Poker Copilot 5.18 Now Available: The Colours Edition (or the Colors Edition, for our USA users)

Poker Copilot 5.18 is now available to download.

(I’m from a country where we spell things more or less than same as they do in England. Therefore, throughout this post, I use colour instead of color.)

The most important change in this update is the HUD colour settings:

  • You can now make all HUD statistics use a default colour based on simple formulas.
  • You now have fine-tuned control over the colours used for each statistic, regardless of whether it is percentage-based or not.
  • You can now customise HUD colours used for M-ratio and for BB remaining.
  • We’ve replaced “full brightness threshold” with two separate settings: “color threshold” and “icon threshold”

Some other changes:

  • Added support for gioco digitale poker (aka GD Poker), which recently changed from Ongame Network to PartyPoker network.
  • Added support for bwin.it, which recently changed from Ongame Network to PartyPoker network.
  • Fixes to 888poker support, especially for their unique definition of ” raises” actions
  • All-in equity is now calculated for 888poker network

I hate it when an app I use every day changes things for no apparent reason. Or for an apparent reason, but not something that was an issue for me. And so I’m aware that some of you will be bothered by the changes in this update. Others won’t notice. And some people will be very pleased. Let me explain further why we did this:

Problem 1: Confusion

Until this update, Poker Copilot’s HUD colours were configured via three different places:

  • the “HUD colour threshold” setting in Preferences -> HUD -> General (which also controlled when icons appeared)
  • Preferences -> HUD -> Colours
  • Preferences -> SharkScope, if you have a SharkScope account attached to Poker Copilot

All three sets of settings were combined to choose the correct colours to use.

This was probably confusing for some customers; it certainly was confusing for us here at Poker Copilot global headquarters.

Problem 2: Limitations

A long-standing and common request for Poker Copilot was to be able to change the colour settings for M-ratio and other non-percentage based stats. A quite recent but common request from our SharkScope users is to be able to colour statistics according to SharkScope statistics, which are often neither percentage-based, nor inaccurate until a certain number of hands for the player are in your local Poker Copilot database.

Problem 3: Keep it Simple

Making a simple user interface is hard. Well, it is easy if there are few choices and features to offer. But when there are subtle differences between features that seem alike from a user perspective, hiding that difference behind a simple user interface is hard. I tried to concoct an alternative to our multi-colour sliders that are used to control HUD colours. I talked to smart people who know Poker Copilot well; I sought external help. But alas, it seemed that the multi-colour sliders were not practical for statistics like M-Ratio or Times Played. For the sake of simplicity we needed an approach that would work for all statistics, no matter what their range of allowed values.

Our Approach

Over the last month, I’ve used the brilliant Balsamiq Mockups to make drafts of potential approaches to remove the confusion, remove the limitations, and yet keep it simple. I’ve bounced ideas around with others. I’ve coded up test solutions. It was hard. But we got it done. Perhaps the solution we’ve got is ideal; we hope it is. But if not, we’ll be listening to customer feedback to tweak the approach in the coming weeks.

Here’s the new HUD Colours preferences panel:

Screen Shot 2015-04-14 at 12.01.38 pm

 

I hope you enjoy the extra flexibility these settings give you.