Nat Arem's Blog

So, a few hours ago, the BLUFF developers and I finished up a production-ready version of the latest incarnation of thepokerdb. While we re-did a bunch of features for our March 2007 release of v2.0, we didn’t really *add* too much. This time we added a bunch of things, all of which I think MTT posters will find to be pretty valuable.

1. Hand History Paster

You can get to the HH paster along the left navigation of thepokerdb pages.

Once you click the table lookup link, you can paste a hand history from PS, PP, FTP, AP or UB into the form. I pasted a Stars HH from the Wed. $150K Guar in the following screenshot:

Once you click lookup players, you’ll see the names appear in the gray area to the right of the form. In addition, the table will follow you around the site for the remainer of your web browser session on the left hand side.

You can paste a new history at any time or continue to use the links from the first history. We plan on increasing the functionality of this tool to allow users to paste multiple histories and store them all for the browser session on the left navigation.

2. Four new tabs, one more to come

I’m personally really excited by this functionality. The filters are pretty powerful and can really breakdown someone’s game in a way that was a pain in the ass to do before this tool was created.

First, we added a few columns on the Summary tab to give you a quick look at someone’s results across different types of tournaments.

In addition, you can click on any of the 4 sub tabs to get a better breakdown of the player’s performance in that category. We’ve modified each tab slightly to make it as relevant as possible to the tournament type. For instance, the HU tab shows 3-4th as the same placing instead of giving credit for top 3 or something that doesn’t make much sense.

Here’s where the filters come into play. You can click on the buyin/game type tab and select “HU” in the filter. This lets you see a summarized version of how the person reached the numbers you see on the HU tab.

In this case, you can see Ansky luckboxed his way to a cash in one of those high stakes 10K HU things. Lastly, if you want to see a detailed view of the aforementioned HU events, you can go to the results tab (the filter will follow you from page to page so you won’t need to select it again) and see the listing of HU events played in even greater detail.

3. Player Linking

The last main feature included in the v3.0 release is player name linking. This allows players to let us know their names on various sites (kinda like P5s) and will allow us to perform global rankings.

The accounts management page is linked in the main nav on the left:

Once on the page, you’ll probably see 6 blank boxes. You can fill in as many or as few as you’d like. The primary site isn’t really too important. Here is what it looks like once filled out:

Each name will be validated to make sure that it’s a real name that has played a tournament. In addition, names, for obvious reasons, cannot be used more than once. Once linked, when someone looks up any of the linked names, the others will appear for easy cross-site lookup:

In addition, where available, we are linking to players’ live statistics.

Anyway, that’s it! There are a few more small improvements that I haven’t listed, but you’ll find them on your own as you browse through the site. Let me know if you have comments, questions, etc.

-Nat

(4:52:36 PM) RandALLin: tickets shipped
(4:58:49 PM) GIFAFI: nice
(4:58:54 PM) GIFAFI: where in the stadium?
(5:00:36 PM) RandALLin: behind home plate front row braves side
(5:00:50 PM) GIFAFI: wow
(5:00:50 PM) GIFAFI: sick
(5:00:53 PM) GIFAFI: how much?
(5:00:57 PM) RandALLin: 44 each
(5:01:03 PM) GIFAFI: sweet
(5:01:08 PM) GIFAFI: how the hell did that happen
(5:01:11 PM) RandALLin: i saw
(5:01:22 PM) RandALLin: 2 available in section 101 for seats 1 and 2
(5:01:23 PM) RandALLin: lol
(5:01:25 PM) RandALLin: i was like uhh ding
(5:01:28 PM) GIFAFI: jesus
(5:01:33 PM) GIFAFI: when you say front row
(5:01:37 PM) GIFAFI: do you mean FRONT row?
(5:01:43 PM) GIFAFI: like first row off the field?
(5:02:05 PM) RandALLin: i suppose its first row off field
(5:02:29 PM) GIFAFI: that’s sick
(5:02:31 PM) GIFAFI: balla
(5:02:38 PM) GIFAFI: so we’ll get em will call?
(5:03:02 PM) RandALLin: The Atlanta Braves tickets you purchased are attached to this e-mail as a separate file. You can print this ticketFast™ attachment with Adobe Acrobat 4.0 (or higher).EVENT: Braves vs Mets September 1, 2007 3:55 PMSEATS: Section 407L, Row 1, Seats 101,102TOTAL TICKETS: 2CONFIRMATION #: 070828-65
(5:03:17 PM) GIFAFI: http://www.tickco.com/sc/50-1752/
(5:03:32 PM) GIFAFI: dude
(5:03:35 PM) GIFAFI: section 407
(5:03:37 PM) GIFAFI: lolol
(5:03:45 PM) GIFAFI: that’s upper deck
(5:03:46 PM) RandALLin: omg
(5:03:47 PM) GIFAFI: not balla
(5:03:48 PM) RandALLin: so owned
(5:03:50 PM) RandALLin: =(
(5:03:58 PM) RandALLin: omg
(5:04:02 PM) RandALLin: how dumb can i be
(5:04:02 PM) GIFAFI: lololol
(5:04:06 PM) GIFAFI:
(5:04:07 PM) RandALLin: dude but it said
(5:04:10 PM) RandALLin: 101
(5:04:13 PM) RandALLin: and fooled me
(5:04:17 PM) RandALLin: so many goddamn sections
(5:04:18 PM) GIFAFI: yea
(5:04:19 PM) RandALLin: bullshit
(5:04:24 PM) GIFAFI: you got pwned, sorry to say
(5:04:27 PM) GIFAFI: well, i’ll still go
(5:04:34 PM) RandALLin: how am i supposed to know the difference?
(5:04:46 PM) RandALLin: i see the seating chart
(5:04:53 PM) RandALLin: then the section #s
(5:04:54 PM) RandALLin: hey lets use
(5:04:57 PM) RandALLin: the same system
(5:05:04 PM) RandALLin: for behind home plate as a section number
(5:05:09 PM) RandALLin: and the area in the upper decks
(5:05:13 PM) RandALLin: yeah htats good idea there
(5:05:16 PM) GIFAFI: no, seat number
(5:05:19 PM) GIFAFI: 101 is the seat number
(5:05:26 PM) RandALLin: see thats retarded
(5:05:30 PM) GIFAFI: good job trying to put the blame elsewhere sir.
(5:06:09 PM) RandALLin: whatever not sittin gthere
(5:06:20 PM) RandALLin: we’ll scalp it ill buy more today
(5:06:34 PM) GIFAFI: hah, okay, let me know what the deal is

Here is the first one…

There are four more and it really starts to escalate. See: http://www.vimeo.com/tag:prankwar

I saw this over the weekend. It deserves its own entry.

One of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.

Go see it ASAP if you haven’t seen it yet.

(Note my new blog title — upper left for those of you wondering where the title is)

This was my first time ever playing a serious round of golf. What a frustrating game. I can already see how people get addicted to it and yet hate it at the same time. But it was fun. Me and three guys from my (former, I’m now a year behind) law school class went to a 9 hole course yesterday and gave it a go. One of the guys was pretty good, shooting a 36 on a par 31 course. The rest of us were terrible. I don’t even know what I shot, but it was way up there. It wasn’t so much that my swing was terrible because I do go to driving ranges a fair amount and I know, generally, what I’m supposed to be doing when I swing a club. The problem was that I have absolutely clue how far things are on the course, I don’t know how far I hit each club, etc. I basically don’t know anything except how to make solid contact (and of course I screw that up a fair amount also). All of that being said, I did manage to hit some good shots here and there and I’m excited to get back out there soon.

On another note, football is finally back. FINALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYY. Football in the fall. College Basketball starting soon. Can’t wait.

Lastly, my “secret project” (even though like 100 people know about it now) mentioned in my last blog took a major step forward over the weekend. It’s shaping up to be good.

I’ve been hanging out with law school friends a lot lately. We did bar trivia last night. Did okay, but didn’t win. Went to the driving range this morning. I confirmed that I’m terrible at golf. Also, yesterday morning went with a friend to the Silver Comet Trail, a “rails to trails” project that is a terrific bike path. We ended up going 32 miles (16 out, 16 back) because her knees started to hurt due to her seat being too low. I was pretty happy with how I felt because 32 miles seemed easy and I am encouraged to try some long rides in the near future (ie, century, etc). Of course, we weren’t going too fast because of how she felt, but 32 miles in a few hours is pretty solid. The only downside to that trail is that it takes 30-40 minutes to drive to from my apartment. Loading up the bike on the rack and driving that far each way for a workout isn’t something I’m going to do on a consistent basis, so I’m probably only going to be biking a few times a month until I live somewhere else.

In other news, a lot of progress has been made lately on an exciting project that I’m working on. I am really excited to get it to completion and see what people think of it. I wish I could lay out the whole idea here, but it probably isn’t smart for me to do that at the moment.

Lastly, I can talk about this other thing I’m involved in: a documentary about the online poker lifestyle. I have a friend with film experience who wants to shoot a video about online players kinda in the style of “MTV: True Life”. So I’m helping him make it happen. We’re going to feature, at least, a house of poker players at UGA (yellowsub, tdomeski, tbthanx, Stoweski). I think everyone knows who yellowsub is. Taylor D (tdomeski) made two $1500 NL WSOP event FTs, one of which was the one that Hellmuth one and the other one Taylor got 2nd for $400-something thousand. Taylor B (tbthanx) isn’t a huge tourney player, but he does have a few tourney scores to his credit and he is a big winner at games around the 5/10 NL area online. Last but not least, Stoweski is a mid-to-upper limit tourney player who’s done well in a few spots, including a $70K score in the Bahamas earlier this year … it was one of the small tourneys run after people bust out of the PCA Main Event.

I think they’re great subjects for the film and considering they live in a house together, it could be really cool. We’re also considering adding a few individuals to the documentary depending on a few factors. I am pretty confident it will turn out well. More likely than not, BLUFF will help us distribute and promote the film, which should be pretty helpful. It will shoot in September.

That’s it for now — time to head into the BLUFF offices. There are some big changes to thepokerdb (ie, we’re actually adding some of those grayed out tabs) coming up pretty soon!