Welcome to the GraphicalPokerClient help.

 

This help file is very detailed. Personally, I find that usually there is some simple thing I have forgotten, and therefore I have explicitly stated everything required.

The graphical poker client is designed to work with the benchmark server, which at present is available only to past competitors from last year. For more information about last year's competition, see the web site.

In order to run this code, one must have a bot that works with the AAAI Computer Poker Competition protocol. This code allows bots on a local machine to play bots on the benchmark server for those who have an account (competitors from AAAI 2006 CPC participating in the Benchmark server).

There are three steps to making this connection:

  1. Create bots
  2. Login
  3. Create matches

Creating Bots

Bots may be created from the "Manage Local Bots" dialog. These bots will run locally given a pointer to a startme.bat file.

What is a Bot?

For the purposes of this application, a bot is a name and a directory containing a startme.bat file. When a bot is to be executed, the file startme.bat is executed:

startme.bat <serverIP> <serverPort>

For more details, see the protocol specification.

The bot name will appear in all log files returned by the server, so it is highly recommended to give different versions of the same bot different names! The directory is specified by clicking on a particular startme.bat file.

Step 1: Open the Bot Manager

Local Bots->manage

Start the benchmark server, and from the menu, select Local Bots->Manage.

Step 2: Open the New Bot Dialog

Name the new bot

In the bot manager, press New at the bottom of the dialog.

Step 3: Name the New Bot

press new on the bot manager

In the new bot dialog, in the top text field, replaced "untitled" with the name of your bot. In this example, we

Note, that your bot name cannot have spaces, slashes, colons, or periods. However, underscore is a valid character.

Step 4: Browse for the bot

press Browse

In the new bot dialog, press Browse.

Step 5: Select the bot

select startme.bat

Using the file dialog, choose the startme.bat file for the file. Observe that this will actually put the parent directory in the file below.

Step 6: Close the New Bot Dialog

press OK

In the new bot dialog, press OK.

Note that closing the dialog by pressing Cancel or X will not add a new bot.

Step 7: Close the Bot Manager

press OK

In the new bot dialog, press OK or press X.

Login to the Server

Before matches can be sent, the server must be logged into. In order to do this, you must have an account on the machine, which have been given to all the competitors from AAAI 2006 CPC which are participating in the benchmark server. If you were a competitor from last year and want access, please contact Martin Zinkevich.

Step 1: Open the login dialog

Choose Login->Login

From the menu, choose Login->Login.

Creating Matches

Step 1: Open the Match menu and select Create

Create Matches

Step 2: Select the competing bots and name the matches

Name Match

Select two bots, one from each column, for the two bots who will play in the match. Input a name for the matches, how many repeats and hit OK. No matches will be created if you hit cancel. You must be logged in to access the match creation form.

 

Complete Matches

As the matches complete they will be moved to the Completed Matches list

Matches as they complete

 

Terminating Matches

To terminate any running match, select it from the Running Matches list and click the Terminate button.

terminating matches