Devlog & notes
Building a poker game with living opponents
Two threads, one project. The Devlog is how it's built; Inside the Table is what it's like to play. No press-release gloss. The wrong turns are kept in.
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Poker where the opponents are alive
Most poker apps give you a difficulty slider with a name attached. This one gives you characters with a mood the game actually keeps track of.
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No, LLMs can't play poker
Strip a language model down to its most mechanical poker player and the strategy never shows up. No range, no plan for a hand, just confident bets into nothing.
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Your opponents remember you
Beat the same opponent across a few sessions and they start to know you. Every player you face becomes a case file you build by playing.
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Stacked With Daniel Negreanu, and the Poker AI We've Been Chasing for 20 Years
A 2006 game licensed the best poker AI in the world and still got read in 40 hands. Its one fatal flaw shaped everything about how we built our opponents.
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Know Your Opponent
7-part series-
How to Beat a Calling Station
The calling station is the player who will not fold. You beat it with a plan you can write on a napkin, and the roster is full of them to practice on.
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How to Beat a Maniac in Poker
The maniac is the calling station's violent cousin. Just as sticky, except they bet. You beat them by getting out of the way and letting them hang themselves.
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How to Play Against a Nit
The nit is the calling station's opposite. They fold too much. You beat them by stealing every pot they don't want and believing them every single time they do.
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How to Beat a Tight-Aggressive Player (the TAG)
The TAG is the hardest seat at the table and the most honest mirror. Against the others you exploit a flaw. Against a TAG, the flaw it finds is usually yours.
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How to Beat a LAG (the Loose-Aggressive Player)
The LAG is the maniac with a license. Same relentless aggression, except now it's earned. You beat them with position, patience, and a willingness to play back.
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How to Play Against a Balanced (GTO) Player
A perfectly balanced opponent has no leak to attack. You don't beat them, you break even. The real skill is recognizing that and spending your chips elsewhere.
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How Not to Be the Fish
You've spent six posts learning to beat every type at the table. This one is about making sure you aren't the type getting beaten.
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Playing Better Poker
11-part series-
The Poker Terms You Actually Need to Know
Every game has its own language. Here is the poker vocabulary that actually comes up, in plain English, with links to go deeper on each one.
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Why Position Is the Most Underrated Edge in Poker
Position is one thing: who acts last. It is also the closest thing poker has to a free edge, and most players give it away.
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Which Hands to Play: a Preflop Starting-Hand Guide
The most common leak in poker is playing too many hands. Fixing it is the cheapest improvement you can make, and it happens before the flop.
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Pot Odds and Equity: the Only Poker Math You Really Need
You don't need to be good at math to use pot odds. You need one ratio and one shortcut, and most calling decisions start to answer themselves.
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Poker Bet Sizing: How Much to Bet and Why
Beginners obsess over whether to bet. The bigger leak is how much. Your bet size should answer one question: what are you trying to make happen?
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When to Bluff in Poker (and When to Just Give Up)
A bluff is a bet that makes a better hand fold. If nobody at the table can fold, you are not bluffing, you are just paying them.
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Exploitative Poker: Play the Player, Not the Cards
GTO makes you unexploitable. Exploitative play makes you a winner. Against anyone short of a perfect opponent, the money is in the adjustment.
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Defensive Poker: How Not to Get Run Over
Every post about beating a player type has a flip side: not being the player type that gets beaten. This is the defensive half of poker.
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Stack Depth: Why Short and Deep Stacks Are Different Games
Two players, same cards, same board. One has 20 big blinds and one has 200, and they are not playing the same game at all.
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How to Read Your Opponents (and Their Tells)
You can't see their cards, but you can see almost everything else. Reading opponents is the skill the whole game is really about.
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Tilt and the Mental Game: How to Stop Spewing After a Bad Beat
Anyone can learn the math of poker. The mental game is the part that actually separates winners from losers, and tilt is its biggest enemy.
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