Poker Odds API - ASP.NET MVC 4 Web API Knockout.js Example

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Poker Odds API is an example API built using ASP.NET MVC Web API. Given a Texas Holdem Poker hand (and optionally the community cards) it will calculate the odds of winning.

How It Works

Poker Odds uses the excellent PokerHandEval code written by Keith Rule (based in turn on the poker-eval library). Users of the API submit information on their hand, and get back information on the possible outcomes of the game.
Cards are submitted as a sequence of two character codes separated by spaces. For example, to specify that your pocket cards are the two of diamonds and the queen of clubs, you would pass "2d qc" as the pocket parameter. If you wanted to pass 7 Hearts, Ace of Spades and 10 Hearts as the board, you would specify this as "7h as th". Note that the characer "t" indicates 10.

Live Demo

A live demo is hosted at http://pokerodds.azurewebsites.net/

Source Code

Source code is available here: https://github.com/SneakyBrian/PokerOdds

Example

Requesting the following url (in Firefox or Chrome, which specify XML by default):
http://pokerodds.azurewebsites.net/api/TexasHoldem/?pocket=2d%20qc&board=7h%20as%20th
Results in the response:

<TexasHoldemOdds xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/PokerOdds.Mvc.Web.Models.TexasHoldem">
    <Board>7h as th</Board>
    <CalculationTimeMS>1678</CalculationTimeMS>
    <Completed>true</Completed>
    <Outcomes>
        <PokerOutcome>
            <HandType>HighCard</HandType>
            <HandTypeName>HighCard</HandTypeName>
            <WinPercentage>8.459619319933843</WinPercentage>
        </PokerOutcome>
        <PokerOutcome>
            <HandType>Pair</HandType>
            <HandTypeName>Pair</HandTypeName>
            <WinPercentage>20.051439464020408</WinPercentage>
        </PokerOutcome>
        <PokerOutcome>
            <HandType>TwoPair</HandType>
            <HandTypeName>TwoPair</HandTypeName>
            <WinPercentage>5.14609555312608</WinPercentage>
        </PokerOutcome>
        <PokerOutcome>
            <HandType>Trips</HandType>
            <HandTypeName>Trips</HandTypeName>
            <WinPercentage>0.90100823218307036</WinPercentage>
        </PokerOutcome>
        <PokerOutcome>
            <HandType>Straight</HandType>
            <HandTypeName>Straight</HandTypeName>
            <WinPercentage>1.326353264373616</WinPercentage>
        </PokerOutcome>
        <PokerOutcome>
            <HandType>Flush</HandType>
            <HandTypeName>Flush</HandTypeName>
            <WinPercentage>0</WinPercentage>
        </PokerOutcome>
        <PokerOutcome>
            <HandType>FullHouse</HandType>
            <HandTypeName>FullHouse</HandTypeName>
            <WinPercentage>0</WinPercentage>
        </PokerOutcome>
        <PokerOutcome>
            <HandType>FourOfAKind</HandType>
            <HandTypeName>FourOfAKind</HandTypeName>
            <WinPercentage>0</WinPercentage>
        </PokerOutcome>
        <PokerOutcome>
            <HandType>StraightFlush</HandType>
            <HandTypeName>StraightFlush</HandTypeName>
            <WinPercentage>0</WinPercentage>
        </PokerOutcome>
    </Outcomes>
    <OverallWinSplitPercentage>35.884515833637018</OverallWinSplitPercentage>
    <Pocket>2d qc</Pocket>
</TexasHoldemOdds>

Or the same url in IE results in a JSON formatted response:

{
    "Pocket" : "2d qc",
    "Board" : "7h as th",
    "Outcomes" : [{
            "HandType" : 0,
            "HandTypeName" : "HighCard",
            "WinPercentage" : 8.459619319933843
        }, {
            "HandType" : 1,
            "HandTypeName" : "Pair",
            "WinPercentage" : 20.051439464020408
        }, {
            "HandType" : 2,
            "HandTypeName" : "TwoPair",
            "WinPercentage" : 5.14609555312608
        }, {
            "HandType" : 3,
            "HandTypeName" : "Trips",
            "WinPercentage" : 0.90100823218307036
        }, {
            "HandType" : 4,
            "HandTypeName" : "Straight",
            "WinPercentage" : 1.326353264373616
        }, {
            "HandType" : 5,
            "HandTypeName" : "Flush",
            "WinPercentage" : 0.0
        }, {
            "HandType" : 6,
            "HandTypeName" : "FullHouse",
            "WinPercentage" : 0.0
        }, {
            "HandType" : 7,
            "HandTypeName" : "FourOfAKind",
            "WinPercentage" : 0.0
        }, {
            "HandType" : 8,
            "HandTypeName" : "StraightFlush",
            "WinPercentage" : 0.0
        }
    ],
    "OverallWinSplitPercentage" : 35.884515833637018,
    "Completed" : true,
    "CalculationTimeMS" : 1816
}

Technology Used

• ASP.NET MVC 4 Web API



• Knockout.js



• jQuery

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ZeroMQ is a highly efficient and scalable network layer that acts as a reliable messaging layer on top of raw sockets. Performance is key here.

For ZeroMQ I use the x86 NuGet package available here: http://nuget.org/packages/clrzmq/2.2.5

MsgPack is a serialization library where efficient storage of the serialized data, and performance of the serialization and deserialization is the main focus.

For MsgPack I found that the current NuGet package was somewhat behind the times, so I built the dll by downloading the latest source from https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-cli and building it in release configuration, and adding it as a reference to both the client and server applications.

With the two libraries combined, an application should be very efficient and performance should be very high. I built this testbed primarily to see how straightforward it was to use these libraries from .NET applications. As you can see, it is very straightforward indeed!

Here is the client implementation:



Here is the server implementation:



Here is the shared model:



The full solution is available here: https://github.com/SneakyBrian/ZeroMQ_MessagePack_Testbed

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Usage:

XML2JSON.exe input.xml output.json

Example Input:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<catalog>
   <book id="bk101">
      <author>Gambardella, Matthew</author>
      <title>XML Developer's Guide</title>
      <genre>Computer</genre>
      <price>44.95</price>
      <publish_date>2000-10-01</publish_date>
      <description>An in-depth look at creating applications 
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      <description>A former architect battles corporate zombies, 
      an evil sorceress, and her own childhood to become queen 
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   </book>
</catalog>

Example Output:

{
  "catalog": {
    "book": [
      {
        "id": "bk101",
        "author": "Gambardella, Matthew",
        "title": "XML Developer's Guide",
        "genre": "Computer",
        "price": "44.95",
        "publish_date": "2000-10-01",
        "description": "An in-depth look at creating applications \r\n      with XML."
      },
      {
        "id": "bk102",
        "author": "Ralls, Kim",
        "title": "Midnight Rain",
        "genre": "Fantasy",
        "price": "5.95",
        "publish_date": "2000-12-16",
        "description": "A former architect battles corporate zombies, \r\n      an evil sorceress, and her own childhood to become queen \r\n      of the world."
      }
    ]
  }
}

Code

This is the code for the program:











The full .NET solution is available here: https://github.com/SneakyBrian/XML2JSON

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