This README file is being working on. Please ignore most of what you see here, and try again later.
This is the initial public release of November 2018
To play the game:
There are some odd behaviors you may notice in the app:
So far, it seems to work well on either Linux or Windows, using a recent version of Firefox, Opera, or Chrome.
Browser support on mobile devices is more limited. You may need to wait some seconds (up to 14 seconds for Firefox on my old tablet) for the game to load. Chrome and Opera seem to work well.
Firefox on mobile is problematic. The app may start properly and work fine the first time the page is loaded, but reloading the page may result in the WebAssembly app not starting. (This is a suspected bug in Go's WebAssembly support or the Firefox browser.) At the worst, you may need to clear the browser cache and restart Firefox to get it to work again. Before that, you can try just restarting the browser, and please let me know if that worked for you.
One of the reasons I'm publishing this before it is more complete is so that this issue can be demonstrated and discussed.
Upon a q ("quit") or e ("exit") keypress, the game shows an end-of-game message, then just stops and becomes completely unresponsive. That is because the Go program exited. This is a holdover from the console version, and will work more elegantly in a future release.
For now, reload the page to start a new game.
It's a great way to practice your strategy for fun, or before going to a casino.
Many variants of video poker are included as options. (Currently accessible only using the A-I keys.)
Example of good luck:
SYNOPSIS
videopoker [-b] [-b1] [-g game] [-is #chips] [-k 5-char-string] [-mh]
[-q] [-uD] [-v]
DESCRIPTION
videopoker is a text-based video poker game. It has an efficient user
interface that takes a little time to learn, but allows fast play and
requires only one hand to operate.
DISCLAIMER
By default, videopoker is intended to closely match the behavior of 9/6
Jacks or Better video poker machines in casinos, and an option allows
selection of other games and pay tables. However, the author is not an
expert on gaming, and no guarantee whatsoever is made that videopoker´s
behavior is an exact match to that of any other video poker. Please
take that into careful consideration before trying out a real video
poker machine.
HOW TO PLAY
Start the game and rest the fingers of your right hand on the keyboard
as when touch typing. Your thumb will be on the space bar, and your
index finger through little finger will be on the keys j, k, l, and
semicolon (;).
A five-card hand will be displayed. To hold cards, type the keys corre‐
sponding to the cards:
SPACE Leftmost card
j Second card from left
k Middle card
l Second card from right
; Rightmost card
The keys may be typed in any order, and a key can be entered more than
once to toggle the held/discarded state of the card. The backspace key
may be used to undo mistakes.
Then type the Enter key to deal. Discarded cards are redealt, and the
final hand is shown, along with how it is recognized as either a win‐
ning or losing hand, and the new score.
The game will continue until you either quit or run out of chips.
To quit, type either q or e, then the Enter key.
Changing the bet
To increase your bet from the default, type b, followed by a digit from
1 to 5, along with the keys to hold cards. For example,
lb4;
will hold the rightmost two cards, and increase the bet to 4x. By
itself,
b3
will increase the bet to 3x, but not hold any cards.
The increase takes effect starting with the next hand and stays in
effect until changed using the same method. The only exception is when
the number of chips is less than the bet, in which case the bet is
automatically reduced to make it equal to the number of chips remain‐
ing, where it will stay until you change it.
OPTIONS
-b1
("Bet 1") Use a minimum bet of one chip, rather than the default ten.
Typically used along with the -is option.
-g name
("Game") Play a different variant of video poker. The default is 9/6
Jacks or Better, but you can change it to another by specifying one of
the strings in the left column of the following list:
aa All American
tens Tens or Better
jb95 9/5 Jacks or Better
jb86 8/6 Jacks or Better
jb85 8/5 Jacks or Better
jb75 7/5 Jacks or Better
jb65 6/5 Jacks or Better
-is integer
("Initial Score") Start the game with integer chips, rather than the
default 1000. integer may be in the range of 1 to 100,000.
BUGS
When played with the (experimental) -u3 option, cards may not be
equally spaced apart. This may be due to improper handling of ANSI
escape codes (used to change text colors) and/or improper handling of
Unicode playing card characters by various virtual terminals.
VERSION
This manual page is for version 1.0 of the program.
AUTHOR
Jay Ts
(http://jayts.com)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2016-2018 Jay Ts
Released under the GNU Public License, version 3.0 (GPLv3)
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)