I do not play poker for a long time, but when I decided to learn it, I thought it would be helpful to do it with computer-game. It is quite clear that you can not learn poker totally on a computer (no matter if you play against a computer or humans in a virtual casino) because you do not see your opponents. But I am sure, that learning some basics is possible with a game like PokerTH, so I suggest to have a focus on this goal by integrating some
- extra documentation like rules etc.
- analysing-features like probability-information
- something like a pokertrainer/tutormodus

Maybe if someone here knows 'gnuBG' (http://www.gnubg.org/ - a opensource Backgammongame) you will know what things I mean. Such feature could be very helpful to learn the more technical aspects of poker as all other aspects can only be learned during real-life games (and maybe with real money in hopefully your pockets!).

Hi,
Some of this has been discussed before, look for the thread "a bunch of things" by passingstranger.
My opinion was (and for the most part, still is) that it's not really simple to integrate help features without making the interface too complicated. And would a help feature recommend that you raise with Q-Q or not, and if so, when? Poker is complicated like that.

Rules for poker are easily looked up on the internet.
As for the pokertrainer/tutormodus: how would this differ from a normal game against ai players, learning the basics as you try all kinds of stuff?

The probability information could be a good idea though: this could be done in the left toolbox. It could be an extra tab (next to hands/chat) if necessary, using plain text it fits if you omit the royal flush (=straight flush anyway) and high card (100% chance anyway). After cards are dealt, the game could dump the info in there.

Something like: You get dealt 5hearts 6hearts. You click on the prob tab next to chat. You see

straight flush -- 1 %
four of a kind -- 1 %
flush -- 8 %
straight -- 10 %
three of a kind -- 9%
two pair -- 15 %
one pair -- 45 %

the flop is 7hearts 8hearts 9diamonds. The box now says

straight flush -- 7 %
four of a kind -- 0%
flush -- 35 %
straight -- 100 %
three of a kind -- 1 %
two pair -- 1 %
one pair -- 11 %

I just guessed about most of these percentages, but there are plenty of sites that have more realistic numbers (or the means to calculate them). And the options are actually very limited since you don't have info about other players' cards anyway.

So this may be doable. Whether the devs think implementing something like this is worth it, I don't know.

heyn