Multiplexer
The multiplexer-engine is a module that enables you to access lots of symbols in a poker-logical way.
Historic background
The philosophy of WinHoldem in the by-gone past and early OpenHoldem was: provide technical symbols and let the user do all the rest. For example there were symbols currentbet0..currentbet9 for the bets of the chairs 0,.9. If the user wanted to figure out the currentbet of the big blind he first had to create a function that identified the big-blind-chair
##f$bigblindchair## // Chair 0 dealt 2nd? ac_dealpos0 == 2 ? 0 : // Chair 1 dealt 2nd? ac_dealpos1 == 2 ? 1 : // Chair 2 dealt 2nd? ac_dealpos2 == 2 ? 2 : ...
This functions looks for the chair that got dealt 2nd and returns the chair number, assuming it is the big-blind (it ignores some finer details like a missing small-blind or reversed blinds headsup). With this function it is now possbile to lookup the currentbet of the big-blind in a similar way:
##f$bigblindcurrentbet## WHEN bigblindchair == 0 RETURN currentbet0 FORCE WHEN bigblindchair == 1 RETURN currentbet1 FORCE WHEN bigblindchair == 2 RETURN currentbet2 FORCE ... WHEN bigblindchair == 9 RETURN currentbet9 FORCE
Doable, but somewhat clumsy and lots of work, as such functions had to be created for every logical chair and for every symbol you, the user, wanted to access.
The new multiplexer
First: OpenHoldem provides more than a dozen built-in logical chair-symbols like dealerchair, firstraiserchair, lastcallerchair utgchair. Second: the multiplexer-engine makes it possible to use these chair-symbols for indexing numbered symnols. For example you can now write:
WHEN currentbet_lastraiserchair > ... WHEN balance_bigblindchair <= ... WHEN pt_vpip_smallblindchair < ...
Chair symbols supported
The multiplexer-engine supports the following chair-symbols for indexing other symbols:
- userchair
- bigblindchair
- smallblindchair
- dealerchair
- buttonchair (synonym for dealerchair)
- cutoffchair
- mp3chair
- mp2chair
- mp1chair
- ep3chair
- ep2chair
- ep1chair
- utgchair (under the gun, the player behind big blind, first to act preflop)
- firstraiserchair
- lastraiserchair
- raischair (historic synonym for lastraiserchair)
- firstcallerchair
- lastcallerchair
- headsupchair (chair of your last remaining opponent)
- bigstackchair
- smallstackchair
Betrounds
Besides chair symbols the multiplexer engine supports also betting-round symbols for indexing of game-history symbols. It is now possible to write code like ncurentbets_previousround or the verbose nplayersround_flop instead of nplayersround2. Symbols supported:
- preflop
- flop
- turn
- river
- currentround
- previousround
Suits
Additionally the new symbols suitbitsplayerN (N = 0..3) and rankbitsplayerN can be addressed in a verbose way with the following multiplexer-postfixes.
- clubs
- diamonds
- hearts
- spades
PokerTracker
In the past OpenHoldem supported similar functionality for PokerTracker symbols only.These symbols get now also handled by the multiplexer in order to avoid duplicate functionality in the code-base. as a consequence some symbols got renamed slightly. E.g. pt_vpip_lastcallerchair instead of the former pt_vpip_lastcaller.
OpenPPL and user-defined symbols
Of course the multiplexer-engine works also for OpenPPL. For example the OpenPPL-library contains technical functions StackSize0..Stacksize9 and the values can be addressed in a logical way like StackSize_dealerchair. And of course it works for user-defined functions exactly the same way.