The seat puck showed a green figure that meant "what this player just bet"
during a street and "what they've put in this hand" between streets — two
different numbers wearing the same badge, sitting directly above their stack
size. Easy to misread, and nothing on the table looked like money.
Bets now sit on the felt between their player and the pot, as a chip coloured
by the largest denomination in the chip legend that fits the amount: a $30 bet
shows green against a $25 chip, a $2 bet shows white. When a street closes the
chips come off the felt and the pot badge keeps the money, the way they'd be
swept in. The puck's figure now always means the same thing — this player's
total for the hand.
On a phone the bet clings to its own puck instead of sitting on its own ring.
That isn't a preference: sweeping every radius between the seat ring and the
pot badge at 390px showed each one collides with either the pucks or the pot,
because the felt has no room for a third ring at that size.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015bnp7xKUPFFSpwkYNFaPgb
Each round added a panel, and the sidebar became five identical dark accordions
with no hierarchy between them — which is the polish debt I've been pointing at
for a while without paying it down.
Session Standings and Hand History were always two views of the same log, so
they're one Session panel now, with subheads and the export and clear buttons
at the bottom where they act on both. Base pot amount is the pre-live-betting
way of working, so it moves into a "Without live betting" disclosure inside
Table Setup rather than sitting between two settings a dealer actually touches.
Panels are ordered by how often they're opened, and the hints are shorter.
Also stops "Small blind" wrapping onto two lines beside its input, which made
the pair look like a mistake rather than a pair.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015bnp7xKUPFFSpwkYNFaPgb
The phone got gestures a few rounds back; the desktop still had a mouse and
nothing else. On a bar that gets tapped thirty times a hand, moving a hand to
the trackpad between every decision is the slow part.
F folds, C checks or calls, R opens the raise pad, A shoves, Enter confirms a
raise or moves the hand on, Esc backs out, U takes the last action back. Each
button wears its key in the corner, hidden on touch devices where it would just
be clutter on a button being tapped anyway.
The shortcuts press the same buttons a dealer would tap rather than calling the
betting engine themselves, so there's no second code path to drift out of step
with what the bar is actually offering — if a button isn't on screen, its key
does nothing.
Nothing fires while a name, amount or note is being typed, or while an overlay
owns the keyboard. Typing "Francesca" into a seat name must not fold the table.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015bnp7xKUPFFSpwkYNFaPgb
An audit of what's accumulated turned up an inconsistency worth fixing: double-
tapping a seat to fold someone was undoable, but tapping Fold in the action bar
— the button a dealer actually uses all hand — was not. Nor was Call, Raise, or
dealing a street. The safest path through the tool was the shortcut, and the
main one had no way back.
Every action taken from the bar now goes through one place that records it
first, and the bar carries a standing Undo naming what it will take back:
"Ben's fold", "dealing the flop". Twelve steps deep, because a misclick usually
gets noticed a beat late and one level of undo would only cover the luckiest
case.
It's a control rather than a toast per action. A dealer taps this bar
constantly, and a toast after every fold is noise they'd learn to ignore —
which is precisely when they'd miss the one that mattered.
The history is discarded whenever a hand starts or settles, because those
snapshots describe a hand that no longer exists. The whole-hand Undo on the
toast already covers that boundary.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015bnp7xKUPFFSpwkYNFaPgb
Dealing guides put the biggest time sink not in shuffling or spreading cards
but in players who haven't noticed the action is on them — and they list the
per-street count of players remaining as part of what a dealer announces.
The action bar now carries both. A stopwatch runs on whoever is to act, going
amber at thirty seconds and red at a minute, so a dealer can see at a glance
whether someone is genuinely deciding or has stopped paying attention. Nothing
happens when it grows; it is a prompt for the dealer, not a clock on the
player. Beside it is the count of players still in the hand.
The timer restarts only when the action actually moves, so re-rendering for an
unrelated reason doesn't put a thinking player back to zero, and it ticks by
repainting its own text rather than rebuilding the buttons under the dealer's
thumb. It stops when the hand ends or the bar hides.
Also stops the side-pot breakdown from crying wolf: it now waits for someone to
actually be all-in. Unequal amounts in front of players are normal mid-street —
the blinds alone are unequal — and layering those announced a side pot on every
hand before anyone had acted.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015bnp7xKUPFFSpwkYNFaPgb
Dealing guides are consistent that the most common side-pot error isn't
miscounting the chips, it's failing to announce the breakdown clearly before
the showdown. The tool had the arithmetic right but only revealed it after the
hand, one layer at a time, as the wizard asked who won each.
The breakdown is now visible while the hand is still running: as soon as an
all-in splits the money, the action bar lists the main pot and each side pot
with the amount and who can win it, and the wizard repeats it under "Announce
before the showdown" before asking for a winner. A hand with a single
undivided pot shows nothing, so the line means something when it appears.
Chips nobody could call are called what they are. Money above the largest live
contribution was never contested — usually an overbet by someone who then
folded — so it's listed as "Uncalled, back to X" rather than padding a side
pot nobody can win. The wizard's leftover warning says the same thing instead
of telling the dealer to un-fold someone to win it, which was the wrong advice
for chips that should simply be pushed back.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015bnp7xKUPFFSpwkYNFaPgb
Folding someone meant opening their editor, finding the Fold box, ticking it,
and dismissing the sheet — four interactions for the thing that happens most
often in a hand.
Double-tap a seat to fold, and again to put them back. Press and hold for a
quick menu of everything else you do to one player: fold, all-in, sit out or
deal in, hand them the button, or open the full editor. Both are undoable the
same way the header buttons are, because a gesture is easier to fire by
accident than a button.
The single tap now waits out the double-tap window before opening the editor —
a fifth of a second of latency on opening a form, in exchange for a fold that
doesn't also fling a sheet up over the table. A press that moves is a drag, so
the hold is cancelled and swapping seats still works, and the puck shrinks
slightly while held so a press that's being counted looks different from one
that's being ignored.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015bnp7xKUPFFSpwkYNFaPgb
Typing "AH" into a two-character box is fine at a desk and miserable at a table:
it needs a keyboard, it accepts nonsense like "ZZ", and it happily deals the same
card to two players.
The two card fields become face-up card slots. Tapping one opens a 52-card grid
— four suit columns, thirteen rank rows, one tap per card — and picking the first
card moves straight on to the second, because a dealer picking hole cards is
always picking two. Cards already dealt elsewhere at the table are greyed out and
say who has them, so a duplicate is visibly out of play rather than silently
accepted.
Cards are still stored as the same two plain characters everything has always
read; the suit only becomes a symbol on its way to a human. That formatting is
now shared, so the table pucks, the seat editor, the pot wizard, the hand history
and the CSV all say A♥ K♦ rather than three of them saying AH KD.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015bnp7xKUPFFSpwkYNFaPgb
jheaps
