Hold’Em Showdown

By

Steve Brecher

Hold’Em Showdown is a program that you can download and then run on your desktop.   It prompts for information from you which specifies a Texas Hold’Em poker “all-in” situation for two or more players, and then gives you the chances of each player winning (or tying). It works by enumeration rather than simulation. Thus its results are a tabulation of all possibilities of remaining board cards and are exact, rather than an approximation based on an arbitrary number of simulated deals.

Hold’Em Showdown and its source code are in the public domain (not copyrighted). You are free to give a copy to anyone.

The Windows version is an archive (.zip file) containing the application (.exe) and a ReadMe.txt text file:

Download Windows Version 2006Dec05.0 (35KB)

The Mac version is a StuffIt™ archive (.sit file) containing the application and a ReadMe text file.  It was created with an earlier version of the C source code discussed below.  I have not tested it with OS X:

Download Mac Version 2001Aug30.0 (36KB)

The Java version is an archive (zip file) containing a  JAR file, a Windows .bat file,  and a ReadMe text file.   The JAR contains, in addition to the executable .class files, the source (.java) files:

Download Java Version 2008Apr27.0 (40KB)

The C source code for Hold’Em Showdown is usually of interest only to programmers who want to make changes to the program or to use its hand evaluator in other programs. It can also be used to create versions that will run with other operating systems. It is written in the “C” programming language and provided as a .zip file:

Download Source Code (18KB)

Programmers interested in hand evaluation code may also want to visit the pokersource site.

Although Hold 'Em Showdown is more than adequate for typical usage on hands with specific hole cards, it is obsolete for more general scenarios involving ranges of hands (example:  any pair, any suited connectors 98 or better, any two Broadway cards) or scenarios involving players with “random” hands.  (Hold 'Em Showdown can do enumerations involving up to two players with “random” hole cards, but it can take a long time.)  For a better solution see PokerStove .