A Good Mix 31: Texas Holdem, IronScheme, Indigo Cheminformatics, IronRuby and bridge xml

More IronPython and DLR related projects, articles and news from around the web.

• Texas Holdem Hand Equity Calculation in IronPython

 Greg Bray has been experimenting with using Resolver One to write Texas Holdem calculating spreadsheets with IronPython. In this blog entry he shows the IronPython code for calculating hand equity:

This year I have been working in my free time to create easy to use Texas Holdem poker spreadsheets based on IronPython using Resolver One. These spreadsheets can be used to calculate Win/Tie/Loss odds, but some people like to use hand equity instead since it represents a player’s overall stake in the pot. Equity of 1.0 or 100% means that they will win the entire pot, where as equity of 0.5 (50%) or 0.25 (25%) means that they will split the pot with other players. You can again use Monte Carlo analysis to run a number of trials before all of the board cards are dealt to estimate a player’s current equity in the hand. This means that if during 4 trials I would win 2 of them and split the pot with one other player on the other 2, then my equity would be (1.0+1.0+0.5+0.5)/4 =  3/4 or 75%.

Calculating Win/Tie/Loss statistics on an independent player vs player basis is very simple, as the player’s pocket cards are evaluated against each opponent one at a time to show which opponent hands are stronger or weaker than your own. This does not take into account how the pocket cards of other opponents might change the odds, since in reality you usually play verse a table of opponents not just one opponent at a time. Changing the spreadsheet to work against the whole table would require changing the Monte Carlo simulation from a “row by row” analysis to a “table by table” analysis, where by you setup a table of opponents using a random hand for each player given the information that you have about their hand (AK, KK or QQ, Group1, etc..) and then generate a random 5 card hand based on the currently dealt cards.

• IronScheme 1.0 RC 1

IronScheme is an implementation of R6RS Scheme for .NET and Mono implemented on the Dynamic Language Runtime. You can either use it for writing .NET applications or for embedding into other applications to provide a Scheme scripting environment:

IronScheme provides 2 run modes: either via direct invocation on the commandline or via a REPL interactive environment.

IronScheme can also used an embedded scripting library in your .NET programs.

With 1.0 RC 1, IronScheme implements the entire R6RS Scheme standard, and only fail 4 of 8884 tests in the PLT R6RS test suite.

IronScheme runs on MS .NET and Mono. Unfortunately, it does not seem to work under 64bit on Mono.

Since the release of 1.0 Release Candidate 1 leppie has also written a blog entry demonstrating the use of the new dynamic keyword in C# 4.0 with IronScheme: IronScheme and C# 4’s new dynamic keyword

• In I go with Indigo, the new open source cheminformatics toolkit

Noel Baoilleach demonstrates using the open source Indigo cheminformatics toolkit from IronPython.

Charlie Zhu has already written an example application using C#. Rather than wait for CPython bindings, I installed IronPython and used it to access Indigo's .NET libraries (Dingo, in this case) to do a SMILES to png conversion.

• IronRuby 0.9.2

A new release of IronRuby, IronPython's red-headed cousin that is still on it's path to 1.0. Release Notes:

The IronRuby team is pleased to announce version 0.9.2! As IronRuby approaches 1.0, these 0.9.x releases contain important bug fixes and enhancements that IronRuby users request; this release fixes/closes 44 bugs. For more information see the "Bugs fixed" section, and the CHANGELOG.

This release is the first to give IronRuby a MSI-based installer for Windows. Try it out and let us know if it does not install on your system.

• bridge 0.4.0 release
• bridge homepage

Bridge is a "General purpose XML library for CPython and IronPython". It provides a common interface (Document, Element, Attribute, Comment and PI) for working with XML whether you are using CPython or IronPython.