Realtime PokerStar Dealer Message Fetching Problem

[pphd]

I am not developing an poker bot but an online poker helper application. What I wish to do is to fetch the dealer message at real time so my application can calculate the winning probability and so on.

Problem is that I am not be able to get any text from PokerStar chat box control using ControlGetText function. I have been reading several online resources for a whole day and noticed using OCR might be one solution.

Obviously all commercial poker helper program has implemented this feature. So I believe there must be a good way to do it. Please kindly advise me in which direction should I proceed.

Thanks in advance!!

[DW1]

ocr IS the solution

[pphd]

ocr IS the solution

Thanks danwilli!

If using OCR, I might do in the steps below:

1. I take a screenshot of the chat box every X milisecond and generate one pic

2. Then ocr the whole screenshot pic and fetch the last line of the whole OCRed text

Does this approach seems reasonable to you? I haven't tested it , but just wonder if you have any experience about it, do you think it will be very slow in this way?

[Fossil Rock]

If using OCR, I might do in the steps below:

1. I take a screenshot of the chat box every X milisecond and generate one pic

2. Then ocr the whole screenshot pic and fetch the last line of the whole OCRed text

Does this approach seems reasonable to you? I haven't tested it , but just wonder if you have any experience about it, do you think it will be very slow in this way?

Previous experience says this will not be efficient. There are times when text flows very rapidly and there is a possibility of missing text, thus challenging your accuracy. Even scanning several time a second may not be enough to accomplish your goal. You would need a nasty fast capture & ocr routine to make it work.

Going back to ControlGetText, this may be the only reliable way to accomplish the task. I wrote one a while back for PartyPoker so I could keep a running history of the cards played for each hand. Interestingly enough the utility became somewhat handy in that it 'tended' to show a pattern for which cards were played the most and least. I used this info to take chances when I was holding cards that could turn into nice hands if those certain cards where to surface. By no means was it a sure winner, but I was impressed with the odds turning in my favor at times.

I haven't played online poker in sometime now, but if I remember correctly I had to use a utility called WinSpy to find the correct control ID to use to get the text I was after.