$Id: README 1773 2006-10-12 11:34:41Z loic $

Introduction
============

poker-eval is a C library to evaluate poker hands. The result of the
evalution for a given hand is a number. The general idea is that if
the evalution of your hand is lower than the evaluation of the hand of
your opponent, you lose. Many poker variants are supported (draw,
holdem, omaha, etc.) and more can be added.  poker-eval is designed
for speed so that it can be used within poker simulation software
using either exhaustive exploration or Monte Carlo.

The poker-eval library is Free Software and is released under the
terms of the GNU General Public License. See the COPYING file in the
root directory of the distribution.

Compiling -- GNU/Linux and Unix systems
=========================
This library uses the GNU Autoconf self-configuration mechanism, so
compiling on a GNU/Linux and Unix system should be fairly simple.  

To build both the C library and the examples:
  autoreconf --install
  ./configure
  make 

To build and run the tests:

  AUTOMAKE=automake-1.9 ACLOCAL=aclocal-1.9 autoreconf --install
  ./configure
  make check

The "make check" command will run several test programs to ensure that
everything works correctly.  On slow machines, the tests may take
several minutes.

To install the library and the headers (by default they will
install in /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/include/poker-eval 
respectively):

   ./configure
   make install

To run the examples:

   cd examples
   read the usage at the beginning of the source file
   and run the program accordingly

Compiling -- Windows, using cygwin 
==================================
If you have the cygwin package installed, you can build the library as
per the directions above for GNU/Linux and Unix systems.

Compiling -- DOS / Windows (May be obsolete, please send updates
to cpinson@freesheep.org)
================================================================
The library can also be compiled using Microsoft Visual C++.  In each
directory, special DOS makefiles are provided, called makefile.dos.
To compile the library, make sure that the VC tools are on the path
and that the LIB variable is properly set (VC provides a batch file,
vcvars32.bat, to set this up), and enter the following commands:
  cd lib
  nmake -f makefile.dos
  cd ..\examples
  nmake -f makefile.dos
  cd ..\tests
  nmake -f makefile.dos

You can't use make to run the test programs under Windows as you can
on Unix, but you can run them (digtest5 and digtest7, in the tests
directory) and compare the output value with the value in the make
file (makefile.dos in the tests directory) to ensure that the right
thing happened.  

Once the library is built, you can use the resulting library
(libpoker.lib) in other Visual C++ projects.  Make sure to put the
include directory of the pokersource library package in the include
path for projects that will be using the library.  

Download
========
The library may be obtained from the pokersource project at
http://gna.org/projects/pokersource/


Reporting bugs, suggesting improvements
=======================================
As of August 2005, the poker-eval library is maintained by
Loic Dachary.  Bug reports, suggestions for improvements, or candidates
for inclusion should be sent to
     Loic Dachary <loic@dachary.org>
     Tim Showalter <tjs@psaux.com> 
     Michael Maurer <mjmaurer@yahoo.com>

You can also check out the pokersource user group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pokersource or the mailing list
at https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/pokersource-users/