Mb2

Mb2 is my successor to multibot. The thought of creating a new poker ecosystem rumbled around in my head for a while. In 2019, three days after running the Boston Marathon, I pulled the trigger:

commit 7f1967bef45762774fcee34e24e2afa8a4215ddb
Author: Clifford T. Matthews <ctm@devctm.com>
Date:   Thu Apr 18 15:51:25 2019 -0600

    output of cargo new poker

BARGE deadheads

On May 7th, I shared my thoughts, concerns and need for play-testers with the BARGE deadheads. I sent out an email with "return, maybe, of IRC poker, sort of" as the subject and I got great feedback.

WRGPT

Although I knew how to play poker and have written a poker server before, I knew that I might forget various edge cases, so one of the first things I did was write a parser to allow me to read all the hand histories from the most recent WRGPT.

I had wanted to do the same using IRC poker histories, but I couldn't find any. I wasn't even successful at finding documentation for the IRC poker commands, so I leaned on the WRGPT advanced action documentation when my memory was insufficient as I created mb2's underlying protocol.

Bill Savage

In mid October, 2019, one of my friends volunteered to invest in my project. I've known Bill for a long time. We used to follow the Grateful Dead, often with him driving. He was also my hiking partner for many years. He was around back when I formed Abacus Research & Development (my Macintosh emulation and reverse engineering company).

LFromHell

The earliest version of mb2 used IRC as an interface and LFromHell was essentially my only play-tester. Others stepped in and tried it here and there, but she came out regularly and even brought a friend or two. Her early support was critical to me getting mb2 off the ground.

C. Meck and the BARGE Rule Book

Multibot only dealt a few games. I wanted mb2 to be more flexible, so I implemented all of the games in the BARGE Rule Book, maintained by Christoper J. Mecklin.

Rich Bremer

Similarly, I wanted mb2 to be able to support a variety of tournament structures, so I implemented the most recent tournament structures dealt at BARGE and EMBARGO. They were created by Rich Bremer.

Lee Ward

In mid August, 2020, another of my friends volunteered to invest in my project. Like Bill, I've known him since I was in the UNM MSCS program. So he too was around for the birth and death of ARDI (Abacus Research & Development). What a long, strange trip it's been.

Patrick Milligan

Patrick created mb2's deck.

Charles Haynes

In mid May, 2021, I sought and found a third investor. Charles got the deal via a simple reply:

"I'm in."

Ironically, as of mid March 2022, I haven't yet taken Charles's money, because it's taken me a while (far too long) to find a business attorney and to get various preferred shareholder agreements written. Since Charles can back out once the paperwork is ready, that succinct reply has turned into (IMO) a big freeroll.

Gerald (Gerry) Petersen aka gerdog

Back when mb2 was still text only, Gerry started playing in our daily tournaments. There have been other players who have played quite a bit, but Gerry has been a constant presence and has provided many good suggestions.

NNR13

NNR13 is another early adopter. NNR13 has gracefully pointed out several areas where mb2 could be (and has been) improved. Furthermore, NNR13 has consistently kept track of the health—physical and mental—of the other players. It's always a delight to have NNR13 present.

Dave Tall

As I added a little bit of sound, here and there, to mb2, I poked around and found various CC0 files to use. However, Dave Tall, a fellow Albuquerquean played his trombone and recorded the game-change fanfare and donated it to mb2.

CC0 creators

Although mb2 is not currently stylized and most of the assets are place-holders, I'm thankful that people create "CC0" works that are I can add to mb2.

Ed Baker

Although I'm currently the sole programmer working on mb2, I use GitHub's issue tracker to log what I need to do and what I've done. Although mb2 itself is closed-source, I have a public mb2-doc GitHub repository and that's where I track mb2 issues.

For whatever reason, Ed has chosen to watch that repository and every once in a while he comments on an issue, typically in commiseration. To a large extent I try to live my life as though someone were watching me, in other words, I behave well even when nobody can see that I'm doing so. However, knowing that Ed may be following my commentary gives me a mental boost that I wouldn't have anticipated.