Okay, so, I’ve been messing around with this idea for a while, a Chrome extension that helps you cheat at poker. Sounds crazy, right? But hear me out. I’m not a programmer or anything, just a guy who likes to tinker. Started out with zero knowledge of how extensions even work, just a vague notion that it’d be cool to see if I could make something that gave me a little edge in online poker.
Getting Started
First thing I did was a ton of Googling. Just trying to figure out the basics, you know? Found some tutorials on how to build a basic Chrome extension. Turns out, it’s mostly just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – stuff I’d played around with a bit before, but never seriously. Downloaded a few example extensions, just to poke around in their guts and see how they ticked.
My initial plan was super simple. I wanted the extension to just read the cards on the screen and maybe give me some basic stats. Like, if I had a pair, it’d say “Hey, you got a pair!” Exciting stuff, I know.
Hitting the Wall
Spent a few weeks just trying to get the extension to do anything. Kept running into walls. Turns out, reading data from a webpage is harder than it looks. Security and all that. Websites don’t just let any random extension snoop around, which, I guess, makes sense.
Back to Google. Found some stuff about content scripts and how they can interact with web pages. Learned a bit about DOM manipulation. Started feeling like a real hacker, even though I was mostly just copy-pasting code and hoping it worked. Lots of trial and error. Mostly error.
Small Victories
Finally, after countless hours, I managed to get the extension to recognize when a poker game was active. It was a huge moment, even though it didn’t do anything useful yet. Then, I figured out how to grab the text from the card elements on the screen. Felt like I’d cracked the Enigma code or something.
Now I could see the cards! In the extension’s popup, it would list out the cards on the table. Progress! It was messy, it was ugly, but it worked. Or, well, it sort of worked. It was super unreliable, and sometimes it would just show a bunch of gibberish.
Adding Some Logic
Next step was to actually make it do something with the card data. I had to teach it the rules of poker, which was a whole other headache. I mean, I know how to play, but explaining it to a computer is a different story.
- Hand Ranking: Had to figure out how to identify pairs, three of a kind, straights, and all that. Spent way too much time on this, but eventually, I got it working.
- Odds Calculation: This was the real dream, having the extension tell me the odds of winning. Found some open-source libraries for poker odds calculation, but integrating them was a nightmare.
Beta Testing
After months of work, I had something that was kind of functional. It wasn’t pretty, and it was definitely buggy, but it could kind of play poker. I tested it out on some free poker sites. Won a few hands, lost a bunch. The extension was giving me some advice, but it was often wrong or just plain unhelpful.
Current State
So, that’s where I’m at now. Still tinkering, still trying to improve it. It’s a far cry from the perfect poker cheating tool I imagined, but it’s been a fun project. Learned a ton along the way, even if I’m still not sure if it’s actually useful. Maybe one day I’ll get it to the point where it can make me a poker millionaire, but for now, it’s just a weird hobby that keeps me busy.