Open standards

Internet poker gaming sites all use proprietary hand history formats of there own devising. In order to save and view histories from every site we are developing two technologies that we offer as standards for individuals and groups that need to use hand histories.

These technologies are an XML language to describe poker games and a robust parsing engine to convert hand histories in any format into this common language.

We think standards for these items are in the best interest of anyone utilizing hand histories for whatever purpose. In order to make these standards as strong as possible we are making our efforts available and hope to get input and commentary from anyone interested.

XML Poker language

The purpose of the XML Poker languange in to describe the event-by-event history of any poker game. All information originally in any hand history from a gaming site, or a manually created history from any other source, will be maintained in the XML. It is possible to merge two hand histories of the same game to complete information not in one or the other (the down cards of people who folded for instance).

The beta version of the XML schema is available here. It is often easier to get an idea of the nature of an XML language by looking at the XML itself instead of a schema, however. For this, try using the on-line Poker Hander Viewer to see the XML output from Internet hand histories. If you have feedback or questions about the XML please use the Feedback link available on any page or email us directly.

Hand history parser

The goal of the parser is to have single robust engine that can handle all hand history formats past and present. The parser will take as input game histories from many sources and output the game in the common Poker XML language.

The parser is modular in design so new formats need a minimal amount of code to identify common events and extract data from single lines. Most of the parsing logic is already covered in other object making the creation and modifying of new formats relatively easy.

We plan on making the complete source code in C++ of the parser available under the GNU Open Source license. Other license options may also be available.

The code isn't ready yet for release. If you would like information on availability please use the Feedback link of send an email.