Flop Card and Hole Card

Certain features of SaT require us to grab a pixel color of a flop card and a hole card. The features that require this are:

  • Move To Grid = 'On Flop' or 'When Dealt Cards'
  • End Of Hand detection

There are 3 things you need to be aware of when using these features.

  1. StackAndTile requires you to sit in the same seat at every table. That's the only way it can consistently find if your hole card is visible. So you would need to turn on preferred seating within your poker client. You would need to coordinate all of your seats for all table types (6max, 9max, etc) so that you always sit in the same place. This is described on that previous link.
    (SaT is only looking for the color of the hole card at the place where you click. SaT does not obtain any information about what your actual cards are. SaT does not transmit any information over the internet, other than checking for new versions and verifying your license upon startup and shutdown.)

  2. During Include Site setup, it asks you to click on a white part of the card. I haven't figured out a good way to word this, therefore this help page was needed. You need to click on a white part of the card that will always be white for all potential cards. Look at the two examples below. Suppose the red dot is the location where you clicked on the card.
    Wrong:
    Right:

    In the first example (labelled "Wrong"), the card was the 2 of Spades, and the user clicked in the center of the card. SaT asked the user to click on the white area of the card, so he thinks he did it correctly, because there is a lot of white space on the card at that location. So the user clicks on the middle of the card which is white. This looks fine for the 2 of Spades. But, suppose that card was the Jack of Diamonds. Then, the center of the card where the user clicked is not going to be white any more. Who knows what color it will be, but because of the picture of the Jack there, it won't be white. In the second example (labelled "Right"), the user clicked on a white part in the lower left of the card. This time, even if the card changes to a face card, that specific location remains white the whole time. This is what we want.

  3. If you use a 4 color deck, then you probably don't have much white area on your cards. However, technically, "white" isn't specifically needed. We need a solid color that must be different than the table felt background behind the card. So, if the table felt is green, and one of your 4 color deck colors is green, you may run into conflicts. In that case, try to click on a green part of the card that is a different shade than the felt behind. It will probably still work, so the best thing to do is try it and test it out on play money and make sure it works correctly as you expect. Alternatively, if you can change the table felt and/or background color to something different than all of the 4 color deck colors, that should work as well. Some players have successfully changed the felt color to yellow or purple and that worked. After making any changes you would need to remove and re-Include the site. For a 4 color deck, if the only white parts are the actual face values (2 through A), then you definitely don't want to click on the white for the same reasons above.

Technical Description

I just used the term "white area" for convenience for most people. The reality is, SaT will be looking for the table background color BEHIND where you click. So suppose that the table felt behind the flop cards is green. SaT will be looking for when this location is NOT green, and if so, then it determines that the flop is visible. Obviously using the white of the card will work, since 'white' is not 'green'. However, if you click on an area that is not always white, where it might have the royal face card picture, there might be a green in there somewhere that would confuse SaT.

So a 4 color deck would still work, but if your 4 color deck ever has a close color match to the table background at the place where you click, then SaT might mistakenly think that the flop is not visible when in fact it is. For example, if the table felt background is green, and your deck uses green for all spade cards, and during setup you clicked on the first of the three flop cards, then every time the first flop card is a spade, SaT will incorrectly see green and think that the table background is visible when in reality it is in fact a green spade flop card and not the green table background. I hope that makes sense.

So a better description would be: you want to click an area on the card that will never be the same color as the table background behind the card. You need to take into consideration all possible cards in the deck: 4 colors, face, and non-face cards.