well, one can do a Monte Carlo simulations to test, but that would take time
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Originally posted by Untiltable
The actual percentages are almost 10x higher. Straights aren't THAT difficult to get with five cards.
That's a lazy argumentation )
Yap you were right. The descipency here happened that with the given prompt Grok assumed that only run-out where both hole cards are used to form a streight are considered. I fed it your comment and ask to re-run calculations for any streight by the river where 0 to 2 players hole cards are used. Thats an outcome:
Spoiler
Full answer link: https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_d09b8465-5395-414e-b79c-04fcd21c4ebe
And that's actually a good case that highlights how important is to form a good prompt to make LLMs properly capture context and request. If before in google we would use key words for search as this is how ranking algorithm works. In LLMs you need to develop strong prompting techniques to make a full use of it's power. There is a new kind of engineering specialization "Prompt engineering". Actually this is a really good course to take, I'll sign-up for it 
4K -> 20K Bankroll Challenge
Week 6
Start of Week 6 BR: 4,104 EUR
End of Week 6 BR: 4,104 EUR
Week Profit: 0 EUR
Tournaments played: 0
Challenge Progress: +0.6% [IIIIIIII]
Summary:
- I finally received my Bildungsgutschein (educational voucher) for a Data Science and AI bootcamp (12 weeks, full-time from 9:00 to 18:00) today. My first day tomorrow and it will last until the end of May. This is a big deal for me - I’ve been going through the application, interview, and approval process for the last three weeks, and before that, I was in job coaching. It’s a bit like earning poker rakeback, but instead of grinding tables, this is a payoff from the Social Security contributions I’ve paid over nine years of working here. I’m hoping to build a solid foundation for my next career step.
- I’ve been working a lot on the Grind Republic and SwongSim calculator over the past week. I hope to share the first version with you soon - once it’s not buggy as hell and at least two or three numbers are somewhat close to reality. While crunching numbers and formulas, I dug deeper into the SwongSim calculator’s logic, though I found some errors, I was amazed at how solid the tool is. My goal is to deliver at least 40% of its value in the first release and build gradually from there. I’m aiming to publish it next week to justify paying for the grind-republic.com domain.
- I’ve become more active on X (Twitter). I stopped using social networks after the full-scale war began because I didn’t want to share stuff from my “normal” life with friends in Ukraine, where the “norms of life” are so different. In my mind, Instagram is for showing off, LinkedIn is about visibility and personal branding, Facebook is for family, and now X has become my main social network. I like how honest, fast, and brutal it can be. I’m still figuring out how quoting, commenting, liking, sharing, reposting, and bookmarking works, but so far, I enjoy it.
- I’ve been slacking on poker big-time due to lots of silly distractions and a fear of committing to a Leaderboard run (minimum 6 hours).
4K -> 20K Bankroll Challenge
Week 7-8
Start of Week 7 BR: 4,104 EUR
End of Week 8 BR: 4,104 EUR
Week Profit: 0 EUR
Tournaments played: 0
Challenge Progress: +0.6% [IIIIIIII]
Summary:
- Can't share anything from poker. Didn't play at all due to very high load in my studies.
- Studies, on the other hand are very interesting. Making my return to coding, learning Python, SQL and Data Science libraries, how to do Exploratory Data Analysis and visualizing the data. We are in the 3d week right now, but feel like I've learned more, than in the last year on my workplace. Incredible feeling.
- On the Grind Republic front, not much progress either. I thought, that I have a limited time to fetch the Leaderboard data for the last month, but after exploring GGPoker API it appeared that all historical data is there, ready to be fetched any time. Interestingly, limit to access only top 6 places in German leaderboard provided purely by Frontend (site) and at there is a possibility to fetch whole standings for any laederboard. His is example of the February last weekly leaderboard data, that I could get:
Spoiler
And the top placement of the DE weekly LBs starting from January 2024:
- Esentially, there is no shortage of data, but my skills limitations on how to present it and what would be useful for the users.
If you have any ideas or suggestions - please share.
Good luck on the tables 
It's a bit tricky as they encode their responses from APIs with not-so-hard-to-decode encoding. But you should decode data before you can see actual response. Here is cURL example:
Spoiler
curl --location ' https://pml.good-game-network.com/lapi/leaderboard/877?status=PENDING&status=OPTED_IN&status=COMPLETED&status=EXPIRED&limit=6&hasSummary=true&hasSummaryPaidPrizes=false&hasSummaryPrizeItem=false' \
--header 'accept: application/json, text/plain, */*' \
--header 'accept-language: en-US,en;q=0.9,uk;q=0.8,uk-UA;q=0.7,ru;q=0.6,de;q=0.5' \
--header 'content-type: application/json' \
--header 'if-none-match: W/"ab7-mbK0VHLXhuQkq5PraOxdyjQYqX8"' \
--header 'priority: u=1, i' \
--header 'referer: https://pml.good-game-network.com/pm-leaderboard/group?groupId=1051&lang=en&timezone=UTC-0' \
--header 'sec-ch-ua: "Not(A:Brand";v="99", "Google Chrome";v="133", "Chromium";v="133"' \
--header 'sec-ch-ua-mobile: ?0' \
--header 'sec-ch-ua-platform: "macOS"' \
--header 'sec-fetch-dest: empty' \
--header 'sec-fetch-mode: cors' \
--header 'sec-fetch-site: same-origin' \
--header 'sec-fetch-storage-access: active' \
--header 'user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/133.0.0.0 Safari/537.36' \
--header 'Cookie: ApplicationGatewayAffinity=5495488bf2eb98617e3af12cb3f10f32; ApplicationGatewayAffinityCORS=5495488bf2eb98617e3af12cb3f10f32; __cf_bm=bmDlr.aJXViTNu6a7Y75jnD4ItSPlMMCARPHfrLIuIc-1741886322-1.0.1.1-zjW0NKb4TfJl6FApc5JLARDh8CupfD3iXAIe7lir3G3OLZ3.cBZw6yY.Yg4QNF_mCnnF91BElU3RXi3BZdoISEhWyNpI8PdeV637OWYk8QQ; _cfuvid=ZzCh0mj6QWbrpi4RWqtw00HzJUnQ_rMtrohnD28Y6RA-1741886322848-0.0.1.1-604800000'
If you'll import it in the Postman and add this script in "Post-response" scripts:
Spoiler
// Include CryptoJS library
// var CryptoJS = CryptoJS || (function() { /* minified CryptoJS code */ })();
// Get the original response
const response = pm.response.json();
const encryptedData = response.data;
// Get the milliseconds header
const milliseconds = pm.response.headers.get('milliseconds');
if (!milliseconds) {
console.error('Milliseconds header not found in response');
pm.expect.fail('Milliseconds header missing');
return;
}
// Convert milliseconds to hex key
const key = Number(milliseconds).toString(16);
// Debug logs
console.log('Encrypted Data:', encryptedData);
console.log('Decryption Key (hex):', key);
try {
// Decrypt the data
const decrypted = CryptoJS.AES.decrypt(encryptedData, key);
const decryptedString = decrypted.toString(CryptoJS.enc.Utf8);
if (!decryptedString) {
throw new Error('Decryption resulted in an empty string - possible invalid key or data');
}
// Parse the decrypted JSON
const decryptedJson = JSON.parse(decryptedString);
console.log('Decrypted Data:', decryptedJson);
// Display decrypted data in the Visualize tab (closest to Response Body)
pm.visualizer.set(`
<h2>Decrypted Leaderboard Data</h2>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">
${JSON.stringify(decryptedJson, null, 2)}
</pre>
`);
} catch (error) {
console.error('Decryption or JSON parsing failed:', error.message);
pm.expect.fail('Decryption failed: ' + error.message);
}
You'd be able to see actual reponse in "Visualization" tab
4K -> 20K Bankroll Challenge
Week 9
Start of Week 9 BR: 4,104 EUR
End of Week 9 BR: 4,104 EUR
Week Profit: 0 EUR
Tournaments played: 0
Challenge Progress: +0.6% [IIIIIIII]
Summary:
- Another week with no poker action. The bankroll remains untouched as life keeps me busy elsewhere. Between an apartment move and the Data Science bootcamp, my schedule is packed. Whenever I get a spare moment, I’m either diving deeper into programming, selling stuff on eBay to declutter, or just kicking back with a beer to recharge. Poker’s been on the back burner, and I’m okay with that for now.
- The Data Science bootcamp is intense but exciting. At the end, there’s a 4-week capstone project, and I’m itching to pitch a poker-related idea. There’s no shortage of data from the grind or publiclty awailable data to scrape - tons of insights waiting to be uncovered and endless ideas bouncing around in my head. The challenge? Selling it to a group with no poker players. Still, poker isn’t rocket science - onboarding them could be quick, and I’m up for the challenge.
- Bigger questions are looming, though. My unemployment benefits run out in June 2025, and I’ll need a steady income after that. Going full-time poker pro isn’t the plan, though it could keep the lights on for a bit. I’m weighing my options: stick with my career as an Engineering Manager or pivot to Data Science full-time, putting my new skills to the test. Switching to DS would mean a big salary cut, which our finances can handle, but it’s still a tough call. I’d love to land a role in MilTech—something where I can make an impact, strengthen EU defense, and support Ukraine in a meaningful way. Time will tell.
If you’ve got thoughts or advice - on poker, projects, or life moves - I’d love to hear them.
Good luck on the tables
4K -> 20K Bankroll Challenge
Weeks 10–14
Start of Week 10 BR: 4,104 EUR
End of Week 14 BR: 4,104 EUR
Period Profit: 0 EUR
Tournaments played: 0
Challenge Progress: +0.6% [IIIIIIII]
Summary:
- Yep, still no poker action. The tables have been quiet since Week 9, and my bankroll’s just chilling at 4,104 EUR. Life’s been a whirlwind with the Data Science bootcamp eating up my time and brainpower. I’ve missed grinding, but diving into data science has been a wild ride, and I’m channeling that energy into something valuable for the poker community that will combine my software engineering, product management and data science skills — more on that in a sec. For now, I’m okay keeping the cards on hold while I grind out this capstone project.
- The bootcamp’s been intense, but it’s lit a fire under me. We’re in the final stretch with a 4-week capstone project, and I’m trying to form a team around Grind Republic project, a poker community portal to make high-volume grinding smarter and more fun. Planned MVP: analytics for GGPoker leaderboards with 6 years of data, a revamped Spin & Go calculator (SwongSim) using Monte Carlo simulations, and articles from our team breaking down juicy insights. I’ve sunk ~€750 into designs and subscriptions, and we’ve got one rockstar teammate, Sina, with more hopefully joining soon. It’s a big swing - scraping data, building models, writing articles - but I’m hyped to blend poker and data science. The poker community’s always hungry for an edge, and I think Grind Republic can deliver.
- Here is a a first 5-slides of presentaiton about this capstone project that I'll present in 2 days: Presentation slides (draft)
- That said, I’m not gonna lie - I’m nervous. Can we pull off the MVP in 4 weeks? Will grinders actually use it? Will it make the impact I’m dreaming of? These fears keep me up at night, but they’re also pushing me to hustle. I’m leaning on my poker roots - if I feel like it's +EV I should go for it. Plus, your messages of support (seriously, those mean the world) remind me why I’m doing this: to give back to this awesome community. I’m aiming for 100–1,000 monthly users, but even if 10 grinders find it useful, that’s a big win for me.
- Blogging’s been on pause, but I’m back! Expect more updates as Grind Republic takes shape. I’ll share behind-the-scenes on the project, maybe some data science tricks, and eventually, my return to the tables. Life’s still up in the air—unemployment benefits end in June 2025, and I’m torn between Engineering Management, a Data Science pivot, actively interviewing for companies of different sizes and placing lots of bets hoping some of them will pay out. Poker’s my anchor, though, and I’m stoked to reconnect with you all.
What do you think of Grind Republic? Got any tips for pitching a poker project to non-poker folks or managing capstone stress? Do you have a good idea / feature in mind that can be solved with publicly available / generated data? Drop your thoughts - I’m all ears.
Good luck on the tables
The project might be monetized eventually, depending on where we end up and the costs of running it. For now, I’d like to focus on creating value for the users. Monetization is a complex topic, and introducing it too early can hinder adoption, fun, and excitement. Monetization (that I can think of) could take the form of ads, affiliate programs, or paid subscriptions, but as a starting point, a "Buy Me a Coffee" link ( https://www.buymeacoffee.com/) should suffice.
I want to explore many aspects of this project, including front- and back-end development, data pipelines, database and object storage, project / product management, UX/UI design, and cloud hosting on AWS. (I’ve started an interview process with AWS, so this project will serve dual purposes.) Additionally, we’ll need to establish collaboration workflows in the team. Students in the bootcamp often struggle with Git, not to mention Jira, agile rituals (retrospectives, estimations, planning), QA, coding best practices and similar tools and topics.
We’ll aim to eliminate unnecessary complexity, release the first version as soon as possible, and I hope we'll receive some actionable feedback from the players to guide iterative development.
I tried to play a session during happy hours (23:00–01:00) yesterday but couldn’t start because my usual bedtime is around 22:00, with a wake-up time of about 06:00. I’m not sure how or when I’ll find the time to resume progressing in my challenge. 
Got my stuff together and played my first poker session in ages. +11 cEV could be better, tbh, but I'll take it with my rusty fingers. Down $150, though it depends on the LB run as usual. If I manage to snag 2nd place, it'll cover the losses.
By the way, my laptop was dying during yesterday's session. I noticed a bunch of changes in the GGPoker client - new timebank, my hotkeys were all messed up, and most importantly, it froze every 15-30 seconds for about a second.
Super annoying. Has anyone else had similar issues with recent GGPoker client updates?
Keep up the good work for Grind Republic, I am looking forward to the release
The presentation slides look very promisingly and I like the design 
I havent played poker for one or two weeks on GGpoker. But I already know the new timebank and the last time I played I had no problems with the client.