SharkScope Successfully Integrated into Poker Copilot

If you play tournaments and/or sit and gos, you know Sharkscope is a great site to look up detailed and filterable stats on how both you and your opponents have performed in these games.  What you may not realize is that Sharkscope also offers a business-to-business service aptly called SharkScope API, which allows software developers to embed Sharkscope tools directly into their third-party software packages.
 
The poker tracking database and HUD Poker Copilot is one such third-party application that takes advantage of the services available via Sharkscope's API.  We sat down the founder of Poker Copilot, Steve McLeod, to learn more about how it works and the history behind it.
 
PokerSoftware: Can you tell us how Sharkscope API is embedded into Poker Copilot?
 
Steve McLeod:  Sharkscope supplies an API that lets us look up the all-time tournament stats for any player in Poker Copilot's database. If a Poker Copilot user has a Sharkscope account, they go to Poker Copilot's preferences, add their Sharkscope user name and password, and voila, dozens of extra statistics become available in Poker Copilot. Poker players can add these stats to their HUD so that Sharkscope's useful tournament "Ability" number shows next to the classic VPIP/PFR/Agg stats.
 
From your HUD, you can summon a popup window with all the stats you have for a player. This also includes all info Sharkscope has available. There's even a tournament history mini-graph.
 
PokerSoftware: Is it available on all versions of Poker Copilot?
 
Steve McLeod: It's available on all current versions of Poker Copilot, both the Windows version and the Mac version.
 
PokerSoftware: How do Poker Copilot customers benefit from Sharkscope API?
 
Steve McLeod: The normal stats in Poker Copilot (VPIP/PFR etc) are calculated only from hands that the hero played, but the Sharkscope stats are all-time from the entire database on SharkScope. I think this gives a player a chance to get a far more accurate picture of their tournament opponent.
 
This is especially useful against opponents you may never have seen before. You can see if they are a long-term winner or a giant fish.
 
PokerSoftware: You mentioned "all-time." Are there filters available for certain games?
 
Steve McLeod: We do allow some simple filtering.  The Sharkscope API informs us of any filter the user has set up on the Sharkscope website. You can tell Poker Copilot to use any of these Sharkscope filters on particular tables. It is good for separating sit and gos from scheduled tournaments.
 
PokerSoftware: Does the Sharkscope data and data such as VPIP appear on the table at the same time? If not, how does it work?
 
Steve McLeod: Yes, it does, more or less. The VPIP data appears instantly from Poker Copilot's database. The Sharkscope data can sometimes take a second or two to arrive because we need to fetch it over the internet and wait for it to arrive. Once the data arrives, it shows in the same HUD panel. From the point of view of the Poker Copilot user, the data seems unified.
 
PokerSoftware: Does the Sharkscope data show up when players are reviewing hands in the replayer? What about on the general stats page when players are using Poker Copilot's database while not playing?
 
Steve McLeod: Yes, and yes! For the general stats page (we call it the "Recent Players" summary), the Sharkscope info is fetched for a player upon request. This prevents someone from accidentally using their Sharkscope daily query quota too quickly.
 
PokerSoftware: What percentage of Poker Copilot customers take advantage of the Sharkscope data available to them?
 
Steve McLeod: I'd estimate roughly 10% of our customers use this. Some were very vocal in praising this feature.
 
PokerSoftware: When did you first start thinking about integrating Sharkscope API into Poker Copilot?
 
Steve McLeod: We had the occasional enquiry from customers about doing this because at the time Poker Copilot was Mac-only and there was no Mac HUD for SharkScope. It seemed complicated, so we chose not to do this. Then, Sharkscope contacted us and suggested we do it. Sharkscope sent us the technical documentation for their API. I took a look and realized it would only take a few days of work to add a lot more information to Poker Copilot. As we already had customer demand, it seemed like a no-brainer.
 
Steve McLeod: I spent two days doing a proof-of-concept. We received immediate customer feedback, so I went all the way and added full Sharkscope support over a few more days. The documentation Sharkscope had prepared was excellent and made it straightforward. When I found something difficult to understand, the Sharkscope team cleared it up immediately and at the same time added the explanation to the documentation.
 
We've found that the Sharkscope API seems to be stable and reliable. This is a concern when looking stuff up on the internet automatically from desktop software. If Sharkscope's server goes down, so do parts of our software. So far, after some years, we've had no problems whatsoever with server reliability.

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