Ten,
Thanks for checking it out. Are you using Firefox?
When you tried it with "On Hand" as the Chips to Use, you should have seen an alert dialog box explaining that this option is not yet supported. Maybe you have a popup blocker that prevented you from seeing that?
I was thinking that the "Help" button would pull up a proper web page with instructions and examples. I'm planning to create that document once the functionality is more completely implemented, since the help document should have screenshots that accurately reflect the appearance of the calculator. (Documentation always seems to lag the development, eh?)
So far, there are basically two modes to use this thing:
1. "Auto". You just fill in the stuff in the top table, and push the "Recommend!" button. The calculator will then suggest starting stacks, and chips to use for rebuys and colorups. It also tells you how many chips you'll need for that game. If you've entered your chips available "Chips on Hand", it will check if you have enough for that game, and highlight the denoms where you're short.
2. "Manual". The middle table is a calculator. You can manually change any of the white items, and the other fields will update (once the item you've changed loses focus). (This operates pretty much like a spreadsheet.)
The bottom table (not yet functional in this implementation) is basically a holding (memory) space for up to six separate games that you'd like to support. The only additional calculations involved is it will determine the "superset" of required chips for each denom.
Logically, I think there are a couple of things in the layout that aren't very clean/clear:
1. The middle calculator uses the #players and #rebuys info from the top table as part of its calculation.
2. The "chipset" (colors, denoms, and chips on hand) is assumed to be the same for all games (e.g. the six games stored in the bottom table). Also, the "Recommend!" calculation uses the denom info from the chipset, so that should be setup before you do the Recommend! thing.
Functionality: Here's what's currently on my "to do" list:
1. Support the "On Hand" version of Chips to Use. In this case, the Recommend! calculations will try to pick the best buyin and starting stacks to make use of the chips available. (I'm not sure how to handle the #players and #rebuys for this calculation -- maybe it will take those as inputs, or even better -- maybe it will figure out how many players your chipset can support.)
2. Add additional game types, e.g. limit vs. no-limit. Currently it has a checkbox for Tourney/Cash games (which controls the colorup recommendations). But the recommended chips should be different for limit games.
3. Implement the bottom "Game Variety" and the Help features.
4. Add a calculation for suggested Blinds structure, given the number of players and desired game length.
5. Maybe add a "chips to buy" column? This could round up the needed chips to be multiples of 20 or 25. Or maybe it could tell you how many additional chips you'd need to add to the chips on hand to support the proposed game.
Otherwise --- I'd like to collect more feedback and suggestions from the members here on how this works for them.
For example, I somewhat arbitrarily settled on 8 denoms for the chipset. I kinow some chipsets have more available, but I figured 8 is more than anybody needs
Anyhow, right now that's pretty much hard coded into the calculator. Maybe I should make that easier to change?
and its next to impossible to read.
