---
title: pokerish
categories:
  - Games
---

**pokerish** is a Texas Hold'em poker simulation: a game engine, a WebSocket
server and an optional raylib table GUI in one binary. Remote clients, human
players or bots, connect over WebSockets and talk JSON.

## Game modes

- **Cash game** (default): 2–10 seats, empty seats filled by auto bots,
  busted players rebought; the game never ends.
- **Tournament** (`--tournament`): sit-and-go with rising blinds, antes, a
  countdown and winner-takes-all elimination.

## Features

- All-in-one server; `--headless` skips the GUI.
- A raylib play client for humans and several reference bots, from a minimal
  example to a GTO bot with opponent modeling.
- Human-like thinking delays with `--simulate`.
- Hand history export in PokerStars format (`--export-dir hands`).
- Seeded determinism for tests and experiments.

## Building

It is C++17 and needs `make`, `cmake`, `libwebsockets` and the raylib platform
packages. The third-party libraries are submodules:

```
$ git clone --recursive --depth 1 https://github.com/hugoocoto/pokerish
$ cd pokerish
$ make
```

This builds the server, the bots and the human client. It runs on Linux,
macOS and Windows (MSYS2).

## Documentation

| Document | Contents |
|---|---|
| [HOW_TO_HOST.md](https://github.com/hugoocoto/pokerish/blob/main/HOW_TO_HOST.md) | Running the server: flags, modes, tournaments |
| [HOW_TO_BOT.md](https://github.com/hugoocoto/pokerish/blob/main/HOW_TO_BOT.md) | Writing a bot |
| [API.md](https://github.com/hugoocoto/pokerish/blob/main/API.md) | The WebSocket/JSON protocol |

## See also

- [Source code](https://github.com/hugoocoto/pokerish)