Configuration

All options live in config.php (generated by setup.php). Edit the file with any text editor, or use the built-in editor at admin.php?cfg=1 — four tabs, help text, dropdowns, shipped defaults and validation, described in Admin & Settings. Defaults reproduce a standard 9-seat cash table (blinds 10/20, 1000 starting chips).

Storage

Table defaults

Tournament

Defaults for the tournament dialog. Players can change every value per tournament in the vote dialog; these are only the starting values. See Tournament Mode for the full behaviour.

Room

Features

Chat

Adding your own banned words

Add words to POKER_BANNED_EXTRA (the built-in list is always applied):

define('POKER_BANNED_EXTRA', ['word1', 'word2', 'word3']);

The censor also matches common separators and "leet" substitutions (e.g. f.u.c.k, sh1t).

Avatars / Countries

The default avatars, flags, sounds and countries.json ship inside assets/. They are product files: updates replace them, and the installer never writes into data/ for them. If you keep your own set, point these two constants at it (for example 'data/avatars'); the shipped folder stays as a fallback, and a file with the same number or country code in your folder wins.

Themes — Google Fonts

Most of the bundled themes load a display font from Google Fonts via a CSS @import at the top of their theme.css (14 of the 15 themes — all except classic). This is optional and only affects the visual style of those themes; the game works fine without it.

Making the game 100% offline

If your host blocks external requests, or you simply want zero external calls, open each theme's theme.css and remove the first line:

@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=...');

Then set the display font in the same file's :root block to a system stack:

--font-display: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;
--font-ui:      'Segoe UI', system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif;

The theme then falls back to safe system fonts with a similar look. No other change is needed — no PHP edit, no re-install. To list every theme that makes an external call:

findstr /S /I "fonts.googleapis.com" assets\themes\*.css

Self-hosting the fonts

You can also download the font files (WOFF2) from fonts.google.com and place them in assets/themes//fonts/, then replace the @import line with a local @font-face block that points at those files.

Security

Enabling HTTPS

define('POKER_HTTPS_ONLY', true);

Then uncomment the HTTPS redirect block in the root .htaccess after your certificate is live.

Card randomness

There is no POKER_* option for it, on purpose: the deck is always shuffled with PHP's random_int() (CSPRNG, OS entropy) inside a Fisher–Yates loop, so a misconfigured site can never silently fall back to rand()/mt_rand() and become predictable. Details in Fair deal & card randomness.

Debug

AI Bots (DeepSeek) — optional

The bots are 100% rule-based by default (pure PHP: GTO ranges, Monte-Carlo equity, pot odds, outs, board texture and an opponent model in data/bot_stats.json). You can optionally add a DeepSeek layer that judges on top of those numbers: it receives the engine's own equity / pot-odds / outs plus the opponent stats and the rule engine's intended line, and may override it. Every answer is validated and "leashed", and on any error or timeout the rule engine's action stands — an action is never illegal and the table never freezes.

The whole integration is a single file: bot/bot_ai.php. With an empty API key (or POKER_AI_ENABLED = false) it is a complete no-op and costs nothing. setup.php sets ENABLED = true and the key automatically when you enter one during install.

Getting a DeepSeek API key

1. Create an account at platform.deepseek.com.
2. Add credit — DeepSeek is pay-per-use (each bot decision costs a fraction of a cent).
3. Open the API keys section and create a new key (it starts with sk-).
4. Put it in config.php:

   define('POKER_AI_ENABLED', true);
   define('POKER_AI_API_KEY', 'sk-...');

   …or simply enter it in the installer (setup.php) — it sets the key and POKER_AI_ENABLED = true for you at install time.
5. Keep the key secret: do not share it or post it publicly. If it leaks, delete it in the dashboard and create a new one. An empty key turns the whole AI layer off.

The key is only ever sent to POKER_AI_ENDPOINT (DeepSeek by default) and is never written to the logs — check with the browser/API keys page that no other app uses it.

Checking the remaining credit

Open the settings page admin.php?cfg=1 (admin password). On the right of the AI BOTS (DeepSeek) card header there is a green badge with the account balance, for example 2.16 USD. It is read from DeepSeek's own GET https://api.deepseek.com/user/balance with the configured key, so it is the real remaining credit, not an estimate.

• One free request per page load (6 s timeout, no cache file); hover the badge for the tooltip DeepSeek API — credit left.
• If the key is missing or invalid, cURL is unavailable, or the host cannot reach DeepSeek, the badge turns red and reads unavailable — the reason is in the tooltip.
• The figure is account-wide: it covers the bots and any other application using the same key.
• It tells you what is left, not what was spent over a period — DeepSeek has no per-period history endpoint, only the current balance.
• The key travels only in the Authorization header and is never printed on the page.

Full settings block

// ============ AI BOTS (DeepSeek) ============
// Empty key (or POKER_AI_ENABLED=false) keeps the bots fully rule-based and free.
// Setup sets ENABLED=true + the key automatically when you enter one.
define('POKER_AI_ENABLED',        false);
define('POKER_AI_API_KEY',        '');
define('POKER_AI_ENDPOINT',       'https://api.deepseek.com/v1/chat/completions');
define('POKER_AI_MODE',           'hybrid');
define('POKER_AI_MODEL',          'deepseek-flash');
define('POKER_AI_MODEL_BIG',      'deepseek-v4-pro');
define('POKER_AI_THINKING',       'disabled');
define('POKER_AI_THINKING_BIG',   'disabled');
define('POKER_AI_TRIGGER',        'marginal');
// Use the AI only when a real (human) player is actually playing at the table.
// A human on sit-out (away) or still waiting for the BB does not count, so games
// with only bots (or an away human) stay fully rule-based and free.
define('POKER_AI_ONLY_WITH_HUMANS', true);
define('POKER_AI_SAMPLE_PCT',     25);
define('POKER_AI_MARGIN_BAND',    0.10);
define('POKER_AI_BIGBET_PCT',     0.25);
define('POKER_AI_LEASH',          'normal');
define('POKER_AI_MIN_CONFIDENCE', 0.55);
define('POKER_AI_TEMPERATURE',    0.3);
define('POKER_AI_MAX_TOKENS',     200);
define('POKER_AI_TIMEOUT_MS',     20000);
define('POKER_AI_MAX_CALLS_PER_HAND', 12);
define('POKER_AI_PREFETCH',       false);
define('POKER_AI_SSL_VERIFY',     true);
define('POKER_AI_LOG',            false);
define('POKER_AI_DEBUG',          false);
define('POKER_AI_PHP_BIN',        '');

Modes

• hybrid (recommended) — the rule engine plays; the AI is consulted in the selected spots and may override the line.
• ai_first — the AI decides every action; the rule engine is only a fallback. Usually weaker than hybrid, because the model is not a solver.
• advisor — the rule engine picks fold/check/call/raise; the AI only tunes the bet/raise size.

Triggers (when the AI is consulted, hybrid/advisor)

• marginal — close decisions (equity near the pot-odds threshold) or medium-strength spots.
• river — only on the river.
• bigbet — only when facing a large bet (≥ POKER_AI_BIGBET_PCT of the stack).
• sample — a random POKER_AI_SAMPLE_PCT share of decisions (disguises the bots).
• all — every decision (mostly for testing).

Leash (how far the AI may deviate)

• strict — same action type; only the size may change (bounded ±25%).
• normal — may change type, but may never fold a hand the engine would continue with; an oversized raise is capped.
• loose — any legal action.

Logs

• data/bot_ai_log.json — last 300 entries: room, hand, seat, street, mode, model, equity, pot odds, the engine baseline, the AI answer, the final action and the reason. The source field tells you what happened: ai (live call), prefetch (warm-up used), fallback (error/timeout/invalid → the engine line was used), or gated (AI paused by POKER_AI_ONLY_WITH_HUMANS because no human is playing — one entry per hand).
• data/bot_ai_debug.log — when POKER_AI_DEBUG = true: the exact JSON sent and the raw response (the API key is never written). Rotates at ~2 MB.

Both folders are inside the protected data/ directory — download them via FTP/SSH, they are not web-accessible.

AI troubleshooting

• phase:entry / phase:decision appear but no phase:request → the trigger did not engage; try POKER_AI_TRIGGER = 'all' to test.
• Entries with "source":"gated" in bot_ai_log.json → normal while you sit out / are away (or in a bots-only game): the AI is paused, no API call is made and no credit is spent. It resumes automatically when a real player is back in play.
• phase:response with curl_error: Operation timed out ... 0 bytes received → the timeout is too small for the model. Use deepseek-flash, keep THINKING_BIG = 'disabled', or raise POKER_AI_TIMEOUT_MS.
• http_code 4xx with a "model not found" message → POKER_AI_MODEL_BIG is not a valid ID at your provider; set a valid one (the engine line is used meanwhile).

Rollback: set POKER_AI_ENABLED = false (or empty the key). The bots return to 100% rule-based immediately — no other change needed.

Allowed ranges

The settings page (Admin & Settings) enforces these limits on the server and mirrors them as min/max in the browser; a value outside them is refused and nothing is written to config.php. Decimals are kept as typed.

Common examples

Change the blinds and stack

define('POKER_SB',          5);
define('POKER_BB',          10);
define('POKER_START_CHIPS', 2000);

Blinds apply to new tables; an existing table keeps its blinds (a seated player can change them with the Blinds control).

Run a 6-max table

define('POKER_SEATS', 6);

The client reads the seat count from window.POKER_CFG, so no other change is needed.

Turn chat off

define('POKER_CHAT_ENABLED', false);

Enable the AI bots

define('POKER_AI_ENABLED', true);
define('POKER_AI_API_KEY', 'sk-...');   // your DeepSeek key

Create the key at platform.deepseek.com (section API keys) and keep some credit on the account — DeepSeek is pay-per-use.

Start with the defaults (hybrid + marginal). While tuning, set POKER_AI_DEBUG = true to write the raw request/response to data/bot_ai_debug.log, and turn it back off once it behaves as expected.

Make the big-spot model faster

define('POKER_AI_MODEL_BIG', 'deepseek-flash');   // same fast model for every spot

Or keep a stronger model but avoid thinking latency: define('POKER_AI_THINKING_BIG', 'disabled');