Case Study: Poker DW: Entities

Continuing from the introduction, one of the first things we'll have to do in designing our Poker DW (Data Warehouse), is to identify all of the entities of interest. Taking a look at our sample hand history file (ignore the last two lines of HTML code, the hosting company stamped them when I uploaded the file), the first line starts with a sequence number, the format of the game and the datetime stamp of when a particular hand took place. The second line indicates the name of the table, whether it is real or play money, and which seat is the dealer. The next ten or so lines tell us who is in which seat, and what their stack size is (at the beginning of the hand), followed by a line for each player who posts a blind (small, big, and other). So up to now, we've seen such entities as Time, Table, Player, Seat, and Money (stack and pot size).

The next section begins with the header line "*** POCKET CARDS ***". Here we have such information as the hole cards dealt to the player, and all of the preflop action (fold, check, call, or raise). We can identify three more entities here: Betting Stage, Cards and Actions. The next section, "*** FLOP *** [10s 9d 3h]", contains the same entities, but this time we have community cards. At each step in these sections, we can calculate the pot size and stack sizes for each player. Two more sections, "Turn" and "River", provide similar info.

Special consideration should be given to the next section, "*** SHOW DOWN ***", as it will show us exactly what cards other players held during the hand, allowing us to "backfill" that info for earlier rounds of betting. This will help us answer some important questions in the hand histories. The final section, "*** SUMMARY ***", provides info such as the rake, the Hi hand (and Low if this is a hi/lo split game), and the final pot size (which we can use to verify our "running" pot size throughout the hand).

So let's summarize our entities and their relationships. Central to this is Hands. Hands occur at certain Times at a particular Table, which have Seats. Players make Actions with Money based on Cards appearing at a Betting Stage.