Introduction

This document will help the poker playing Linux user install wine, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and optionally, BoDog, UltimateBet and Internet Explorer (which is required to run BoDog and UltimateBet). Some of the topics discussed here are for the more advanced Linux user who is not scared to recompile applications and patch source code, but this is not required if you are running Fedora Core 4 or 5. I am currently running Fedora Core 5, so that’s what this HOWTO will reflect. Any section of the HOWTO that looks like the following is run from a X terminal, or the command line.

# command

This is a Note.

Requirements

To help weed out other bugs and configurations, we do not want any type of wine configurations installed on the system. I would assume for the most part that you do not have wine installed yet. If you do and you have a lot of data and Windows applications working, this HOWTO shouldn’t interfere with the data you have now, but you never know what could happen. Please backup any data before starting the steps outlined in this HOWTO. On my Fedora Core boxes, the data to backup is in ~/.wine

# tar -cvf wine-bakup.tar ~/.wine

Here is the list of files that you will need to download. When to download and where to download then to are described below.

  1. wine
  2. PokerStars Client (PokerStarsInstall.exe) or Fill Tilt Client (FullTiltSetup.exe)
  3. Internet Explorer Optional
  4. BoDog Client (BoDogClientPoker.exe) Optional
  5. UltimateBet Client (ubsetup.exe) Optional

Install wine Source

We will install the wine source code, as wine must be patched for 90% of the poker clients to work.

If you would rather skip the build process and just want to get wine up and running, grab the wine rpms from http://www.mattahfahtu.com/rpms/fc5-i386/stable/ and install. Then skip this section.

NOTE: for Fedora Core 4 use http://www.mattahfahtu.com/rpms/fc4-i386/stable/
Fedora Core 6 use http://www.mattahfahtu.com/rpms/fc6-i386/stable/

The wine-debuginfo-*.rpm are not required, but listed for completeness (and saves you from downloading 30 MB of data that you will most likely not use.

The downloadable rpms have the following versions:

  Package Version(s)
Fedora Core 4 wine-0.9.27-1
wine-0.9.24-1
Fedora Core 5 wine-0.9.36-2
wine-0.9.36-1
wine-0.9.35-1
wine-0.9.32-1
wine-0.9.31-1
wine-0.9.30-1
Fedora Core 6 wine-0.9.32-1
wine-0.9.31-1
wine-0.9.30-1

Get the latest wine rpm from Fedora Extras

# wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/extras/5/SRPMS/wine-0.9.36-2.fc5.src.rpm

Become root

# su -

Install the source

# rpm -ivh wine-0.9.36-2.fc5.src.rpm

This will install the source code to wine in /usr/src/redhat/. Now we need to download two files, the patch to wine to allow different poker sites to work and a patch the the wine.spec file to include the new patch.

# wget http://www.mattahfahtu.com/files/wine-spec-patch.txt

# wget http://www.mattahfahtu.com/files/wine-bmay-patch.txt

Move the wine-spec-patch.txt to /usr/src/redhat/SPECS

# mv wine-spec-patch.txt /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/wine-spec.patch

Move the wine source code patch to /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES

# mv wine-bmay-patch.txt /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/wine-bmay.patch

Now we patch the wine spec.

# cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS

# patch < wine-spec.patch

Now, lets build wine.

# cd ..

# rpmbuild -ba SPECS/wine.spec

NOTE: The first time I tried to build wine, there were a ton of development dependencies that I had to download and install.

That will patch, configure, and compile the source, build a binary RPM package in RPMS/<arch>/, and an SRPM package in SRPMS/ containing the original source, plus the additional patch and new specfile, so that the package can be rebuilt again without having the modify the data to add the patch.

Depending on how fast your computer is, this could take a while. On my AMD 1600+ I was able to grab lunch, eat it, come back and watch wine compile a bit longer.

Now install wine.

Install wine from rpm

If you must be root to install rpms. So if you are not logged in as root:

# su -

Now install the rpms

# rpm -Uvh wine*.rpm

Logout of root as now that wine is installed we can continue to setup the rest of the programs with user level privileges.

# logout

NOTE: There may be other packages that wine is dependent on. Those will need to be installed prior to installing wine.

Setup wine

Run the wine configuration program. This requires that X is running. If you are in Gnome, KDE or other window manager, so already have X running.

# /usr/bin/winecfg

You should now see something like this:

Wine Config Image #1

If you do not see the above window, Something is Wrong(tm)

The nice thing about wine is that you can change how the libraries are loaded, as native (windows) or built-in (wine), per application. Some Applications require different settings and if we were to only modify the default settings, only a few of the clients would run properly. In each install of the poker client we will set up wine to use certain libraries in native mode and others in built-in mode.

If you are going to be installing BoDog, UltimateBet or any other Poker Client that requires Internet Explorer, continue to the next step. If not, skip to the PokerStars install

 

Optional: Internet Explorer 6 Installation

Now we are going to install Internet Explorer 6 from the ies4linux project.

Download the latest script data via your favorite web browser:

# firefox http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/download.html

As of this writing the latest version is 2.0.5

Unarchive the script and install:

# tar -zxvf ies4linux-2.0.5.tar.gz

# cd ies4linux

# ./ies4linux

Follow the prompts. I just installed ie6, no other versions and the addons.

Now there is a link to Internet Explorer 6.0 on the Desktop

Internet Explorer Setup #1

Internet Explorer 6 Running under Fedora Core 5:
Internet Explorer Setup #2

Now since ies4linux creates it’s own instance of wine, we must overwrite the ~/.wine data with the data from ies4linux so BoDog, UltimateBet and any other Poker client that requires Internet Explorer will work.

NOTE: Remember to backup existing wine data if you already have existing wine installs and you are currently running other applications under wine.

# tar -cvf wine-bakup.tar ~/.wine

# rsync -av ~/.ies4linux/ie6/ ~/.wine/

This will also set a bunch of internal wine settings that we would have to do by hand. Now if you want to install BoDog, UltimateBet or any other poker client, you are good to go! (At least BoDog and UltimateBet will work since they are apart of this HOWTO)

Additional Wine Setup

Now, PokerStars Client will run with wine, unpatched. Most Poker Clients, however, do require a patched version of wine to run properly. This is because most poker sites block clients by the machines Hardware GUID, or Hardware ID. To test this, try to connect to Full Tilt Poker with an unpatched version of wine and you get this:

Full Tilt Poker running under an un-patched wine

The Hardware ID that wine comes pre-installed with, cannot be changed and is currently blocked. You will not be able to login to Full Tilt Poker and other poker sites with wine. That doesn’t matter to us, as we have a patched version of wine. Fire up regedit and create a new Hardware ID for yourself, or skip this and download the reg file and import the data.

Manual Entry

# regeidt

Migrate down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control and add 14 new registry
keys.

Regedit Setup #1

HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB,"CurrentConfig",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB,"UserWaitInterval",,0×0000001e
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB,"IsPortable",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Alias\0000,"DockingState",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Alias\0000,"Capabilities",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Alias\0000,"DockID",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Alias\0000,"SerialNumber",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Alias\0000,"ProfileNumber",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Hardware Profiles,"Unknown",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Hardware Profiles\0000,"PreferenceOrder",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Hardware Profiles\0000,"FriendlyName",,"Wine Profile"
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Hardware Profiles\0000,"Aliasable",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Hardware Profiles\0000,"Cloned",,0×00000000
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Control\IDConfigDB\Hardware Profiles\0000,"HwProfileGuid",,"{abba0009-1ed34-1dad4-1333-1e3e4ebb890a}"

Or import the reg file from http://www.mattahfahtu.com/files/wine-reg.txt if you do not want to add all of the registry keys by hand.

# wget http://www.mattahfahtu.com/files/wine-reg.txt

# regedit wine-reg.txt

Ether way, the end result should look like this:

Regedit Setup #2

Now the default Hardware ID should be safe to use, but just in case we will want to change a few of the letters in the string, using only numbers and a-f (a, b, c, d, e and f).

NOTE: Keep the format of {8 characters-5 characters-5characters-4 characters-12 characters}

Regedit Setup #3

Skip to the Full Tilt Setup | Skip to the BoDog Setup | Skip to the Ultimate Bet Setup

Download and install PokerStars Client

I like to keep all of my windows applications in a separate directory for installs or re-installs. This directory is oddly enough called windows

# mkdir windows

# cd windows

Now we download the PokerStars client:here.

Once the file is downloaded, install the client using wine:

# wine PokerStarsInstall.exe

Follow the on screen instructions to install the PokerStars client. After the install was complete, wine added an icon of the PokerStars client to my desktop. Double clicking the icon launches PokerStars.

PokerStarts Setup #2

Main screen.
PokerStarts Setup #3

And at the table
PokerStarts Setup #4

NOTE: There is a table refresh bug with PokerStars under wine that if you resize the table window, the window doesn’t refresh and cuts off part of the table. To fix this, edit the user.ini in the PokerStars directory and add f5redrawtable=1 under the [Options] section, like such:

# wine notepad.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/PokerStars/user.ini

PokerStarts Setup #6

PokerStarts Setup #7

Now restart PokerStars and after you resize the table, hit F5.

PokerStarts Setup #8

All better!

There are no additional settings in wine that are required to run PokerStars. Now, PokerStars is installed!

 

Download and install Full Tilt Poker Client

Now we fire up a web browser and point it to Full Tilt Poker’s site to download Full Tilt’s Client.

# wine FullTiltSetup.exe

Full Tilt Poker install #1

Follow the on screen instructions to install the Full Tilt Poker client. After the install was complete, wine tried to add an icon of the Full Tilt Poker client to my desktop, but it failed. Sometimes telling wine to ‘reboot’ helps to create a good icon to launch Full Tilt.

# wineboot

NOTE: This will simulate a reboot for Windows and is usually very fast. This does NOT reboot your computer.

If that doesn’t work you can copy the PokerStars icon and edited the duplicate PokerStars icon to use Full Tilts exe.

Right Click on the Duplicate PokerStars icon and select Properties. Under the Launcher Tab, change the command from:

wine "C:\Program Files\PokerStars\PokerStarsUpdate.exe"

to

wine "C:\Program Files\Full Tilt Poker\FullTiltPoker.exe"

Full Tilt Poker Change Launcher #2

I also used a different icon for Full Tilt that I got by:

# wget http://osx.iusethis.com/icon/fulltiltpoker.png

To change the icon, under the Basic tab, click on the current icon. That will launch another window that will let you select the new icon. Now my Desktop looks like this:

Full Tilt Poker Icon #3

Now we must set some application specific settings in wine, so run winecfg

# winecfg

In the Applications tab click on the Add Application button and select Program Files\Full Tilt Poker\FullTiltPoker.exe, then click the open button.

Full Tilt Poker - wine config #8

Now under the Libraries tab we want to add a few libraries to run differently than the default settings.

Add ole32 and riched20 as (builtin, native) as shown below:

Full Tilt Poker - wine config #5

If ole32 and riched20 are not listed in the drop down list, type the name of the library in the New override for library drop down field.

Now you are ready to run Full Tilt Poker
Full Tilt Poker - Connecting #4

When you sign up for a new account, be sure to put MATTAHFAHTU in the bonus code text box for a 100% deposit bonus up to $600.
Full Tilt Bonus Code

play online poker
Play Online Poker

Main screen.
Full Tilt Poker - Welcome Screen

At the table
Full Tilt Poker - At the Tables. #5

I would recommend that you Disable [the] Exit Screen that Full Tilt has. There have been some reports that this screen and wine do not mix. Better safe than Sorry

Full Tilt Poker - Disable Exit Screen #6

If you are curious, this is what the exit screen looks like.

Full Tilt Poker - Exit Screen #7

Congrats! Full Tilt Poker is installed on your Linux box!

 

Optional: Download and install BoDog Poker Client

NOTE: This requires Internet Explorer 6 to be installed. Click here to view instructions.

There are a few files that we need to get in order to get BoDog to work that BoDog does not install for us, so we need our trusty web browser loaded and pointed to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259403

Download vc6redistsetup_enu.exe and run it with wine, which will extract a file that will will need to run from wine again:

# wine vc6redistsetup_enu.exe

# cd <directory where you extracted the above file to>

# wine vcredist.exe

Now we can install and run the BoDog client. Fire up your web browser to http://www.bodoglife.com/poker/download-poker.jsp

Download and install with wine

# wine BodogPokerClient.exe

After the install was complete, wine tried to add an icon of the BoDog Poker client to my desktop, but it failed. So I copied the PokerStars icon and edited the duplicate PokerStars icon to use BoDog’s exe.

Right Click on the Duplicate PokerStars icon and select Properties. Under the Launcher Tab, change the command from:

wine "C:\Program Files\PokerStars\PokerStarsUpdate.exe"

to

wine "C:\Program Files\BoDog Poker\BPGame.exe"

I also used a different icon for BoDog that I created from the BoDog site:

# wget http://mattahfahtu.com/files/bd.png

To change the icon, under the Basic tab, click on the current icon. That will launch another window that will let you select the new icon. Now my Desktop looks like this:

BoDog Install - Launcher Icon

Since we need most of the default settings applied to BoDog, with a few changes, we will import a reg file to make all of the changes that we need.

# wget http://www.mattahfahtu.com/files/bodog-reg.txt

# regedit bodog-reg.txt

Or if you would like to make the changes by hand, winecfg and add all of the Library overrides from the default settings and change the following to (builtin, native): advpack, imgutil, msvcrt, msvcrt40, ole32, riched20, riched32, shdocvw, shfolder and shlwapi. All of the other overrides should remain set to native. If any of the libraries are not listed in the drop down list, type the name of the library in the New override for library drop down field.

Now run BoDog!

Main screen.
BoDog Install - Welcome Screen

At the table..
BoDog Install - At the Table #3

NOTE: There is an issue with BoDog when you minimize the main lobby window that makes the window a 40×40 pixel screen:

BoDog Install - Minimize Issue

You will want to force your window manager to keep the window locked at the dimensions that the window first appears as (could be 1024×570) or use the single table view and never minimize the application.

 

Optional: Download and install UltimateBet Poker Client

NOTE: This requires Internet Explorer 6 to be installed. Click here to view instructions.

If you just installed BoDog you can skip this part:

UltimateBet requires a few files that are not installed by by wine or UltimateBet. So we need our trusty web browser loaded and pointed to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259403

Run the vc6redistsetup_enu.exe with wine which will extract a file that will will need to run from wine again

# wine vc6redistsetup_enu.exe

# cd <directory where you extracted the above file to>

# wine vcredist.exe

When you try to run the UltimateBet setup for the first time, it has issues with extracting the eula.txt and fails to run setup because of this.

UltimateBet Install - Error

So we have to make a simple change to wine’s configuration.

# winecfg

Go to the Drives tab and hit the Autodetect button.

wine configuration for UltimateBet

For me, that installed a new drive mapping, H:, that points to my home directory. Now be sure to save the settings, clikc the OK button. Now running the UltimateBet setup works like a champ!

Lets download the client

# wget ftp://ftp.ultimatebet.com/public_html/releases/active/ubsetup.exe

Now we can install the UltimateBet client.

# wine ubsetup.exe

wine and UltimateBet install a proper launcher icon for UB.

UltimateBet Install - Icon

The default settings for wine in the Libraries tab will allow UltimateBet to run properly, so there is no additional settings to configure. So click the UltimateBet icon and you should be all set!

NOTE: Sometimes the install of Ultimate Bet doesn’t properly rename the resSplash.dll file and you will get the following window when you run Ultimate Bet:

Ultimate Bet : Where’s resSplash.dll?

Other side effects of this file missing include a blank or funky table background.

To fix this, go to the Ultimate Bet directory.

# cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/UltimateBet

Now look at the files in the directory:

# ls
eula.txt      res2D.dll       RESS~YB0.DLL  UBSoftUpdate.exe*  zlib.dll
INSTALL.LOG   resBJ.dll       resTable.dll  UltimateBet.dat
libeay32.dll  resGames.dll    ssleay32.dll  UltimateBet.exe*
LocalWeb/     resLobby.dll    StmOCX.dll    UNWISE.EXE*
Product.ini   resMiniBar.dll  ubcustom.ico  Update/

Bingo! Notice the file called RESS~YB0.DLL or something like it (RESS~XXX.DLL)? That’s actually resSplash.dll. Lets rename the file, shall we?

# mv RESS~YB0.DLL resSplash.dll

All Better! Fire up Ultimate Bet and take down massive pots!

Main screen.
UltimateBet Install - Welcome Screen

At the tables..
UltimateBet Install - At the Tables

NOTE: While trying to find a table to sit at, the colors are all messed up so everything is black on black until you select a row from the grid and then it gets highlighted. Most annoying.

UltimateBet - Table Filder Color Error

If you go into Options -> Lobby -> Restore Original Colors (button) this fixes the issue. Then hit the Apply button, then the OK button. If you do not hit the Apply button the colors do not take effect.

UltimateBet - Table Filder Color Fixed

You will want to do the same thing under Options -> Chat. Remember to click Apply first, then OK.

NOTE: I have had issues with UltimateBet’s automatic updater. Whenever there is a new version, I just re-download the client and install the new client over the existing client.

Poker Client Overload

Here is a screenshot with all of the poker clients running at the same time to show that with all of the settings configured with this HOWTO will allow the clients to play nicely with one another.

All of the Poker Clients in this HOWTO running at the same time in wine

Now I wouldn’t recommend that you run them all at the same time, but it is possible,

See you at the tables!

Donation

This document was done on my personal time as a community service. If this document helped you to install and play on a poker site, please consider a donation.

via PayPal

Full Tilt and PokerStars Username: StatikKling
Ultimate Bet Username: katzsak

References

[1] Wine HQ – www.winehq.com/

[2] Fedora Core 5 Tips and Tricks – www.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc5-tips.php

[3] Wine HQ – advapi32: Fulltilt Poker hangs (GetCurrentHwProfileA is a stub) – bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4468

Comments / Questions?

If you are having issues getting your poker client to run, I may be able to help. Please feel free to leave a comment below.

History

v1 - February 20, 2007
- initial posting

v1.1 - February 23, 2007
- added updated versions of wine for Fedora Core 4, 5 and 6
- updated the howto to use the latest version of wine for FC5, wine-0.9.31-1

v1.2 - March 8, 2007
- added updated versions of wine for Fedora Core 5 and 6
- updated the howto to use the latest version of wine for FC5, wine-0.9.32-1

v1.3 - March 20, 2007
- updated Ultimate Bet section: resSplash.dll

v1.4 - April 25, 2007
- added updated versions of wine for Fedora Core 5
- updated the howto to use the latest version of wine for FC5, wine-0.9.35-1

v1.5 - May 25, 2007
- added updated versions of wine for Fedora Core 5
- updated the howto to use the latest version of wine for FC5, wine-0.9.36-2

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