Update, 2026/06/09
RushCraft is now in open free testing — head over and download it.
Hello everyone.
I am a software engineer in Taiwan and a devoted Natural8 Rush & Cash player. Like a lot of people, I have put plenty of hours in at the tables and always wanted to get better, and I have been going round in circles at NL2 the whole time. T_T
All of this started with something I tried a few days ago. Like many of you, I had heard of Poker Tracker 4 (PT4), that legendary piece of kit, so I downloaded the trial to see what it was about. Two problems turned up almost immediately.
First, the HUD — its most important selling point — simply does not work on Natural8. Second, the software as a whole is somewhat complicated, and using it left me a bit lost.
At which point, as an engineer, the spirit of eating your own dog food came over me.
Rather than complaining that nothing on the market really fits a Natural8 Rush & Cash player, why not build one myself? Something that actually solves my own problem.
So my vision is an offline analysis tool that is light, focused and powerful. The goal is not to become another sprawling PT4, but to concentrate on what PokerCraft cannot do:
- A simple, intuitive interface: no more complexity; make looking at your own data easy to pick up.
- Advanced filtering: filter across several dimensions — position, starting hand, line — so you can answer the strategy questions you actually want answered.
I will be putting my time outside work into this project, and I know it is going to be a long marathon. The current plan is C++ with Qt, though I am also exploring what Rust could do here.
Most importantly, I plan to do this building in public: regular development logs reporting my progress, the problems I run into and what I am thinking about.
To make the plan clearer, here is a first-pass roadmap:
| Timeframe | Stage goal | Main milestone |
|---|---|---|
| 0–3 months | Technical validation | A working CLI prototype |
| 3–6 months | Build the core difference | Alpha GUI v0.1 |
| 6–9 months | Community feedback and polish | A usable alpha for early testers |
| 9–12 months | Market validation | A paid beta, and the first users |
| 12–18 months | V1.0 release | A feature-complete V1.0 |
Naturally this is the idealised version, and the real schedule may well move.
I would sincerely like you to be part of it. Technical suggestions, feature ideas, plain criticism or simple encouragement are all invaluable to me, and they are what will keep me going.
Thank you for reading. Let us see how far this idea can go.