image I was recently given the chance to try out the most recent version of Poker Academy Pro.  I was able to finagle an extra copy, which I will be giving away for free (see bottom for details).

Poker Academy is built around the Poker AI created by the University of Alberta games strategy group, a factor which puts it above the other packages available for human-computer poker play.  I’ve looked at several other packages on the market – they all offer pretty much the same stuff in terms of setting up tournaments, tracking stats, etc.  Poker Academy differentiates itself in the quality of its play, especially when you are playing limit poker.  You can play either no-limit or limit poker.  There are sit and go’s, MTT’s, cash games, even simulation of WSOP main event conditions.  The no-limit is a little weak, with the computer opponents smooth-calling all too often.  However – this can be tweaked and you can get opponents that will push nearly every time they get into a pot.  It makes for an interesting practice tool if you know that you will be facing a certain type of player in a real-life game.

One particular computer opponent that was a lot of fun to play against was ‘Vexbot’.  The Vexbot is capable of learning your play -  the more hands you play against it, the tougher it is to eek out a make believe profit.  Even changing gears during play was difficult, as I was never quite sure which patterns Vexbot was picking up from me.  For the record, I left the table with less fake money than what I had sat down with.

Poker Academy is also a good way for novices to learn the mechanics of the game, along with a little bit of basic strategy.  We all know that the play money ‘games’ are about the worst way you can learn.  Poker Academy can get you settled into limit poker play.  It has an advisor that will suggest proper play as well as give you an idea on the strength of your hand at each betting round.

Poker Academy Pro was a fun program for experimenting with different game play aspects, without risking your money.  One simple tool was the ability to play games with the hands face-up.  It gives you some insight as to why people who steal aggressively often do well – I was amazed at how often most people/bots were dealt crap hands.  I even saw one aggressive bot raise me from the button with the hammer!

The accompanying software package, which also works as stand alone software, is Poker Prospector.  This is a standard hand-history tracker/analyzer.  It will scan your drives for hand histories for any of the standard on-line card rooms.  It even reads in Poker Academy hand histories if you want to see how you’ve been doing against the bots.  Graphs are available by position, type of hand, game limit, etc.  Well done – probably the only advantage over similar tools is the ease with which it found the hand histories on my hard drive, as well as the ability to read in poker academy hand histories.

Contest:

I’m giving away a free copy of Poker Academy Pro with the Poker Prospector.  Just leave a comment to this post, with the name of the bot that I liked best from the software.  I’ll pick the winner by random draw this Friday, May 23rd.

The software is available for either Mac or Windows and retails for ~$145 ($85 for Poker Academy and $59 for the Prospector).