Poker Academy Blog

Sometimes, playing poker can be such a chore. Click, move mouse, click. Wait. Wait. Wait. Move Mouse Click.

Luckily, Poker Academy Pro has a very nice little feature of hot keys.  Using these can make the game much easier to control from the couch or leaning way back with your feet up on your desks.  These are customizable to be anything that is most convenient for you.

To get to the customization screen:
From any table window go to the

Options menu, and select Edit Hot Keys.

Sam :: Apr.17.2008 :: Poker Academy Pro Tips :: No Comments »

Prospector’s first third party application has been made by a user. It is free to use (although he provides no support) and gives you the ability to add your Live Tournament winnings for your bankroll.

The app creates a Poker Stars summary that can be imported into Prospector. It is a really simple interface and requires no help. Best of all, it is open source and the source code is included should anyone want to add any features.

Once you create the Tournament summary, save it in the same directory as your PokerStars (or any other site you play on) hand history folder. Prospector will then import it automatically.

 

Sam :: Mar.05.2008 :: Prospector Tips :: No Comments »

We like to think that we are magicians when it comes to the tournament summaries, but sometimes even we can’t foresee everything.

Not every site provides a tournament summary for us to parse (Full Tilt for example), and Poker Stars ones need to be requested from their automated service. The tournament editor can help you make your tournament data a lot more accurate by having you fill your known fields.

The editor can be launched from the Database Tab by selecting the tournament with the incomplete information and selecting ‘Edit Tournament’.  Fill in how much you have invested, how much you were awarded to help you get on track quickly and easily.

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Sam :: Feb.08.2008 :: Prospector Tips :: No Comments »

The subject of hand history logging, or more specifically the ability to toggle it off and on, came up in our forums this week so I’ll address it here for all.

Hand history logging stores every hand you play on Poker Academy or Poker Academy Online to your hard drive.  These logs can then be reviewed, analyzed and exported through the "Player Statistics" window.  By default your hand histories are automatically recorded.  If, for whatever reason, you would like to turn this feature off, select "Dealer Options" from the "Dealer" menu while seated at a table.  As shown in the screenshot below, an overlay will be displayed with a checkbox along the right side to toggle hand history logging on and off.

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Graham :: Feb.01.2008 :: Poker Academy Pro Tips :: No Comments »

One of the great features about Poker Academy Pro 2 is the ability to create your own custom tournaments and cash games on Poker Academy Online.  These games can be PAX games or play money games amongst friends or open to the whole PAO community.

After signing into Poker Academy Online, you’ll be brought to the PAO Lobby.  At the bottom of the lobby window you’ll find a button labeled “Create Room”.  Clicking on this button brings up the Room Creation Wizard which will guide you through creating your custom room.

The wizard provides you with all the fields and tools you need to get your table up and running. The wizard, which can be seen below, allows you to make customizations such as an optional scheduled start time,  a password so you can allow your friends, buy-in, blind structure and so on.  We’ll go through this wizard in more detail in a future post.

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Graham :: Jan.25.2008 :: Poker Academy Online :: 1 Comment »

CBC Radio: Search Engine did a piece on Polaris today. Jesse Brown’s host today was Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer.

They discussed the various implications of poker bots in the wild to a very odd reference of the first Gulf War relating it to Poker.

Dr. Schaeffer discussed that bots could do a lot of harm to the online poker trade, and that people should be told that they are playing bots. He emphasizes this would allow a player the choice of man or machine opponents.

Dr. Schaeffer knows that one day AI bots will over take Human players, it is just a matter of time.

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Jesse Brown didn’t fair too badly against when we look at his net BB. He was losing 0.05 sb/h or 5.8 BB/100.

However, when we run the results through the divat analysis (removing randomness and luck from the results) we see that the long term potential loss (a gain for Polaris) would be staggering. At 0.34 sb/h, Polaris was well on it’s way to clearing out Jesse Brown at a rate of 17 BB per 100 hands. 

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More about:

CBC Radio: Search Engine
Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer

Sam :: Dec.20.2007 :: Poker News, Poker Academy Online :: 1 Comment »

Time to get your kids away from the Xbox and Wii and on to the Poker Table. A Harvard professor is touting  poker as a learning tool. 

“I see great advantage in hitting kids as early as sixth grade, when they’re dropping out of math,” said Charles R. Nesson, the Harvard Law School professor who began the society with a group of his students. “I’m thinking of kids who are into their video games but instead of Halo-3 and World of Warcraft, we lead them into a game environment that has real intellectual depth to it, and feeds their curiosity rather than snuffs it out.”

The skills at the poker table are said to create better lawyers and negotiators. The pot odds calculating can enhance and reinforce the algebra being taught in the school room. The traits that Nesson sees in his colleagues he says can be attributed to their Poker playing.

“I see poker as one tool to develop the kind of cognitive abilities that a lot of people don’t seem to be developing on their own, whether because those skills aren’t taught effectively in school or because they’re not learning it from their parents,” Mr. Woods said. So many of his Harvard Law classmates were or had been serious poker players, he said, “that I had to wonder what role poker played in all of us getting here.”

  Poker Academy has been working closely the University of Alberta Poker Research Group for a while bringing you many of the great bots. Polaris is the latest from the team and shows that Poker is a viable path for students. The solving of problems and research artificial programs with computer programs using poker as a basis makes the pursuit of education a more alluring endeavour.

The next time you have a poker night, think about teaching the kids the subtlety about your game. Or maybe a Sklansky book for Christmas. Allowing them to learn the mathematics of the game could lead to a life long appreciation of fine art of poker.

Who knew that a life lesson in pot odds could lead to a Harvard degree?

Article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/nyregion/12poker.html

Sam :: Dec.13.2007 :: Poker News :: No Comments »

The ability to create and tweak the Poker Academy Pro bots is an excellent feature to help strengthen your game. With the options available a bot can be created that will act any way that is needed to learn from.

The flash video below will highlight how to create a custom limit bot and seat him at a table.

Sam :: Nov.20.2007 :: Poker Academy Pro Tips :: 2 Comments »

A world of opponents to choose from.

Setting up a table of opponents in Poker Academy Pro is an easy way to simulate different opponent styles that you may encounter online or at a live table. Poker Academy Pro has many different styles of Ring Game bots available for the seats.

To find out the different styles that each bot plays before choosing, go into the Opponent Manager. This is from the window under Dealer Options. Choosing a table with many types of opponents will create an excellent practise environment.

Creating a new Table with Specific Opponents

• Select the icon with a plus sign. This creates a new ring game table.
• You can select a style of player and randomizing the small changes in them. Choose the bot you want and select Random.
• It is also possible to select a specific bot type by going throw and selecting the name of the opponent you wish to face.

The bot play styles are configurable in the Opponent Manager.
Stay tuned next week as we delve into the world of the Opponent Manager and how to tweak the bots to play a certain style.

Poker Academy has the ability to create and mimic nearly any kind of player.

Sam :: Oct.30.2007 :: Poker Academy Pro Tips :: No Comments »

Click to view full image.

Whether you’re playing your weekly home game against your intoxicated buddies or playing the sharks at Ceasars Palace, you’ll encounter many different playing styles. With each tournament comes a vast array of players ranging from weak to solid to over aggressive to totally unpredictable.  To simulate these different fields Poker Academy Pro allows you to pre-define the starting lineup of any tourney. As shown in the image, you can select which percentage of player are of each bot profile. Perhaps you want 80% Xenbots, which play a solid tournament strategy, 10% unpredictable Oddbots, 5% the over-aggressive Jambots and 5% random from any bot engine.

In the offline tournament editor, switch over to the "Players" tab and select the Bot Engine, Bot Name and the Percentage of each bot you would like to face and simulate your upcoming tournament field.

Graham :: Oct.23.2007 :: Poker Academy Pro Tips :: No Comments »