Poker Academy Blog

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 »

The Man-Machine Poker Championship 2007 took place in Vancouver, BC, Canada on July 23 - 24, 2007.

The University of Alberta challenged Phil Laak and his partner Ali Eslami to a heads up match against their newest "sick" bot Polaris. The humans ended up winning, but not without a super challenge by the U of A team and its bots. Poker Academy was proud to sponsor and power the event.

The Poker Group at the U of A has put together some highlight reels of the matches and made them available.

My favorite is Session 2 from Phil Laak, he is on the ball and really puts on a great show for the audience. There are a lot of great quotes and some pretty amazing calls by Phil Laak.

Watching the caliber of play that both these Pros were able to maintain, really put a sense of awe into the crowd.

The patience, strategy and brilliance displayed proved that not anyone can be this good. It takes a lot of practice and some great math skills.

Polaris is available for play for owners of Poker Academy, just sign into Poker Academy Online and check out the rooms. There are 8 different rooms with varying stakes and the 2 bots that played against Phil and Ali.

The other videos are available here with more sessions yet to be added.

Sam :: Oct.15.2007 :: Poker Academy Online, Poker Academy :: No Comments »

The friends list feature in Poker Academy Online is a great way to keep track of favorite players or most hated opponent. You can easily see if they are online and where they are playing.

Right Clicking a Player

Adding from a Table

• Right click on the players name
• Select ‘Show in Players Tab’
• The lobby screen will now change to the players tab
• The drop down menu ‘Select Action’ allows you to add as friend

A matching player is found.

Adding from the Players Tab

• Search for the player by name (Partial searches work)
• Select the player from the search results.
• The drop down menu ‘Select Action’ allows you to add as friend
• Note: Searching for as much of the username as you know. This will ensure you are getting the correct player.

Friends Lists

Players are now available in the bottom of the Players Tab screen. You can add different groups and manage your friends list.

Pro users have the ability to create as many groups as they want. Standard users are limited to 1 group of friends.

Sam :: Sep.20.2007 :: Poker Academy Online, Poker Academy Pro Tips :: No Comments »