Poker Academy Blog

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 »

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The more and more you play online, the more your Prospector database is going to grow. There maybe sessions that you do not want to include in your analysis because someone else played them, you’re trying a new strategy, or you were just playing "badly" for the fun of it.  Whatever the reasons may be, database management can be a very effective tool for maintaining an easy to work with environment.

Sam :: Oct.12.2007 :: Prospector Tips :: No Comments »

If you are anything like me, whenever you see pocket kings in the hole you don’t cheer. Whenever I get these 2 cards I fear the Ace on the board.

With Poker Academy Pro you can easily stack the deck to set up a drill of playing pocket kings with an ace on the board over and over. By stacking the deck, you can set up your hole cards and the board cards to any combination you need practise on.

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Stacking the Deck

• When seated at a table, go to Dealer in the menu bar.
• Go to Dealer Options
• This will open the Dealer Options screen that will allow you to stack the deck. Select your hole card and your fixed board cards.

Sam :: Oct.08.2007 :: Poker Academy Pro Tips :: 1 Comment »

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By going to the reports section in Prospector and selecting the magnifying glass next to the suited connectors, the detailed player stats for those types of hands are loaded. Loading up the hand types tab, and customizing the graph to display Raised Percentage and Hands Played Percentage can you give you an insight into whether or not there is a tendency to play low or mid suited connectors much to often.

Guidelines for Playing Suited Low and Mid Suited Connectors

1. Suited low and mid connectors should be played only when it is cheap or free. Playing in the blinds (or the button if the blinds are known to not raise) with limpers is advised.
2. Raise with middle ones occasionally for deception. Keep everyone on your toes. The ability to read suited connectors is key to a good strategy.
3. On the other hand, do not raise every time. Remain unpredictable.
4. Suited connectors are best played while in position. Only raise when you are on the button.
5. Watch the flops for 2 or 3 way potential. The more outs, the bigger you can make the pot.
6. Be very wary of being out-kickered.
7. Know your enemy. Play the suited connectors sparingly against the better players. Read your opponents well.
8. Know when to Hold ‘Em. Don’t be afraid to be outdrawn.
9. Know when to Fold ‘Em. Know how to get out of your hand gracefully.
10. Know when to go All-In. Don’t be afraid to drive the action by betting the best hand.

Sam :: Oct.02.2007 :: Prospector Tips :: No Comments »

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Sometimes finishing an offline tournament is not possible in one sitting. With the ability to start at 6000+ players, it could take a few days to get down to the final table.

Poker Academy Pro automatically saves your progress so you can take a break, practice some drills or play some online poker. From the main Poker Academy Lobby screen, select Tournament. You will see in the left hand window a new option called Unfinished. All tournaments that you have not busted out on or shut the program off while in progress will be listed there.

Sam :: Sep.27.2007 :: Poker Academy Pro Tips :: No Comments »

The MA% smoothes out the change in hand statistics to show the longer term trend. The moving average is calculated by averaging the current hand over the previous hands to provide a value that is less susceptible to variance.

In Poker Academy Prospector, the moving average is a little different than is used in other places. We do not use a moving average over a period of time (ie: days, years, minutes), we use it in relation to number of hands.

If you have 10000 hands, and select a MA% of 20% for the Played% statistic, the first data point of Played% will be 2000 hands in. Each subsequent point on the Played % graph will then be an average of the last 2000 hands.

By setting the MA% to 0%, Prospector will put the value of your average over the entire selected session or applied filter.

Moving Average Examples:

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The first image is of a moving average of 5%. You can see the data is much more susceptible to small fluctuations in the way a game is played, since only the previous 5% of the total hands is used to calculate the data point.

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The second image has a moving average of 20%. The data points are much smoother and show a better long term outlook of playing style.

These graphs show that as a player tightens up (played percentage decreases), the total winnings are actually on the rise. With Poker Academy Prospector, we suggest a hands played percentage of roughly 35%. These statistics are easily displayed in the detailed player statistics window under the Actions tab.

Sam :: Sep.24.2007 :: Prospector Tips :: No Comments »

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Poker can be all about changing gears by varying your playing style.  Poker Academy ships with a set of advisor profiles, all of which play different styles.  To change your advisor single-click on the rightward facing arrow in advisor box as shown in the image.  Your advisor box will now switch to a profile selector.  The two drop down boxes represent the selected advisor for Fixed Limit (FL) and No Limit (NL).  Use the drop down box(es) to choose a different advisor and start experimenting with different styles or select an advisor that matches up best with your desired style.

Additionally, you can use the "Edit" buttons to view the advisor profile in the opponent manager to get a better feel for how the advisor is designed.

Graham :: Sep.20.2007 :: Poker Academy Pro Tips :: No Comments »

Importing hands into Poker Academy Prospector is quick and painless. But as you start to approach millions of hands, the time needed to parse and import all the information keeps growing. It is a good idea to start backing up your hand history databases. This can save many headaches down the road.

Backing Up

Prospector Application Directory

All Prospector hand history databases can be accessed quickly by doing the following:

• Go To Start Menu
• Select Run
• Windows XP Type:%AppDir%\PA-Prospector and hit enter.
• Windows Vista Type:%AppData%\PA-Prospector and hit enter.
• This will launch windows explorer, and the Prospector data directory

Sam :: Sep.20.2007 :: Prospector Tips :: 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 »

We receive countless number of requests for tutorials and guidance on how to best use our software and so we bring you the Poker Academy Blog!  Various members of the Poker Academy team will publish tips for Pro, Prospector and Poker Academy Online while mixing in news items and general poker interest stories along the way.  

Please drop us a line if there are any aspects of the software you would really like to see explained.

Graham :: Sep.20.2007 :: Poker Academy :: No Comments »