Poker Academy, the leading poker training software developer, today announced that the company supplied the foundation for the poker playing artificial intelligence inside Myelin Media's award-winning game STACKED with Daniel Negreanu. Poker Academy's AI is world renowned and was developed over more than 10 years in association with researchers at the University of Alberta, Canada, which has published many academic papers on the subject.
Poker Academy supplied two forms of artificial intelligence to the STACKED poker framework: a bot for limit Texas Hold'em called “Poki” and a no-limit Texas Hold'em bot called “Zen”. The Poki and Zen bots play poker drawing on a vast knowledge of each Texas Hold'em poker game respectively and use extensive poker mathematics as a foundation for their decisions. Both bots also have the ability to read cards and put opponents on hands as well as the ability to model the actions of their opponents and predict future responses.
Using this break-through foundation, Myelin was able to create variations on each of these bots to create multiple hold'em experiences. While some of the AI crosses genres, quite a bit of it is specifically fine-tuned for each game.
Poker Academy Pro is poker training software, designed for the serious rounder. The “Poki” and “Zen” bots can also be found within this training product, along with a host of other AI engines including very powerful Limit and No-Limit Heads-up specialists.
The AI supplied in Poker Academy Pro was developed with close affiliation to the University of Alberta. The AI from the University of Alberta has has won numerous accolades as well as competitions including the AAAI 2006 Computer Poker Championship.
Poker Academy Pro allows players to tweak the settings for the AI – refining the players to provide more challenge or game variances. In addition to this, the software provides an interface for programmers to write their own AI to use within the program. All of this creates the most difficult poker AI environment available and forces players to elevate their game against worthy competition.
The STACKED poker gameplay is reminiscient of that experienced in a casino or home game. With the 3-D graphics modelling, attention to facial expressions, and the requirement to check your cards – STACKED aims to be a leader in the entertainment aspect of poker.
“Our poker training software is not only highly complementary to Stacked, but our AI is a popular feature of the game – a real differentiator for those looking to be challenged when playing limit and no limit Texas Hold'em,” said Kurt Lange, president of Poker Academy. “Stacked poker is perfect for those who want to experience the life of a pro, virtually, and to be challenged to become a better player. Poker Academy Pro teaches you how to be a real pro. When a player is ready for that next level, it's worth investing in Poker Academy Pro.”
Poker Academy specializes in developing training tools for Texas Hold'em. Poker Academy software is designed to help players learn, adapt, and improve their poker skills at any level. Poker Academy Pro includes limit, no limit, ring, and tournament play along with many tools to analyze a player's game.
Poker Academy Pro contains many Hold'em tools including:
STACKED attempts to give that “live poker game” quality through graphics, facial expressions, and game flow. The game allows you to make facial expressions as well as watch other players in great detail. You can also see which players need to glance at their cards again when 2 suited cards hit the flop. While this game has an advisor and some great instruction from Daniel Negraneu – it is much more like a suggested action button then something to teach poker. STACKED definately focuses on the entertainment value of poker.
On the other hand, Poker Academy Pro is designed to be a poker trainer and accomplishes this through something much closer to an online poker experience. This software provides a wealth of poker tools to evaluate hands, potential EV, and pot odds. Additionally, a player can use zip mode to display the hand in rapid succession, or can use dealer options to set up drills and focus on challenging scenarios. Every aspect of this tool is customizable: the ring game opponents, player chip stacks, tournament levels, payouts, and even the advisor can be changed to provide advice from different playing styles.
It seems that STACKED didn't do so great in the overall reviews. The AI tended to receive better marks, but still had some mixed comments. Generally, the comments tended around: “the AI was solid but not perfect”.
The advice was a source of much of the AI criticism, and mainly for one reason: when changing up play. As was mentioned earlier, the STACKED poker interface provides a gameplay suggestion – and naturally, every once in awhile a player should through in some misdirection. The obvious problem is that the advice didn't specify that this was mixing up the play, just that it was time to push with that 9–3 offsuit. While this seems like a rare occurence, it really does make the advice hard to follow.
Also, in a game that focuses on entertainment, the other suggestion was that perhaps the AI was not characterized enough. Most live games have some crazy raisers, the card chaser, the over-aggressive, and of course the call stations. The AI within Poker Academy Pro serves itself well, as there are subtle tendencies by many of the players, and when playing many hands they become very apparent. But the subtleties between these players take many hands to find out and are not readily obvious (which is not always true in a live game). Contrasting this playing speed with the STACKED poker gameplay, there seems to be a lack of variance. This can probably be expected when you compare something like the 200 hands an hour that is played with Poker Academy Pro, compared to perhaps 30 played with STACKED. From an entertainment perspective, the bots could have made it more fun – but in the end, a more challenging opponent provides a much more lasting experience then an easily exploitable one.
