Anyone worried about this hurting your ROI ?

[theredpill5]

There is now software to work on your NL tournament play. I actually own this. I bought it last year when it was only geared toward limit. Now they NL and tournament play. I played two tourneys on it last night. I killed the first tourney. Then I changed the bots a little and it killed me the 2nd time. There is also an advisor. Although, I have to admit to going against the advisor a few times. I think you can even adjust the advisor so that it coincides more with your style of play but I haven't found that option yet nor have I looked for it, though. It's at poki-poker.com if you want to look at it. It has a nice hand Evaluator that I might use online if I'm quick enough with it. It tells you the probability of you having the best hand with N opponents seeing the flop.

Two guys on the forum over there have claimed that they made a bot better than Vexbot. They claim that it can actually play very good poker 5 and 6 handed. They say it still can't play a 10 handed game, though because it uses opponent modeling and the neural networks to do that are way too big for a regular PC yet or something.

[Freudian]

Im convinced that the program was responsible for your initial success and your tinkering was responsible for your consequent failure.

[theredpill5]

What ??? What the hell are you talking about ?

[Apathy]

This sounds more like a fish farming tool then a pro-creating (get it?) one to me.

[tomdemaine]

If you mean Texas calculatem it's ok for odds but if you take it anywhere near a party SnG the advice will kill you. "knowledgeable" fish using this software in a Party format will only improve my ROI IMHO

[Freudian]

1. You say "I played two tourneys on it last night. I killed the first tourney. Then I changed the bots a little and it killed me the 2nd time."

2. I reply "Im convinced that the program was responsible for your initial success and your tinkering was responsible for your consequent failure."

Connecting the dots isn't rocket science.

[raptor517]

i guarantee anybody that can destroy the party sngs wont make a program with an advisor that tells you how to do it. i hope everyone buys that program because it will probably advice super tight on the bubble to sneak into the money. holla

[eastbay]

[ QUOTE ]
i guarantee anybody that can destroy the party sngs wont make a program with an advisor that tells you how to do it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wouldn't be so quick to make that guarantee. The people behind the poki program are the UAlberta team, who pretty much unequivocally are on the cutting edge of pokerbot AI. Their work is very impressive so far and getting better every year. Aside from the fact that they are academics and may have motives beyond profit, if their NL AI program was good enough to sell 10k copies per year at $100 apiece, that's a variance free $500k/yr (say, per co-author). That doesn't seem an unrealistic estimate with multi-millions of enthusiast to pro NL players these days.

Given the choice between playing for 15% ROI in the $215s or a variance free $500k per year to write/maintain/improve the program, I'd take the latter in a heartbeat. I think you'd be nuts not to.

eastbay

[yanicehand]

learn to play yourself?

[Chaos81]

I might tell you if I was worried about it, if you told us WTF you are talking about.

[the shadow]

The OP's talking about Poker Academy (http://www.poki-poker.com/). It's commercial software written by Darse Billings and his crew from U. of Alberta's game theory program. You can play against a dozen+ limit or NL bots in ring play or a SNG. One of them -- named Sklansky -- plays a NL game a lot like saabpo's.

As far as I'm concerned, the program's +ROI. Some of the bots are quite good, especially HU. I hate to admit it, but I'm still -$ against one of the bots after 10k hands.

The Shadow (who can cloud men's minds but has problems clouding a bot's)

[Freudian]

Writing a bot that plays a good HU is quite different from writing a bot that handles a SnG well.

Not that I doubt the latter can be done. But it is much harder.

[Chaos81]

Thanks man.

[The Yugoslavian]

There are many other things actually worth worrying about lowering your ROI.

Why the hell worry about this one?!?!

Yugoslav

[Blarg]

I clicked the link. That's an expensive program! Sounds like you feel it's really going to teach you something about heads up play, eh?

Hmm...heads up play is definitely an area I could use work in.

[Huxley]

Check out these links to get some unbiased info about Poker Academy:

http://www.pcgameworld.com/story.php/id/5137

http://tinyurl.com/49w5d

http://tinyurl.com/46aqh

The Poker Academy site is at:

http://www.poker-academy.com

[Blarg]

Thanks, Huxley. I checked those reviews, too.

[Blarg]

I couldn't resist; I bought it to check it out. Kind of interesting.

There are some limitations I don't like which I think are clearly the result of this software being developed as an academic tool rather than a tool to help poker players practice.

For instance, you can't set buy-in amounts, and you can't set stack sizes freely. You can't keep a running bankroll, and your starting chips equal whatever your bankroll is. That in turn cannot be set to the Party limit structure, as you can set your starting chips to $10, $100, $1000, or $10k only. Sorry, no 800 chips for you!

There is a lot of flexibility in setting initial levels, though, which can be set from $2/4 to $500/$1k. You can also set the blinds to increase every 1, 5, 10, 20, 30, etc. hands, so that's nice and flexible, though a timer would have been a cool addition too.

Unfortunately, you have only the choice of 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions. No big deal, but I would have liked to be able to see the game full screen without having to change my 1600x1200 resolution I use on both my monitors. The graphics look fine at those resolutions, though.

I played a NL game, and got bounced out on third when one of the players, called my K9o all-in preflop push steal attempt with a stack size not too much larger than mine with a Jack high and hit a jack on the flop and rivered another. Hmmm...guess this thing really IS a flawless replicator of real life!

I kept the poker advisor on, and it seemed to suggest calling with pretty much anything out of the small blind at any level if there wasn't a raise. It also was a fan of medium pairs and dominated hands, it seemed to me. I'm not a big fan of calling a preflop raiser's flop bet on a K9x board just because I have a 9, at least on early levels.

To be fair, though, each table does have several different AI's being randomly assigned to your computer opponents, so I'm sure the AI will do different things. This would have to be even more the case when the adaptive AI comes into place as you build up a history of playing that the AI can use to see trends or rules in your playing. I'm not sure how well this works, because scanning the program doesn't tell you whether the AI is coming at you fresh each game/tourney or if it's using your last thousand hands, or whatever. The utility of adaptive AI could be orders of magnitude greater or less, depending on the data that the AI is allowed to collate and draw its conclusions from.

I was intrigued and surprised when, after a hand completed, I peeked at the hole cards of a guy who checked on the river in a multiway pot with a board of K6792, when there was one more player left to finish the action. The last player bet, and then this other fellow I've been talking about raised him a good sized bet and won the pot. What did he check raise with, I wondered? Peeking showed me it was a 75 offsuit, so he check raised with middle pair! Much more interesting play than I expected from a computer!

I have Wilson software for hold'em(not the tournament version), and I have to admit I didn't find it compelling at all somehow. But this program looks like it might have some fun surprises in store.

The extra tools the OP mentions are there, and I'll probably get into their use a little bit later, but right now I'm more interested in trying the heads-up play versus the various AI's, including the two that are that's made specifically for heads-up play. That's the main reason I got the program.

I did like the player stats section a lot. You can look at graphs of your bankroll, see your percentage of time spent on folds, checks, raises, calls; percentage of the time folded PF, flop, turn, river; win percentage and rate, preflop hand stats, etc. It's no Pokertracker, that's for sure, but what is? It does provide useful stats, and the graphing doesn't hurt either.

Anyway, I like it so far and look forward to playing it more, but for now I gotta go out and get some lunch and restock my supply of Mountain Dew.

[Huxley]

Blarg,

To set your and any/all opponent bankrolls to any $ amount:

After you have loaded your table of choice, pull down the Table menu and click Set Bankrolls.

The AI in Poker Academy tracks each profile you use separately. So, if you play a 1000 hands as Blarg1 against Sparbot, it will use that history in playing against Blarg1 next time you play together. But, if you create a new profile - Blarg2 - then Sparbot will be starting from scratch. The same holds true for opponents - if you modify an existing bot and give it a new name, then all the other bots are learning about it from scratch, just like you are.

A really cool thing to do is have a buddy who uses PAPro configure a table for you without telling you anything about the opponents he has created. If he knows your style of play well, and knows the types of players you usually play against for cash, he can build a custom table that will be a real test and force you to learn some valuable lessons.

Also, if he gives each of the bots new names then everyone at the table (bots and you) will start as strangers and each player will have equal opportunity to learn to read the others. I've done this a couple of times now and there are certain bots that drive me nuts after the hand history builds to more than about 1400 hands