Poker Academy Pro 2.0 is out

[Crispy86]

Poker Academy Pro 2.0 came out a few days ago, and it is a significant expansion and improvement over PA Pro 1.5.

There are a lot of improvements large and small, and it is a finer tool for them. The largest and most visible ones are the multi-tournament support, the online play, and the revamped stats.

The multi-tournament tables are completely customizable, and one can find a number of presets to simulate up to a full WSOP behemoth event. The sidebar will include a new panel on tournament standings, though the panels can all be minimized and maximized according to one's desires.

There are a number of new presets as well for those who play sit and gos at Party Poker and co. so that you can simulate an event with the same prize structure, rake structure, and starting chip counts. Thanks to the new stats, you will be able to also see how you do specifically at these events, compared to others.

Ring games have a few more presets as well, such as a specific low-limit table with bots set to simulate the play of micro-limit and small stakes play, as well as random table settings. Furthermore, in honor of Miller's book SSH, there is a bot set to play according to his opening hand advice. Finally, as was much requested, not only have rakes been added, but one can select the rake according to the place one wishes to emulate, from an online site such as Party Poker, Poker Stars, or Ultimate Bet, to the Mirage in Las Vegas.

As before, one can create one's own tables with types of play, players, custom name and save them, but now one can also export and import settings to share with other users.

The online play is NOT a new gambling source, unless it is done via a private agreement. Instead it is to allow PA2 users to meet online, either to play against others, or only with friends. You can set any number of options to the room, and after creating the room, I saw the options for all cards face up, and other usual ones (for PAPro) available, so I presume one can use them. When playing one always has the option to show either card or both before mucking. Missing items, to be added soon enough in the future, are password control of private rooms, and the option to add bots to fill up tables.

The stats underwent a complete overhaul and are amazingly detailed with numerous graphs. I hesitate to try to describe this, as I'm not even sure where to start. You can see your results per

- type of play (limit, no-limit, ring, tournaments),
- specific setting (party poker SNG, short-handed 6 max, etc)
- session

All respectively broken down according to dollars won, SB/hand, showdown%, etc. Not to mention with graphs per position, per types of hands (any ace, pairs, suited connectors, etc.). There is also a funny curiosity due to a new perk. The perk shows the winning % in a showdown, so that under the players' hands one can see the chance to win accoridng to the cards and flop, changing as each card appears. The curiosity is when one opts to use the playback for a session. When you play a session or tournament, you do not know what your opponents had nor their genuine winning chances if all the cards had been face up. Now, you can play a tournament, run the playback option, and see all the hands played, card-by-card (one can fast-forward, pause, etc), with all the cards face-up and all the respective winning chances under each player's cards according to each fold and card that appears on the board. Not only will you see who played what and the bluffs, but what your chances really were at each moment of the game.

There are a number of small perks that make training sessions that much more interesting and productive. Of course, there was the usual 'Zip' button to immediately accelerate play to the next deal, after one had folded, but now there is the auto-zip so that this is a default choice.

The training options continue to be rich though I really mostly make use of the detailed setup options. For example, you can have it deal only the the top 25% tier of hands, or more specific choices such as always dealing a jack and random card or a pair of specific hole cards. Naturally one can make similar choices for the board cards. In one exercise for example, I tested a couple of strategies when dealt pocket kings but a dreaded ace came out on the flop. If you do such drils or exercises, I'd suggest creating a separte profile so as to not create odd stats mixed up with your other playing stats.

There's a demo on the site, though I haven't tested it and cannot say what it shows, but can attest that the final product is easily worth the investment.