Poki's Academy?

[Jackal82]

Any one used this program? I understand it has pretty high end AI, but the hefty price tag makes me woder if it is worth it. Will this actually help improve my game or am i better off with 100 worth of experience at the table? [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

[the_joker]

It's a very nicely done program. I think it has helped me get from a beginner to an intermediate level. The AI seems to be good especially the heads-up player. I also tried turbo texas hold-em and I think this one is far better. I think if you play Sng's or heads-up, it is definitely worth the $100 to practice, since playing good heads-up can win a lot of money at the end of a tournament.

[cwsiggy]

I think Poki's AI is being used for a new game coming out on XBox and PC in July with Daniel Negreanu. It will have tourneys and running advice if wanted. Obviously aimed towards the masses but looks interesting.

[jojobinks]

what is poki's? how do i find out more?

[Jackal82]

do a search on amazon.com for it and you will get a nice explanation/pitch of the software.

[sillyarms]

I heard they recently added no limit to the program. What's your rating of poki's no limit play?

silly

[the_joker]

I mostly play no-limit SNG's. The standard tables that come pre-configured seem comparable or maybe a little tougher that the $10 Party SNG's that I normally play. Since you can configure the table, my guess would be that you could select all the toughest opponents and it would be very tough, at least for beginner or intermediate level players. I'm just learning no-limit myself, so I'm probably not totally qualified to fully answer the question.

[Huxley]

I am a newbie posting here, but I have been reading 2+2 for a few months now. I have also been a shareholder for the past seven years in the company that developed and sells Poker Academy.

Poker has been my hobby for over a decade, but AI software has been one of my two lifetime passions. (The other being great sex, of course)

I have owned Poker Academy Pro for 3 months now (remember, I own shares in the company so take this for what you think its worth) and it is one fine piece of software. Most importantly, it has the best AI available - based on years of university research on economic game theory and opponent modeling. I have had the Wilson Turbo software for a few years - it was the best poker software for many years - but its AI is rudimentary at best in comparison to Poker Academy Pro.

They changed the name from Poki's Poker Academy to Poker Academy Pro awhile ago. Poki is the name of the University software (limit only) you can play against for free on the web
The commercial products are Poker Academy ($39) and Poker Academy Pro ($100)

Until recently, there was no commercial poker software that had decent AI. Compared to chess (ChessMaster software, Deep Blue against Kasparov) and checkers (Chinook software is the current world champion), poker has been a much tougher nut to crack because there is so much unknown information, especially in no-limit.

The limit bots in PA are the nuts. For heads-up limit in the Pro version, Sparbot (an elegant chunk of AI code that doesn't play to win - just never to lose!) and Vexbot (adapts to your play, identifies weaknesses and exploits them) are getting to the point where they are unbeatable over the long term by a human.

The no-limit bots are nowhere near as capable , but they are getting better fast. The developers put out updates with new features, tweaks to the AI and bug fixes pretty often and they say on the PA forum there is a major upgrade coming soon.

But regardless of the relative strength of the limit versus no-limit bots, the other real value of this software is in the tools it provides for analysing your play. This is powerful stuff if you are serious about becoming a better poker player. For example, after 7700 hands against a pretty tough limit table (I tweaked the bots to mimic the play of my 9 most regular human opponents) I am appalled to see how poor my record has been when dealt KK, so now I am looking at each instance to see what went wrong and next I'm going to practise a few hundred KK hands in a row until I feel really comfortable knowing how to play them against a table of similar opponents.

So, in summary, I love this software and know it is worth the price if you are serious about using it to improve your game. The no-limit bots are great, the limit bots are average but getting better, and the analytical tools (especially in the Pro version) are the feline's rump.

Hope all of the foregoing is useful for people, but don't ever trust the word of a shareholder who's hoping to get rich! Download the demo and check it out.

[cwsiggy]

Couple of questions -1. so you can have it deal you only kk hands or whatever to practice??? That sounds pretty cool.

2. If purchased are upgrades lifetime and free???
3. Is this for sure the software being used in Negreanu's Xbox game?

[Huxley]

cwsiggy:

1. Yes, you can have fixed hole cards for any combination of yourself and the bots. You can also set the software to deal you (or any of the bots) hole cards in the top 25%, or top 10%, or whatever you like. You can also set one or more of the board cards to a constant. I can't begin to describe the tremendous overall utility of the analytical tools - you should download the demo. It only lets you play 20 hands until the cards start repeating, so you can't really judge the strength of the AI from the demo (some of the bots need to play 1000 or more hands against you before they get a really good read on you), but I think the demo does allow you to look at all the features.

2. This question has been a popular one on the PA forum. Since I've had the product (3 months) there have been a handful of updates (new features, AI tweaks, bug fixes) and one major upgrade (added no-limit!, much nicer GUI, major improvements to AI, etc.) The updates and the upgrade were all free and they download and install automatically if you toggle that choice on in the software.
I think the policy for the future is that updates will always be free but for upgrades there will be an additional cost. You should look at the PA forum and read the threads related to future versions.

3. Yeah, that's the Poker Academy AI. I just read the press release about the Stacked/Negreanu poker software today. I guess the point here is that BioTools (the company that designed and developed Poker Academy) really does have the best AI available, so they will probably end up selling licenses to a number of companies making console and PC games. But I bet they will keep their most current, best AI for their own PRO product. Also, for serious students of the game, the analysis tools are critical for maximizing your learning and thereby increasing your real money EV, and I imagine you won't find these "boring" features in an XBox game for the masses.