Acespade v. Wilson: It’s a Toss-up

[Still the Spank E]

The things I found about Wilson software that beat out Acespade can be boiled down to three: the appearance is more attractive; the opponents REALLY adjust to your play (making them tougher to beat if you don’t change gears often), and you can be done with any hand you don’t intend to play almost instantly.

The first one would seem irrelevant to most, but—as I stated in this forum once before—the Acespade screen is not only less attractive, but downright difficult to look at for long periods of time. The advantage to the chintzier graphics, though is that they take up less memory, allowing you to run other software at the same time without an intolerable slowing down of other progams is that it allows you to play at work while still getting things done (if you’ve got it like that, that is).

The second is pretty cool, though. I may be mistaken, but the Acespade opponents don’t seem to get tougher when you fail to change gears. If they do, it seems less obvious to me than with Wilson’s: maybe they DO adjust to your play, making them tougher--only not as tough as Wilson’s do. Either way, you can’t keep beating the opponents with the same style of play for very long and it’s pretty obvious that the computer players have “caught on” to your tactics big time.

Lastly, with Wilson, as I also said elsewhere, you can really whip through the hands you choose not to play. There is no waiting around of any kind while other players “make up their minds” as to what to do—you can “zip” to the result of the hand instantly.

On the plus side for Acespade is a BIG one: their (hold ‘em) tournament game rocks! Wilson’s seems almost primitive by contrast. There is no advisor (in Wilson’s), you can’t select the quality of your opposition as you can with both Acespade and with Wilson’s Limit Hold ‘em version, and the players did NOT seem to adjust their style in any way in the Wilson’s no limit tournament version. The later stages of the tournaments I played degenerated into practically EVERYBODY limping into every pot, with little or no attempt by any of the other players to steal blinds or prevent YOUR so doing.

In addition, when you buy Acespades’ hold ‘em package you get both ring game AND tournament play: limit AND no limit (as well as pot limit) for a price that comes out to less than Wilson’s equivalent.

The early results are mixed, but, depending on what you’re looking for, and with certain reservations, both may be recommended.

[artman]

Hey Spank E,

I was wondering if you find the Acespade tournament to be a bit on the overly aggressive side. With the default settings you often find that the pots get raised and reraised 3 or 4 times preflop. For instance player A raises with AQ then gets reraised by B with 99 who then gets reraised by C who has JJ and you muck your AK just to find out that a A or K hits the board so you would have won had you stayed in. But i do agree that it plays a tough game. Although i changed the settings a bit. By the way have you tried Poki's Poker Academy? I purchased it a while ago but can't compare it to Wilsons or Acespade since i don't have their regular versions.

Laterzzzzzz
ARTMAN [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[Still the Spank E]

Artman,

Yeah, I found the Acespade a little overly-aggressive: I mean, 3-betting with jacks after UTG and EP have both raised is my idea of maniac, not aggressive. BTW, another nice thing about Wilson's is that you can set the kind of advice it gives (in the limit version only) so that you have either a tight player, a loose player or someone in between advising you on how to play.
No, I've never seen the Poki Poker Academy software, is it good?

[artman]

As far as the quality of play is concerned it's pretty good. But it doesn't have as many features as TTH. I kinda like the Showdown Calculator. But if your satisfied with TTH then i wouldn't recommend buyin it. In the end it's just another piece of software, pretty good but still.

Laterzzz
ARTMAN

[DOTTT]

I decided to purchase the Ace Spade software on Monday. I want to really improve my tournament play, and based on what I've read on these boards, I think it's the best in this category. I purchased Poki a while back, and if you've read my review I think it's pretty good for beginners, and offers a lot for those interested in heads up play. I was also disappointed by it's lack of features; hopefully Poki will fix this in coming versions or updates. I'll post my review of Ace once I get it and play some tournaments on it.