Review of Poker Academy 2

A nice guy called Tony from Poker Academy gave me a copy of their training program to try out and review so here is what I found (With apologies to Tony for the long delay).

Poker Academy Pro (2) is the latest version of the well-known poker training software program. You can use it in the same way you play online poker, but its main use is as a multifaceted training and analysis tool.

From the main PokerAcademy splash screen you can choose from a wide selection of cash games and tournaments at various limits and structures. Among other things, you can tweak the blinds size, blind level-up times for tournament play, stack sizes and number of opponents.

Here’s a shot of the main ring games screen. (Click image to view in full-screen).

If you've used previous versions of PA2 you will notice many improvements. The latest user interface is much fancier than the previous version, and there is a wider choice of game scenarios to choose from.

Given the huge popularity of short-handed games online, PA2 in their wisdom have added 5 and 6-max versions of No-Limit and Limit cash games to this latest release. You can play from the highest limits right down to 10c/20c. You can also choose the amount you wish to buy-in for as well as the amount of table rake paid, based on the structures at many of the well-known Poker rooms like Party and Bodog.

They say Limit hold'em is a science and No-Limit hold'em is an art, and I tend to agree with this. NL is the art of playing people rather than playing cards - a mechanical approach to playing does work as well in NL as it does in Limit. For this reason, it's said to be much more difficult to design a bot that can play No-Limit well.

The reason I mention that is to emphasise what a difficult job it must be to create a truly realistic virtual No-Limit opponent. And the people at PokerAcademy, via the University of Alberta, have done a decent job. These bots will bet and raise you with light values as well as strong, just as a real-world opponent will do. They will slow-play, check-raise, reraise, continuation-bet and even bluff. They won’t berate you in chat, but who knows, maybe that’s in the next release.

But a good poker-training program should do more than just allow you to play poker. It should also have advanced features that facilitate learning - PA has many of these features, and in my opinion these are where the real value of the product lie.

Are you weak at playing from out-of-position? No problem. PA allows you to freeze the table positions of all players so you can play any number of hands from the same position. Practice playing 300 hands of AK from under the gun. Then use the hand history and replayer to analyse your plays and see what you have been doing right and wrong.

I like the fact you can modify the styles and tendencies of the built-in bots (of which there are dozens). Not only that, you can even create bots with their own individual playing styles. These simulated players are customizable in terms of looseness and aggression, both preflop and postflop. The interface for tweaking the players is very easy to use. Create a TAG (Tight AGgressive player) or a LAG (Loose AGgressive player), or even a Maniac that plays in push or fold mode. See how you fare against many different styles of opponents and improve your overall game by playing more hands against the types of player you have the most difficulty with.

We all have leaks in our game. Let’s say your biggest leak is that you don’t know what to do in situations where an ultra-aggressive player has position on you and his aggressive betting and raising is forcing you out of pots. With PA2 you can set up this exact scenario and then play it out repeatedly. Same cards, same position and same opponent. In your own time, (rather then under the pressure of an online money game clock), you can then examine what works and what doesn’t work. Repeatedly practicing scenarios like these will help you move up the learning curve quickly as you don’t have to wait to encounter similar situations in a “real” game. You can also save these scanarios and go back to practice them later.

An interesting feature the creators have built in to PokerAcademy2 is the ability to play with all the dealt cards face up. This feature brought home to me how few “playable” hands are actually dealt during the course of a game. Fearing your opponents have a hand more frequently than they actually do is something that holds many players back from playing the aggressive style they would like to. But when you repeatedly deal 12 cards face up in a short-handed game, you can see that the majority of the time nobody has anything. Seeing this helps ram home why aggressively stabbing at small pots is such a crucial part of any good players arsenal. You want to be the one taking down the orphan pots that nobody is claiming and not the one standing back while someone else steals them.

PA2 has built in an “Adviser” that recommends the best play for each street. Unfortunately, the Advisers advice is rather weak tight. For instance, it mostly recommends folding a flopped middle pair if an opponent bets. In full ring games this might not be a mistake but if you do this routinely in aggressive 6-max games, astute opponents will soon cotton on and you’ll be run over.

I also noticed the Advisor seems to always recommend folding draws if you don’t have the correct odds to chase. Of course this advice is often correct, for example against tight and skilful players or short stackers. But by the same token, in No-Limit it is often ok to accept poor odds on the current street if you are fairly sure your opponent will put more money in on later streets. This is especially true against maniacs and very loose/poor opponents. So, in my opinion, the Advisor does not factor in implied odds, which is one of the most important concepts in No-Limit hold’em.

These criticisms aside, the Adviser is a useful tool for the novice who may be tempted to incorrectly chase draws - referring to the Advisor from time to time will help beginners realise when it is wrong to call with a draw and hopefully eventually acquire the discipline to fold in situations where it is correct to do so. In summary, the Advisor is a tool that should be used intelligently, in conjunction with other sources of learning, and not as a crutch.

I sat down for a couple of two-hour sessions with PA2, and in total played around 500 hands. I chose small stakes 6-max NL cash games because that’s what I currently play online. The game played similarly to the real thing, although somewhat less aggressively than online at similar stakes.

Here is one hand I remember. I raised preflop with A-Qs and got one caller who had position on me. I led ¾ pot with the nut flush draw on the flop and my opponent called. I checked a blank turn and he checked behind. I hit the nuts on the river and checked to try and induce a bluff. Sure enough when I checked, my opponent bet half the pot, and proceeded to fold to my check-raise! Checking his hand history I saw he had a busted straight draw. Many times I have been in similar situations in real money games and I have to say I was impressed with this move in a simulation program!

On a slightly negative note, I have to say I found my virtual opponent’s bet sizing a bit strange, on the whole. Far too often my opponents seemed to bet a very small amount in relation to the size of the pot, one quarter or one fifth of the pot seemed to be standard. I'm not sure why this is the case - maybe the software determines the bet sizes in relation to the blinds rather than the current pot. In any case, these bets make no sense as they give terrific odds (5-to-1 or 6-to-1) to flush draws and straight draws. The bet sizes I typically faced were just not realistic compared to real money online games in which decent (and even average) opponents will typically bet between 2/3 and full pot. Of course there are online players who ritually bet very small in relation to the pot, but these are in the minority.

In the past I have used several products similar to PokerAcademy2 but IMHO PA2 is the best of the bunch. At $85 for the pro version it’s reasonably priced, and works out at about €54 if you are in the Euro zone.

To finish up, I would emphasise that you’ll quickly get bored if you use PA2 just as a free money poker game. But if you actively use it as the valuable learning tool that it is you will get a lot out of it, and I mean a lot. If you use it with the right attitude I guarantee your game will improve. And in case you think you are too advanced, don’t be fooled - it's not just for beginners. It was one of the first training programs I used when I started playing two years ago and even now as a winning intermediate player, I still find it a very effective learning tool and one I return to again and again.

Useful Information

PokerAcademy website. Purchase the software here. You also will find the PokerAcademy forum there (you don’t have to register to browse it). The forum has a lot of discussion about the software itself but there is plenty of general poker chat as well.

If you wish to try out PA2 before buying, you can download a demo version from here. I haven’t tried this demo out so cannot say if it is a full featured time-limited demo, or a limited version of the full program.