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Poker Academy Pro 2.0 Review

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Last night I couldn't sleep so I started up my copy of Poker Academy Pro 2.0 and then logged into Party Poker.  After the two programs interfaced, I sat down at a $15/$30 table.  With the handy Poker Academy Pro 2.0 advisor at my side and my favorite poker bot playing most of my hands, I was quickly up $500.  The great thing about this software is its ability to program which hands Party Poker will deal you.  To throw off my opponents' suspicions that I was using such a powerful software aid, I alternated between having PP deal me AA, AK, and QQ.

And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you…  It’s not quite that easy to use Poker Academy Pro 2.0 to win money, but it is one hell of a poker tool!  If you’re a total newbie to online poker, I really believe that with this program (and a lot of effort), you’ll never have to purchase all those books that most new players go out and collect when first learning to play online Texas Hold’em.  During the many hours spent thus far tinkering around with Poker Academy, I repeatedly kept having the less than ethical thought “If I could just get this thing to interface with Party Poker somehow.”  What an amazing program that would be!  It would be like having Poker Tracker combined with instant poker advice, together with bots that would likely clean up the low limit tables.  That’s how good this program is.  The AI on the bots is just scary, the advisor gives solid poker advice, and you have every stat available that you could possibly need.  This program won’t win you money like in the scenario I first described, but it will teach you to win money yourself if you put in the effort. 

This is hands down the most powerful poker tool I’ve ever seen.  And that’s what this is, a poker trainer, not a game.  There should be a law that all players new to online Hold'em are required to purchase and use Poker Academy Pro 2.0  for a month before logging into a poker room to play for real money.  The purchase price is far less than what most newbies will lose in their first few sittings of playing poker online.  Logging a few hours with Poker Academy would make many players’ first encounter with online poker a much more positive experience.    

The strength of this software lies in 1) Its bots' AI, Vexbot being the star, 2) its ability to teach correct pre and post flop play, and 3) its ability to stack the deck for advanced players.  The advisors give you a recommendation on each play with a percentage for checking, betting, and folding.  You can also bring up the hand evaluator which displays your possible draws, hand strength, and more.  In addition to having just about every stat available that you’d possibly need, including pot odds, you can also look up player hand histories in order to gauge progress, leaks, etc.. 

One of my favorite aspects of Poker Academy Pro is the ability to stack the deck.  Advanced players will love this.  I spent hours playing various hands from different positions with difficult boards.  You can have the program deal the same hand to you repeatedly.  You can also designate how you want the board to be set up.  You can even specify the percentage of premium hands you wish to be dealt.  Not only is this a lot of fun (I probably spent an hour dealing myself AA’s just for kicks), you can use it to work on problem hands and flops that you have difficulty maneuvering through during live play.  Is AK or JJ a leak in your game?  Then practice with those hands until you start seeing them in your dreams.  If you use tracking software such as Poker Tracker or Poker Office, then you can search your hand histories for leaks and then re-create those situations with Poker Academy Pro 2.0.  Personally I hate dealing with a 3^rd card of the same suit falling on the turn if I’m not holding a card in that suit (yeah, who doesn’t).  I set the program up so that on the flop two clubs would always be dealt, the 3^rd card would be random, the turn would be another club, and the river would be random.  Then I would tweak the bots and see how play would vary.  The ability to stack the deck any way you wish allows you to put some serious effort into patching leaks and rough edges in your game.

You can also play with all the cards face up.  This was a real eye opener for me.  While you can never perfectly emulate human play, seeing which hands were folded and which hands were pushed aggressively by the computer based on the bots settings has really helped my understanding of the game.  In most of the situations where I’d have a specific board set up, I would have the hands be dealt face up.  Alternately, you can peek at your opponents' hole cards during normal play by simply right clicking on the cards.  The bots are so lifelike that I really believe this can help you become better at reading players in real life.  Often when playing poker, we like to think that our premium hand is the only quality hand at the table.  Playing with the cards face up will quickly dispel this illusion. 


 

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