Poker Academy V2 (Win/Mac)
by POKERSOFT, LLC
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List Price: Category: Video Games See more product details |
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Video Game Reviews of Poker Academy V2 (Win/Mac)
Customer Review: 10 STARS-BEST LEARNING TOOL ON THE MARKET
Summary: 5 Stars
"The artificial intelligence in this Poker simulator is light years above anything else available. Originally developed by computer scientists at the University of Alberta, some of the poker "bots" in this game are self teaching! They actually learn to play against your style by analyzing the entire history of hands you have played. If you know how to play fairly well, you'll win pretty steadily at first - but the opponents get tougher and smarter over time, forcing you to improve and to vary your game. Different artificial opponents have different styles - some are super skilled, others a little crazy - just like the real world!
The smooth play, variety of opponents, hand analysis tools, and - most important - the complete hand history lets you see exactly where you make your big mistakes and your big wins! Play 10,000 hands or so and you will find the holes in your play and improve your game many times over.
Some previous reviews state that there are only a limited number of different hands being played over and over. These poor souls are using an early demo version of the software. One can only assume they didn't register or enter a license key to unlock the full program. In the earlier demo version of the game, this was the intentional demo limitation - it dealt the same 100 hands over and over in the same order.
I'm a software developer myself, and this is a beautifully designed and implemented poker "system" - far beyond the typical cheap computer card game. The smooth play, clean graphics, wide variety of game structures and opponents, and the many educational features all contribute to a fun learning experience. And yes - those computer science professors do know how to generate randomly dealt hands!! Use the program for 15 months and over 15,000 hands as I have and see your poker skills grow and grow."
Thanks to the gentleman who posted the above because it saved me a lot of time and was very well done. This is a great company to do business with and their customer support is beyond words. If you are a beginner or someone who thinks you have mastered the game, you owe it to yourself to buy this software. I bought it about 4 years ago for $129.95 and discovered it was a steal at that price. I had never played before and wanted the best software available and this is it. The online Forum is awesome. Incredibly astute players who will help you with any question you have no matter how technical the question about Texas Holdem or they can offer tips on how to better use the software. Anyone who rates this software below 5 stars should have a second look before they write their review.
And, of course, the more you play the bots the more their game improves against you which obviously forces you to take your game up a notch. Lest we forget, the more you play the bots the better you become as you see their strengths and weaknesses. It works the same way when you play another player over and over again, you are suppose to learn to exploit their weaknesses. That's the whole point. And, no I do not work for the company in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I live in San Diego and wouldn't begin to know how to program my own TV not to mention this marvelous software. Enough said, buy it now.
Customer Review: Want to tune up your game? Try this!
Summary: 5 Stars
This product is quite possibly the best training device to fine tune your game. Features the finest AI Poker engine out there with programmed and completely customizeable levels of computer opponents. Simulate any number of handed tables with any level of computer opponent you'd like, in single and multi-table tournaments or sit-and-gos. Practice your 'heads-up' game and it even analyzes your pot odds, playing style, and probabilities. Includes a customizeable computer 'playing partner' that recommends the best play according to your playing style. When you are ready, take your game online and play versus other Poker Academy 'students' using a unique monetary system that ensures (for the most part) serious play from 'live' opponents.
Using this software with other available resources, you should be able to become a 'feared' player in no time. I've been playing for only 8mos. now, mostly online and with increasing success while training with Poker Academy software. Last week, I played in my first live tournaments at a local cardroom (5 tables of 9 players each) and not only ended up in the money, but in the 2nd tourney of the day, came back from a 5k to 55k chip disadvantage 'heads up' to WIN! It takes a lot of work to become remotely decent at this game, but Poker Academy makes it easy and fun to study and develop YOUR game!
Customer Review: Random number generator?
Summary: 2 Stars
As far as poker games go, Poker Academy 2 is one-up with tracking of statistics and better than normal poker AL. The problem with the game is one that many cite in other games such as Tournament Poker is the irritating tendency of the game to seemingly direct outcomes, particularly when it "learns" how to play you. Apparently the adaptation is that when it cannot beat you, it will steer the winning cards to the heads-up bot. On too many occasions while playing the game I would be leading to the river when the program magically gives the bot the three or four out card to win. What rational player (and big stack such as yourself) with no danger of being eaten away by the blinds would call your preflop all-in of pocket kings with 2-5 offsuit and turn a wheel straight UNLESS you knew that an ace,3 and 4 will come? That happened along with hundreds of other incidents such as calling an all in with A-J with a board of 3-6-7-9, me with pocket tens, no draw possibiliies, both of us with 200 grand,and the river magically bringing a jack! This has happened so many times that I just laugh and I've stopped recording them. Again, as far as games go, it is not pre-programmed as is World Class Poker but if you are seeking a fair and totally random game, play live poker.Customer Review: I'm All IN
Summary: 4 Stars
Bought this to improve my skills at Texas Hold Em. In-hand tools are very helpful and it has taught me more about when to play and when to fold. It considers your hand plus the other players plus table position and has broken my habit of focusing so much on my hand. Besides all that the game is fun. You can play stand alone againt the AI players...these are tough players. I think they can see my cards : ) The most fun for me is connection to PA Online which is an area of tables and tournaments against real players for PAX (play chips). The community is made up of good players and is a friendly environment. It is the best play chip games I have experienced and I have played at most of the online sites. I got the MAC (because why would anyone own a PC?????) version and it works very well...stable network performance. Customer Review: Slowdown, ugh
Summary: 3 Stars
Poker Academy runs well on any half-way modern Mac, but I originally bought this game as a present for my parents who are using a very servicable but very old iMac G3 400 Mhz. Unfortunately while some sites list this as within the system requirements the box clearly says 800 Mhz.
Now, don't get me wrong, it runs. Just not very well. Poker Academy is a Java application, and the overhead of that as opposed to a pure Objective C application means that low end configurations need considerable RAM to run at even acceptable speeds.
Moreover, long sessions seem to slow this game down like nobody's business. While the game is peppy for the first few dozen hands, a table that has lasted past 50 hands will experience major slowdown on a low end system. Maxing out the RAM to 1 GB managed to forestall the slowdown until the 100 hands mark, but eventually, no matter how much RAM you have, if you have a low end processor the game will eventually turn into a festival of spinning beachballs that takes 10-15 minutes to deal out a single hand. Not acceptable by any stretch of the imagination.
If you like Poker, and if you have a modern system (take those system requirements seriously), this is a very nice game for a very affordable price. I hope the developers eventually port the game to a native binary though, as that would doubtlessly make it run better on the low end systems.