Poker Academy Texas Hold ‘Em Win/Mac
Poker Academy Texas Hold ‘Em Win/Mac
- Advanced poker software with AI technology adjusts to ability and style
- With improvement, game becomes more challenging
- Advice pop-up with opportunity to reconsider potentially bad decisions
- Learn to use advanced statistics and math when making decisions
- Advanced tools assist in studying and researching the game
List Price: $ 19.99
Price:
Apparently some people don’t get it….,
As an advanced player, I can’t suggest a better program for developing the fundamental skills required to be a winning Hold ‘Em player.
The review below obviously doesn’t understand what this software is designed to do. This isn’t a poker “game,” it’s training software!
(…) But for those of us who are looking to gain a deeper understanding of the game, it’s an absolute necessity. (If the reviewer had taken the time to input Q6 into the showdown calculator he would quickly see _exactly_ why the advisor told him to fold.)
The Heads-Up limit players are, hands down, the toughest available. I challenge anyone to play 20,000 hands against Vexbot and see how they fare. I can tell you this: they won’t beat it, because the more you play, the better it plays against you, by exploiting your leaks and attacking your weaknesses. Unlike a human, Vexbot never goes on tilt, calculates perfect odds every time, and has a record of how you’ve played every single hand you’ve ever played against it. How’s that for a tough opponent?
If you interested in learning sound, foundational, winning principles of Hold ‘Em play, you should seriously consider adding Poker Academy to your curriculum.
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|Great Learning Tool and Excellent Player Models,
I am very pleased with my purchase of “Poker Academy: Texas Hold ‘Em”. It offers several variants of play and several models of players to play against. Writing software that simulates a good poker player is non-trivial and my experience with other poker games and/or learning tools is that the authors usually choose a single model and vary it in one dimension (i.e. aggressiveness, etc.). However, “Poker Academy” actually has several different models based on real playing styles and is thus by my estimate a much more sophisticated learning tool and/or challenger to play against.
The extra “bells and whistles” mentioned by a previous reviewer are nice for beginners but they can be turned off completely so that game play decisions are totally up to the player.
I own 7 different Texas Hold ‘Em games ranging from extremely simplistic (meaning once you “figure out” how the opponents work, you never lose) to others that are more sophisticated. It is my opinion that “Poker Academy: Texas Hold ‘Em” is the best software I have of the 7 different variants I own. Thus, I highly recommend the software to others and suggest that reading the help section and possibly reading about some of the player styles modeled in the software is quite possibly the best combination of fun and training I have come across.
Keep up the good work!
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|Publisher’s Review: Poker Academy Texas Hold’em Software,
With poker on fire these days, there is no shortage of Texas Hold’em tips you can read or study. But what you learn is only useful if incorporated into real games with real people. If you want to become a real player, at some point you’re going to have to move beyond being a practice hero.
Fortunately there is a new software program on the market that will help you at every stage of your learning process and at every stage of play. It’s called Poker Academy Texas Hold’em. Thomas “Thunder” Keller, 2004 WSOP $5,000 No-Limit Winner, says “Poker Academy is a revolutionary learning tool and a must-have for the beginner to the serious rounder.”
Poker Academy offers limit and no-limit games, tournament and ring games. Pop-up advisors help you learn with every move that you make, and users can even check their player statistics, hand values, and pot odds at any point during or after a game. “Our Luckometer lets you have it straight,” said Kurt Lange, president and CEO of Poker Academy, a leading software developer of poker products. “Are you playing well or just getting lucky?”
Poker Academy’s artificial intelligence is robust and was developed over a decade. Its capabilities have been featured in The New York Times, New Scientist and on the Discovery Channel. Even pros have learned more about their own game by facing off against the adaptable AI opponents provided by Poker Academy. And Poker Academy was recently selected to be used in the WPT Boot Camps (a two-day seminar on how to play Texas Hold’em held at casinos and hotels around the country) as part of their course materials.
“Only a few games currently employ adaptive artificial intelligence, which is also called machine learning,” said Hector Munoz-Avila, assistant professor of computer science and engineering of Lehigh University. “Most are `hard-coded’ to operate at a fixed level or levels.”
Lange elaborates, “This means that every action taken by a computer player is determined by a rule or algorithm. A savvy player will come to recognize this over time and their software will become useless as a learning tool and not much fun to play because you’ll know exactly what the computer will do.”
What Poker Academy’s computer opponents do is basically adapt to those playing the game, requiring human opponents to adjust their play to win. As the player gets better, the game gets better and more challenging. Poker Academy’s AI also shows hand strength, potential and pot odds on the screen as you play. So you shouldn’t spend hours trying to memorize percentages and obscure odds. “The good news is Poker Academy software shows you the percentages you need to know at every stage so that over time these numbers will become more familiar to you without requiring you to bury your nose in a book and memorize them all precisely,” said Lange.
If you can win money playing a Poker Academy game, your chances to win money in a real-life casino, tournament or online game are that much greater, for you don’t want to venture into a casino or a tournament armed only with your instincts and the fact that you’ve been winning $10 or $20 from your buddies at a weekly game. The game played by professionals is much more complex and nuanced than the game played by most of the recent fans of the game or people who never intend to venture more than a few dollars for fun. “Poker Academy can teach you how to play Texas Hold’em poker like a professional, no matter what your current level of skill and knowledge may be,” said Lange.
Poker Academy (MSRP $29) is both PC and MAC compatible. The game runs on Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP, as well as Mac OS X 10.2 or higher.
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