Game Options
The options are accessible from the Options Menu, and are described below.
- Advanced Actions
If Advanced Actions is checked, then a
panel will appear on the game screen where your action buttons normally
appear to allow you to pre-select an action before it is your turn to act.
If you pre-select an action which no longer makes sense after another
player has subsequently acted, then your advanced action is automatically
cleared. Advanced actions are particularily useful to speed up game play
when playing Poker Academy Online.
- Auto Deal
Auto Dealing will automatically press the Deal Hand button for you
after each hand. The delay between deals can be set in the
Throttle settings. Auto Dealing can be
used during ring game or tournament games but does not do anything during
online play.
- Freeze Button
Selecting this option so that there is a "check mark" in the menu will
force the button to stay in its current position during ring game play
for as long as you have the button frozen. This option is useful if you
want to practice playing a specific position. This option is ignored
during tournament and online games.
When the button is actually frozen, a lock will be shown on the button
when you see it on the table.
- Four Color Deck
The four color deck makes different suits easier to spot.
Diamonds are blue and clubs are green.
- Muck Losing Hands
Players will automatically fold their hands at the showdown if they are beat.
If this option is off players will always reveal their hands at the showdown.
- Peeking
Peeking allows you to click on a player's cards to see them. If you don't want
to be tempted, or accidentally click and see the cards, then use this option
to turn peeking off. This option does nothing when you are in an online
game.
- Hide Names
This option when selected will replace each computer opponent's name on
their seat and in the Sidebar Transcript
with a generic name, of
the form "Seat x", where x is their seat number. It is important to note
that this option does not mask each player's real name when keeping
statistics and when logging the actual hands played in the
Hand History Database. This option is useful
when you want to
practice how to quickly classify an opponent based on their betting
tendencies and get feedback on your improvement. For example, you can
start a table with known opponents, then hide their names using this
option and then shuffle the seats. You can then play at the table for
a while and try to figure out which opponent is which based solely on
how they play. Once you have a guess of which player is which, you can
flip this option off and see how accurate your guesses were.
- Advice
Poker Academy will display advice in the
Sidebar to suggest which actions it feels are appropriate to
take every time you need to act. This option allows you to choose
between having this advice hidden or visible. In addition, there
are certain situations in Poker Academy that trigger warnings when
you make certain actions in those situations. When this happens,
Poker Academy will warn you by displaying a warning overlay over
the poker table. When these overlays appear, you are able to tell
them to not display again in the future. This option allows you
to re-enable all warnings associated with each of the fold, call,
and bet actions.
- Background Image
Allows you to choose your preferred table color, carpets, and chairs.
- Animation and Sound
Turn the various animations and sound effects on or off. Additionally,
there is a drop down item that allows you to select which sound engine
you want to use to play game sounds. Sound engines seem to perform
differently for different people, so this option gives them the choice
to experiment with alternative sound engines.
- Throttles
Throttles control the speed of the game. If you find the game moves too slowly or
too quickly for your taste you can adjust the throttles
to move the game at your desired speed.
- Hot Keys
Allows you to customize the hot keys assigned to various game actions.
The defaults are 'f' to fold, 'c' to check or call, 'r' to bet or raise,
'd' to deal, 'z' to go into Zip Mode, and 'enter' to automatically
take you from the poker table to the chat box for chatting in online play.
- Window Options
Allows you to decide how you want the Poker Academy window to be
displayed. You can choose between playing Poker Academy in
Compact Mode or in Regular Mode. In addition, you
can choose between available color schemes. It is important to
note that these options require Poker Academy to be restarted in
order for them to take effect.