Snowie Games, the company behind Backgammon Snowie, has launched a new online poker learning tool designed to help players of all ability levels improve their game using a system based on artificial intelligence.

PokerCoach is designed to help teach players long-term winning strategies for No Limit Texas Hold’em, helping experienced players work out how to balance their games effectively and teaching smaller players to avoid making basic errors in their play.
 
The system is based on a game theory agent developed after more than four years of research and development, and was tested using a poker school populated with novice players, with one placing 5th in the World Poker Tour Malta event, winning €30,000 having never played a hand of poker six months previously.

Snowie Games co-founder Oliver Egger said the product’s AI “will assist poker players of all abilities to improve their level of play, and ultimately help to level the playing field.”

“The PokerCoach product is based on self improvement, and isn’t concerned with the analysis of opponents,” he continued. “Instead the focus for users is on improving their own game, raising overall proficiency whether winning or losing, and the fact that this is done in an instructive and accessible way marks out PokerSnowie as a unique tool in the vast poker community.“

Founded in 1998, Snowie Games first came to prominence with a Backgammon Snowie, which was an educational game allowing novice players to compete at a much higher level, although it was seen by some as having undermined the growth of the market.

However, the PokerCoach product is designed to aid individual players’ behaviour and improve their gameplay rather than providing the tools to beat better players.

“What makes PokerSnowie such a revolutionary product is the fact that it is not an expert system but is based on an artificial self-learning brain that has been able to surpass, not only its programmers but also the very best humans,” Egger explained.

He added that the sophisticated nature of the system would allow it to help “further knowledge and understanding of the game of poker.”