ACRPoker adds 3 new poker game formats: Good, Bad, or Meh?

An ACRPoker software update in early January 2025 did more than just add a few graphical options or rearrange the colors of the poker lobby. Rather, the site announced three new types of poker games. They're called Poker Races, Bounty Hunter Poker Scratch Cards, and Survivor Flips.

These new formats are not just on ACRPoker but also its sister sites BlackChip Poker, True Poker, and Ya Poker. We've taken a close look at the latest poker innovations from ACR to give you the rundown on what they're all about.

Poker Races

Poker Races are found in a new tab of the lobby, called “Poker Races.” Within this tab, there's a category for “Race & Gos,” which are similar to SNGs in that they start when a certain number of players have entered.

Race & Go Lobby at ACRPoker

There's another category of “MTTs,” but they're stated to be “Coming Soon.” Presumably, they'll work similarly to how the Race & Gos function although with a specified starting time rather than firing off when they're full.

Gameplay Details

Each participant in a Race & Go chooses five AI-controlled racers. These racers play tournament poker against each other until they're in the money. At this point, the human players take over from the racers and continue until the tournament is complete.

In the event that a player has multiple racers that reach the money, the player will take over control of the one with the largest stack while AI plays for the others. If the entry being manually controlled by a player is eliminated, then that individual will switch to whichever of their other live entries has the most chips. This process continues until all an individual's stacks are eliminated.

About the Racers

The “Racers” that players draft for their Race & Gos are AI-controlled bots. There are 100 of them, and the system keeps track of certain stats about them in the “Racer Stats” area. Here you can see their names, in-the-money percentages, highest cashes, and other metrics pertaining to their last few games.

You can opt to select your Racers manually or build a squad of five random Racers. According to ACRPoker, “All racers perform the same over time,” so there shouldn't really be any advantages or disadvantages to selecting one Racer over another.

Prizes

Much like in Jackpot Poker, the prize pool in a Race & Go is determined by a randomly generated multiplier, up to 2,000x. Race & Go documentation asserts that “Typically, eight Racers reach the money in a 100-Racer tournament.”

In addition to the normal prize pool, 5% of each Race & Go buyin is dedicated to a jackpot. This jackpot pays out designated amounts whenever three or more of a participant's racers make it to the ITM stage of the contest. The biggest prizes come from having all five racers make it to the money. There's no house fee taken from the jackpot pool; 100% of it goes back to the players.

Playing a Race & Go

After you select your buyin, draft your team, and register for a Race & Go, you have to wait until the game is full before it starts. Currently, you can play $0.25-buyin, 20-player Race & Gos. Other buyins listed are $1 and $5, but they are “Coming Soon” according to the ACR lobby.

One you register for a game, you'll be brought to the Game Center. This is a centralized interface that displays all your active Race & Go games on the left and lets you join more of them with the click of a button toward the right. In the center of the Game Center display is the main action for a game whether that be racer-played hands that the system has flagged for your attention or the hands you play yourself while ITM.

Race & Go Game Center With Several Games Active

When the game starts, you'll be in the race portion of the competition wherein your 5 AI-operated players will battle it out against the 95 other entrants until they're in the money. Key hands will be chosen by an algorithm and shown to you while the right of the screen gives you info on where your Racers stand with respect to the field.

The Race Portion of the Race & Go Where the AIs Play on Your Behalf

After the race portion of the contest is over, if you have no remaining entrants, you'll receive a message to the effect that you have lost. Otherwise, you'll be seated with your largest stack to play out the rest of the tournament manually. This is also when the prize pool multiplier is randomly selected.

A Random Multiplier Is Chosen for the Prize Pool

At the end of the Race & Go, you'll receive all prizes that your entries have won. The prize distribution follows the general format for MTTs with first place getting the largest slice of the pool and the cash payouts decreasing until eighth place, which might be worth just a few cents.

Bounty Hunter Poker Scratch Cards

The Bounty Hunter poker scratch cards game is located within the new “Poker Races” tab in the ACR poker client, in the “Bounty Hunter” section. This is a game you play by yourself; there's no need to wait for lobbies to fill or for any other players to enter.

There are four buyins currently listed for Bounty Hunter Poker Scratch Cards: $1, $5, $10, $25. You play one scratchcard at a time.

Gameplay Details

The results of each scratch card are based upon a 110,000-player poker tournament that has already concluded. Each entrant in the tournament was controlled by AI – there were no human players involved in the gameplay at all.

The already-finished tournaments upon which the Bounty Hunter is based are progressive knockouts with all the money devoted to the bounties. These bounties, which vary in amount, are randomly assigned at the start of each event, and they are distributed as normal (half to the victor of the hand, half added to that player's bounty) whenever an AI is knocked out.

Prizes

Your winnings are the sum of all bounties won by your AI. In addition, there's a jackpot pool that's activated if your player made two flushes throughout the tourney. If any of the two flushes were straight flushes, then the payout gets higher. The highest jackpot is reserved for those who manage to make two royal flushes in the same tournament.

Playing a Bounty Hunter Scratch Card

After you buy in to a Bounty Hunter, you'll be prompted to pick your player.

Choose a Player

You have three choices, each corresponding to an AI entrant in the already-played tournament. It doesn't matter which one you select, really, because all three of them point to random players. Nevertheless, this illusion of choice may serve to make the game more attractive to certain users.

You will then see your Scratch Card with various details covered up. You can click on each box to reveal that particular piece of information or choose “Scratch All” to scratch off the entire card.

Bounty Hunter Scratch Card

Press “Watch the Highlights” or “Watch” to view important hands from the tournament.

Bounty Hunter Hand Replayer

After you see the hand where your player was eliminated (or where he won the event), you will go back to the Scratch Card to view your results.

Bounty Hunter Hand Replayer

Survivor Flips

Despite ACRPoker's website saying that “Survivor Flips launch Wednesday, Jan. 8,” we saw no indication of these games within the poker client. Furthermore, the ACR promotional website still designates them as “Coming Soon.” Nevertheless, we can give you an idea of how they work based upon publicly available information.

Gameplay Details

Each hand of a Survivor Flip sees each player receive three hole cards. You have to choose one to discard. After all participants have made their discards, the flop, turn and river are automatically dealt without any betting possible.

At each showdown, the player with the worst hand is eliminated. The remaining individuals proceed to the next hand. This process continues until there's only one player remaining who wins the tournament.

Prizes

There are two kinds of Survivor Flips: Step Satellites and Multi-Flight qualifiers. In the Step Satellites, the winner receives a ticket to the next step with the eventual prize being entry into a major poker tournament. In Multi-Flight qualifiers, the victors from multiple Survivor Flips proceed to phase 2 of the tournament, which plays out like a normal MTT.

New Terms of Service

ACRPoker.eu has added a set terms of service that, oddly enough, apply only to the Poker Race games. On the web page describing this poker format, there's a body of text different from the overall terms and conditions hosted elsewhere on the site. This “supplemental” ToS is prefaced by the following ominous-sounding warning: “YOU MUST READ AND ACCEPT THE FOLLOWING IMPORTANT TERMS BEFORE PARTICIPATING IN POKER RACES. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THE TERMS OF USE, DO NOT PARTICIPATE.”

Then when we look further into these terms, we see the following:

4.1 Our use of Artificial Intelligence. You acknowledge and understand that:

4.1.1 during the early rounds of the tournaments, you will be matched up against virtual (rather than real-world) opponents generated by software that utilizes AI technology (“AI Software”);
4.1.2 The virtual opponents (“AI Opponents”) can refine their strategies by studying patterns in your play;
4.1.3 All AI Opponents share the same level of skill and adeptness, and their win rates over time are consequently identical;
4.1.4 Each AI Opponent employs a unique playing style and the variable among playing styles is aggressiveness in betting patterns;
4.1.5 The playing styles maintained by the individual AI Opponents in any given tournament are randomly generated by the AI software.

It's peculiar for an online poker site to have specific terms relating to one and only one of the formats of poker being offered. Another section of these Poker Races terms sets the minimum age for participation as 21 whereas the sitewide T&Cs establish 18 as the minimum. Whether this is a weird oversight on the part of management or ACR will actually prevent users who are over 18 but under 21 from partaking in Poker Races remains to be answered.

Our Impressions

ACRPoker has deployed many innovations in the past. Some of them have proven successful and popular, like multi-flight tournaments and Jackpot Poker. However, others, like SNG 2.0 and the distracting Flying Bucks promotion, turned out to be failures and have been retired (or taken out back and shot).

We feel that the new Survivor Flips, Poker Races, and Bounty Hunter Scratch Cards will ultimately fall into the latter category. What they all have in common is the reduction or elimination of skill from the game.

Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?

People want to play poker because it's a game of skill. By working on their poker abilities, individuals can grow as players and scoop up some of their opponents' cash at the same time. Never mind the fact that only a small fraction of players manage to do so on a consistent basis – what matters is the dream of being able to do so.

Both Bounty Hunter Scratch Cards and Survivor Flips are basically RNG-fests where your results are not determined by skill but by pure luck. We already have games like this – casino table games and slots – and they tend to be more entertaining than these poker-derived formats. Video slots especially have come to incorporate sophisticated graphics and sound along with exciting bonus rounds and jackpots. Bounty Hunter and Survivor Flips simply cannot compete as far as entertainment value is concerned.

The Poker Races also reduce the skill component of poker considerably though there is still some of it present after the entrants are in the money and control moves from AIs to actual humans. Nevertheless, we believe that this neither-fish-nor-foul chimera will ultimately go the way of the dodo. There's simply no compelling reason for anyone to play it except as a novelty.

Reliance on AI Troublesome

Though we have no reason to suspect ACR of using AI to commit fraud against its player base, the heavy reliance on AI in some of these new games is problematic. Bots and solvers are two of the aspects of the modern online game that both pros and novices alike are worried about. Incorporating them directly into the poker client gives a bad vibe.

Drafting a new set of terms and conditions specifically for Poker Races and the AIs deployed within them is an odd move too. We can't think of another time when an internet poker room has created special terms – separate from the sitewide T&Cs – governing one particular game format.

Fortunately, the “Poker Races” tab in the lobby, which includes both Race & Gos and Bounty Hunter, is clearly labeled “beta.” Meanwhile, Survivor Flips have yet to appear. Thus, there's every possibility that ACR will roll back these disgraces before too long.

Real Poker Still Available

Disgusted by these newfangled gimmicks? Don't worry; you can still play traditional poker at ACR. Not only that, but you can claim $10 for free with our exclusive ACR Poker no deposit bonus code PRB10FREE. Then get a 100% up to $2,000 bonus on your initial deposit. Click below to sign up:

For more info on this online poker destination, consult this thoroughly researched ACRPoker review. Other sites on the Winning Poker Network include BlackChip Poker, True Poker, and Ya Poker (non-US).