ACR Poker Debuts New AI-Powered Skip-It MTTs

To little fanfare, ACR Poker added a new type of poker tournament to its offerings on or around March 20, 2026. Called Skip-It MTTs, these tourneys use a combination of AI-controlled rounds together with typical human vs. human play to determine the winners and losers.

Skip-It tournaments are currently listed as “Beta” in the poker software. They have their own tab labelled, “Skip-It MTTs,” and can also be accessed via the “Pokasino” tab.

Skip-It Overview

The stated purpose behind the Skip-It tourney format is to eliminate the boring early rounds of the tournament and to let players instead concentrate on the more interesting latter stages of the MTT. To this end, the first portion of the tournament is played by AI-operated “racers” with the remaining phases of the tourney played by actual humans.

There are multiple Day 1 flights per Skip-It. Players can join more than one of them, and all surviving Day 1 stacks combine to a single stack for Day 2. It's also possible to buy in directly for Day 2.

At the beginning of every Day 1 flight, each entrant receives five automated AI racers who battle it out on their players' behalf. It's possible to view computer-selected hands from this part of the MTT through the Game Center interface:

You Can View the Progress of Your AI Racers

Once 80% of the field is eliminated, which should take no longer than five minutes, the stacks from each player's remaining racers are combined into a single stack, which is then placed into the hands of the human player.

After the AI Portion of the Tourney, Stacks Are Returned to Manual Player Control

The field is then whittled down, through regular player-vs-player poker, to 10% of the initial number of racers. These players advance to Day 2 of the Skip-It. They are now officially in the money. The second day plays down to a winner like a traditional online poker tournament.

About the AI Racers

The AI racers that compete in the first stage of the Skip-Its are programmed to play poker to a very low level of competence. There are actually different AI profiles that you can choose your racers from, or you can randomize them. However, they're all programmed with the same strategy, so it doesn't matter which ones you select.

You Can Choose Your AI Racers

There's an autoplay setting that allows you to use the AI to play for you even during the player-versus-player phase of the tournament. However, this isn't recommended as the poker skill level of the AIs is so substandard.

Buyins and Chip Stacks

The Day 1 flights currently listed in the lobby are priced at three separate points: $1.05, $5.25, and $10.50. All three are the same as far as how the gameplay works and the number of qualifiers who advance to Day 2. The difference is the starting stack and therefore, by extension, the number of chips the winners will carry forward to Day 2. Registrants in the $1.05 tourney get 1,000 chips per racer, those who buy in for $5.25 start each racer with 5,000 chips, and the $10.50 entrants receive 10,000 chips for every racer.

There Are Multiple Day 1 Flights for Each Day 2

Individuals can buy in directly on Day 2 for $26.25 and get 100,000 chips. Those who have qualified from Day 1(s) can also pay $26.25 to receive an add-on of 100,000 chips.

Chip Costs

Because everyone who advances to Day 2 in a Skip-It retains his or her chip stack (with multiple stacks being added together without any loss of chips), every chip issued on Day 1 eventually makes its way to Day 2. Therefore, it's easy to see how much a chip costs depending on when and how the user opts to buy in.

Those who enter the Low flight for $1.05 receive 1,000 chips each across five racers for a total of 5,000 chips: a rate of $0.21 per 1,000 chips. The Medium flights grant 5,000 chips to each runner, meaning that 25,000 chips cost $5.25, which works out to the same $0.21 per 1,000 chips. The math is the same for the High $10.50 flights. It's $0.21 for 1,000 chips no matter which Day 1 flight you enter.

However, registering directly for the second day of play costs $26.25 and gives 100,000 in chips. This is a rate of $0.2625 per 1,000 chips: a worse rate than any of the Day 1 flights.

Deeper Calculations

We actually went to the trouble of entering the relevant values for an actual Day 2 of a Skip-It MTT with 177 players into an ICM calculator. It told us that 5,000 chips represented 0.05% of the chips in play but had about 0.168% of the equity. Similarly, 25,000 chips comprised 0.26% of the chip total but was worth 0.382% of the value. 50,000 chips worked out to be 0.52% of the chips in play and accounted for 0.578% of the value.

Thus, those who buy into Day 1 are receiving good value for their buyins. A Day 2 starting stack of 100,000, on the other hand, accounted for 1.03% of the chips but was only worth 0.924% of the prize pool in expected value. When we consider that these 100,000 chips also cost more to purchase, it becomes clear that waiting until the second day to enter a Skip-It is a losing play.

However, the current set of Skip-Its in the ACR lobby come with guarantees of $10,000. It may be the case that, depending on the number of participants, buying in on the second day actually has positive expected value because of an overlay. Even in this case, however, playing through Day 1 like normal and then adding on for Day 2 would have an even greater positive expected value.

New Version of Poker Races?

Skip-It appears to be descended from Poker Races, a product debuted by ACR Poker in January 2025. Poker Races have since disappeared from the poker client.

Like Poker Races, Skip-It uses AI to determine the results of the earlier portions of the tournament. However, Poker Races then proceeded to the final portion of the event with humans playing out the remainder of the MTT whereas Skip-It has a second phase where the humans play down to 10% of the field. This means that Skip-It is a two-day affair whereas Poker Races ended the same day that they started.

Poker Races had a prize pool determined by a multiplier whereas no such mechanism exists in Skip-It. Moreover, Poker Races started whenever enough players entered as opposed to the scheduled starting times of Skip-It. These two elements taken together mean that Poker Races was more similar to the WPN's Spinz (formerly Jackpot Poker) product, but Skip-It more closely resembles a traditional multi-table tournament.

Our Opinion

We already thought Poker Races were a bridge too far. It's hard to see who would be attracted to a combination of AI and human play, and the incorporation of AI technology into a mainstream poker product is likely to cause confusion and fear among the player pool.

Skip-It is even worse, we believe, because it takes two days to play, weakening the time-saving justification for employing AI in the first place. Also, the weird second stage of Day 1, where the humans play down from 20% to 10% of the field, appears gimmicky and unnecessary to us.

We appreciate ACR's willingness to shake things up by trying out new formats, but we'll stick with traditional tournaments and cash games for now.

ACR Poker has Many Other Games

Whether you wish to check out the new Skip-It MTTs or have no interest in them, you can still sample and enjoy the rest of ACR's poker lineup. This includes cash games, ranging from nano-stakes to high-stakes tables, fast-fold poker, lottery-style Spinz, and tournaments with massive prize pools.

When you sign up with our special ACR Poker no deposit bonus code PRB10FREE, you'll get $10 for free to try out the games. Then when you're ready to deposit real money, you'll get a 200% up to $2,000 bonus. Click below to create an ACRPoker account:

Check out this detailed ACR Poker review for additional information about this cardroom. You might instead be interested in one of ACR's sister sites: BlackChip Poker, Ya Poker (non-US).

March 23, 2026 – by Max Golden, Editor-in-Chief