Card Academy is Australian Poker’s venture into the poker training market. Headlining the instructor list is none other than WSOP Main Event winner Joe Hachem, and his chant of ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!” However, Hachem has been MIA on the site since 2007. Although the rest of the instructor team is very knowledgeable, in my opinion it’s a bit misleading to feature Hachem, when he hasn’t produced content for some two years.

Aside from the Hachem discrepancy (to be fair, he does have content on the site, albeit pre-2007), I have to say that Card Academy is the most visually appealing of the poker training sites, has the best design and layout, and is easy to navigate.
For whatever reason, Card Academy really targets the Australian market specifically; which seems to alienate them from competing with the other ‘big name’ poker training sites, and probably hurts their membership numbers overall.

Site Features:
Forum: Yes
Pro Blogs: No
Member Blogs: No
Hand History Converterr: No
Site Navigation: V Good

Payment Methods:
Paypal
Hansa Poker Transfer

The best feature of Card Academy is the site itself. It has a sleek layout, and is incredibly simple to navigate; you will literally not waste any time trying to find what you are looking for at Card Academy!

Another feature that helps Card Academy stand out is their content; by not specializing in one particular form of poker they have a wide variety of information that will appeal to many different players. Besides Hachem, their instructor list includes some of Australia’s top poker players:

• Emad "Boondy" Tahtouh
• Nick "popitpopit" Nicolaou
• Arul "arulx" Thillai
• Jethro Horowitz
• Grant "grunter321" Levy
• Rayan "Rkruok" Nathan

Some of the areas on the site seem to be updated rather infrequently –the ‘News’ tab has a single entry since 2007—and many of the site’s areas are simply portals leading to PokerStars and other affiliate sites like PokerTracker and PokerAce HUD.

There have also been some grumblings about streaming issues –apparently you cannot fast forward when streaming in Windows Media Player--, and the audio quality could be a bit better; especially for non-Australians who might struggle with the players’ accents.

Video Library Summary:

Videos – Over 150
• No Limit Hold’ Em (cash) –40 videos
• Limit Hold’ Em (cash) --4 videos
• Multi-Table Tournaments --Over 40 videos –only 4 videos with buy-ins under $20
• Sit & Go Tournaments—12 videos ranging from $5 to $500
• Other games –Over 40 videos, most are PLO

Written Content:
Card Academy has a very nice article section, with the content broken down into numerous categories (once again; making navigation super-easy). They also have the typical Blog-roll, and forum area that can be found on most training sites.

Goodies:

Card Academy does host a poker league for its members, but being an Aussie oriented site the games are held on Hansa poker.

The Verdict:	Score: 5/10
With a focus only on the Australian market and a lack of new or updated content, we recommend giving the Card Academy a miss in lieu of a different poker training site.

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