Tournaments

ACR Poker Skip It MTTs: First AI Powered Tournaments Explained

By Pessi Lamm

15 Apr 2026

Pessi Lamm 15 Apr 2026

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Americas Cardroom launched AI-driven Skip-It MTTs on March 20, 2026.
AI handles early phases; humans play from the shrinking field in Day 2.
Geared towards casual players and efficiency, accelerating tournament poker.

The Skip-It tournament lobby on Americas Cardroom, showing available flights and buy-in tiers (credit: ACR Poker)

Americas Cardroom launched Skip-It MTTs on March 20, 2026, making it the first real-money poker site to deploy AI powered live tournaments for players.

The concept is straightforward: artificial intelligence handles the grind-heavy early phase, humans take over when the field thins, and every player who reaches Day 2 is already cashing.

The Problem It Solves: Time

Americas Cardroom launched Skip-It MTTs on March 20, 2026, making it the first real-money poker site to deploy AI powered live tournaments for players.

The concept is straightforward: artificial intelligence handles the grind-heavy early phase, humans take over when the field thins, and every player who reaches Day 2 is already cashing.

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Format Breakdown

Phase	Who Plays	Duration	Outcome
Race Phase (Day 1)	AI Racers	Under 5 mins	80% eliminated
Controlled Phase	Human players	~1 hour	Field cut to 10%
Day 2 (Sunday)	Human players	~4 hours	All start ITM

Each entrant gets five AI Racers with identical in skill, fully transparent, operator-sanctioned
Surviving stacks from multiple flights combine into one Day 2 stack
Direct Day 2 buy-in available at $26.25 with a smaller starting stack
Currently in beta at stakes of $1.05, $5.25, and $10.50

Who It's Built For

Recreational players who want tournament poker without a four-hour time commitment
Multi-flight grinders stacking cheap Day 1 entries to build a large Sunday stack
US and Canadian players: ACR is one of the most geographically accessible poker rooms available to North American players

The Bigger Picture

Skip-It is part of a broader ACR push toward speed-format innovation. The platform doubled its tournament schedule in February 2025 to over $9.2M in weekly guarantees, and previously launched Poker Races and Bounty Hunter formats chasing the same casual-player audience. Skip-It is the most structurally ambitious version of that strategy yet, and the first in online poker to hand AI Racers a live seat at the table.