Why I buy this one ?
- No real money or play money involved -- the game is strictly about the thrill of winning
- Advanced learning AI helps you develop incredible poker-playing skills
- Beautiful graphics that suck you into the action

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What our customer's say!

"entertaining, but not realistic", This game is entertaining for a while. It is a good way to practice the basic skills of the game, and get used to the basic rules. The game displays the various odds of winning with your two cards at every step of the game, pre-flop, flop, turn and river, and this is useful. I say it is not realistic because the AI that you play against is predictable and I quickly learned how to beat it every time...It is definitely unrealistic because in just my first few games I beat like 2000 simulated players to win the simulated world series, twice. Bringing my winnings up to a few million in just my first few simulated "tournaments". Now as much as I would like to believe that I am a poker prodigy, I think it is more likely that the games AI is seriously flawed if a beginner like me can win the simulated tournaments so easily...

overall I would recommend it to beginners, just to learn the basics and get familiar with the odds of various starting hands etc...It is fun for the first week that you play it. to get real poker skill I believe you need to play real people, for real money. As one of the other reviewers said it is true that playing online against people for play money is completely useless and unrealistic.

"ATTENTION!!! STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME!!!", This came of no-limit Texas hold-em poker sucks big time. First some positive things about it:
It can be fun for awhile. It has lots of options. 2003 and 2004 World series tournaments are here(pitting you against 800+ and 2500+ opponets respectively). It installs easily.
Now the bad things:
Gameplay sucks. The only way to really improve your play is to play for REAL, for REAL MONEY. Playing other fools online in virtual rooms with "play money" is a joke, because no one using his/her own cash, with the chance of losing it, would , say, re-raise all in with 9/3 off-suit hole cards. Might as well go home now. but in these no real cash games, people do it all the time. Oh, I busted out? OK, just re-enter another table and keep playing.
Now, why does the gameplay suck? Because the program cheats. Ever watch Hold-em tournies on tv?How often do players hit the "miracle card on 4th street or the river" and pull out the win? Not often, say about 20%. In this game, you hit the miracle about 15%; computer opponets hit it about 75%. Also, you tend to lose to opponets with the same primary, but a kicker usually 1 card higher- your hand is J/Q, you lose to a J/K. also, have AA starting hands? You'll lose to a flush/straight/3 of a kind about 95% of the time. What's the worst starting hand in Texas hold-em- it's 7/2 off-suit; you get this, you toss it. I have then seen the flop come either 77x,22x,72x,or 722 or 772, which, if I stayed in, would have won me the hand. It rewards you for playing laughingstock hands. NONSENSE! Play like that in a real money tournament, you'll bust out before you've even gotten to warm up your seat.
My advice, avoid this like the plague. don't get fooled by its cheap price tag. Here, you buy cheap, you DO get cheap.

""Like a live game"", Loads of fun - challenging - as close to a live tournament as possible for this price!

"Terrific Way to Improve your Game", This program sure beats playing in the play money rooms online. I always finish in the top 3 at party poker online. Imagine my shock when I lost on the beginning level. Ive been playin for about a year and have read tons of books. I read a previous reviewers thread where he states he beat this program the first time he played and it was on the highest level. Liar Liar pants on Fire!!! The opponents in this program become better and better as you get to the last table. The last 5 or 6 opponents are extemely good. Better than anything your gonna get online. I highly recommend this program.

"Poker overhaul", I've been playing poker for quite a while now and until now, I really haven't found a decent enough game to play on my own. This game is awesome! You have so many options for playing and can speed up games that would normally get dragged out by slow computer play. With tournament play, small tournaments, friendly games and even a heads-up poker option, you can hone in your skills for all types of game-play. My gf and I love this game and has improved our skills a great deal. Recommended!

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Reviewed by y'all way to high!", This game is marginally better than that Hoyle Casino joke, but it has no resemblance to a real game. The AI is OK, but there are WAY too many great hands, that seem to ALWAYS beat you on the river card. I've played hundreds of hands, and when I cheat to see what all the community cards are I end up missing my straight, only if I fold first. I NEVER hit it when I'm digging for it!!! EVER!!! Can't tell you how many times I've been sunk by a boat when I do hit my flush. Hole cards are awful for my hand, but every one around me is getting AA, KK, OO, JJ, AK. I think this game is poor, and only gave it 2 stars because Hoyle's was my only comparison, and it's palin awful!

"Helps a lot for beginners but AI makes big mistakes too..", Overall, it isnt a bad game. The AI opponents do often call allins with nothing.Also odd is how occasionally a whole table will call ur allin's during a tourney!
The odds regarding starting hands-ie Ak beats A6 normally, is fairly good. If you want to learn holdem (only NL in this game) this really helps but it wont help good players much.
It's surely worth 20 bucks simply b/c of the fun factor.

"A disappointment", I bought this and played in several of the 40-player tournaments, winning one of them and finishing second in another. The program does a good job of making the experience fun and easy, and there are some nice features that you can turn on or off as you see fit, including what they call the "cheat mode," which lets you look at the cards of uncalled hands and see community cards not dealt when nobody calls. When there is a showdown after somebody has gone all-in the probability of winning the pot for each hand is given as it is on TV. You can speed up play or slow it down, and you have the option of jumping to the end of the hand after you fold--an option that one soon chooses and stays with!

There are three levels of difficulty, although I didn't play long enough to get a real feel for the differences. I did notice a rather annoying and ultimately totally off-putting bug (or perhaps, in the spirit of some programming traditions, maybe this is a "feature" that helps the neophyte player win). Quite simply some of the computer players called with hands that could not beat the board!

Now it is true that there are times when it is correct to call with a hand that cannot beat the board. These are very rare however and typically occur when there is a straight on board. Everybody has that straight (at least), and if it is the best hand, the players left at the showdown split the pot. Clearly if the board is AKQJT, with no more than two cards of any suit, it is the nut hand and no matter what the bet is you have to call and split the pot. However, in this program some computer players were calling with hands that made no pairs, no flushes, no straights and were undercards to the board. For example, one board was something like A89TQ of three different suits. One of the computer players called with something like 64. As any hold'em player knows that call makes no sense. It is just throwing money away.

This discovery really turned me off the program because even at the most elementary level of play, real players do not make such suicidal calls.

The package also claims that "Computer opponents learn and adapt to your style of play." What this statement should mean is that the program does things like fold a lot when it notices that you don't bluff much or call a lot or raise if it records a lot of bluffs from you. This "learn mode" is what makes poker-playing 'bots very difficult to beat, and would be an essential part of any program that presumed to be able to beat sophisticated human players. My problem with their learn mode is that I didn't see any evidence of it!

I would like to note in passing that some years ago Mike Caro, the self-styled "Mad Genius of Poker," developed a poker engine that was able to beat some very good human players. However, I am not aware of a program that can play at the highest levels of the game, a program that could beat a table of world champions, for example, a program comparable to chess-playing programs that can beat grand masters. Maybe such a program exists and I am not aware of it. My guess is that such a program is possible, but very difficult to write.

Anyway, I would not recommend this program and I am sorry that I bought it.

"Enjoyable", I'm really enjoying this game. I do wish it could be networked with other players...but for $20 it is a great buy.

"For Practice Only - Too frustrating to really enjoy", It's a good game to experiment with strategies. But I can't stand it when I go "all in" and half the other players call me, even the ones that don't even have a pair, and I wind up losing to a straight or a flush at the river. Incidently, I think that there are too many straights and flushes being made in this game. I think it is difficult to get automated players to behave like real human beings. Still, it's better for practice than playing online, because online, the other players tend to slow the game down too much.