Others say...

"Fake"
If you like playing rigged poker, then get this game. The hands are fake.
They're not randomly dealt, as in real cards would be, but set up by the programmers to 'teach' you poker. The AI's either know they're going to win a hand, or they know what you have, but I suspect the former. Case in point: This is about 1/2 way through the tournament, and I am chip leader or very near it. I have KK before the flop, there is a raise ahead of me. Action gets to me, so I raise it, doubling the previous raise to something like $19,000. I have $56,000 in chips, and after my raise, the other raiser goes all-in, so of course I call it. This is all before the flop, mind you. He has Q-5. He hits 2 pair on the flop, and no paired board for me to win against his 2 pair. He came out raising with a Q-5 to begin with (before the flop), and went all-in at my re-raise. Rigged. And this is not just one incident. I've seen it dozens upon dozens of times in all the games I've played of it. This is just one of the more glaring examples of it.

It reminds me of one the Chris Ferguson quotes (tips) that come up in the game: "Poker is not only about winning hands, but also keeping yourself from losing big hands". True, but remember, my example took place all before the flop and before any cards had been seen. The game is rigged to 'teach' you poker.

Sorry, that's not real poker. Also, on the first hand of just about every tournament, an AI will have A-A, K-K, or A-K. Just about every first hand of every tournament.

If you like playing rigged hands, then by all means, go for it.

"Game of errors"
I have tried to install this game on three different computers. After a lengthy installation process, when I try to run the application, I get an error message that a file is missing.

"Mediocre at best"
Being a fan of both poker and computer games I had certain expectations about the game going into it. Right away the user interface turned me off. If you have a USB gamepad in (the RumblePad 2 in my case) you're going to have to Alt+F4 out of there and unplug it before you gain any keyboard functionality. After figuring that much out, then I find the controls are in interesting places on the keyboard. After figuring the controls out I decided to try my luck on the career mode. The options are very limited and the sequencing of creating your character is terrible. For instance, in order to take the glasses off, you must first go to the accessories menu, then to the glasses menu, then to the style and select no style.

After all the creating character business (which seems to take much longer than it should; for some reason the game seems slow in responding to keystrokes), I finally got to play my first game. I must say that the graphics are very subpar. On a game like this where not much time is spent coming up with and creating storylines/settings, one would think they would at least create a decent engine to run their game on. Not the case at all. Poor resolution and no way to fix that.

But onto the actual gameplay itself. Set to normal speed, each hand takes a solid 2-3 minutes. The game is very slow moving from one character to the next, and each character is very slow in his/her movements. The comments are very trite and even though they managed to bring in the guys from ESPN to do the commentating, they both are pretty boring and get repetitive after a while.

Probably the most frustrating thing about this game for me is that it doesn't really seem like I'm playing a legitimate game of poker. Bluffing is all but impossible, the AI will make calls/raises on nothing and then luck out on the turn or the river, and in general it just seems impossible to win. Figuring that the cards would be more forgiving on the easier levels I tried amateur, but even at that, the only reason I ever made a final table was that I'd win one or two medium-sized pots early on then just fold pretty much every hand thereafter.

All in all this game really is disappointing. It had so much potential, especially with as many pros as they have in it. What's even more disappointing is that now with the poker bandwagon seeming to slow down developers will have even less of an interest in creating a quality game that brings both graphics, gameplay, and friendly user interface all together.

I'd settle if Activision even recreated this just so it wasn't impossible to win a hand more than once every 15 minutes.

Update: After having spent much more time playing the game it seems that it's easier than I first felt it was. While the computers often make terrible calls or push all-in with random cards, it still provides some amount of entertainment when you're trying to kill time. One upside is that you'll see a lot of hands of poker for no money which is good practice as long as you play seriously.

"Disappointed"
The first problem you will likely encounter is a DirectX error. The fix is on the CD but you have to look for it. If you browse the disc there is a directx folder that has the latest DirectX in there to intall. Most games give you this option during the installation of the game but this one doesnt. No big deal though, I got it running.

Plenty of reasons to not like the game though

The controls are weird. But I got used to it. I prefer using the mouse to click my options (call raise fold) like you would in online play or like in the game Stacked. But you have to press the backspace key to look at your card then use the arrow keys to decide wether to call raise or fold.

I also keep getting an "assertion error" after about 45 minutes of play. The computer opponents aren't really that tough. If all the online players played like some of these guys I would be typing this review from home, not work.

They use Texas holdem announcements in Omaha. for instance if the board comes up all spades Norman Chad will say "there's three spades on the board. One in your hand would be nice, two would be that much better" of course you cant make the flush with just one spade in your hand in Omaha... A little picky on my part but it kind of takes the "realism" out of the game.

If you want a good PC Poker game get Stacked. I love Stacks interface, controls, and realism, just wish it had Omaha on it like TOC does.

"Silly problems plague this game"
I've run in to two out of the three support issues listed on the Activision Value support site for this game. I'm sure I'd hit the third one if I could actually play the game.

The DirectX problems mentioned by others are silly, but fixed easily enough with a download from Microsoft. Still -- why not just install the latest required DirectX as part of the rest of the install?

Once I got DirectX fixed I ran in to the issue where my keyboard and mouse won't work in the game, making it completely unplayable since I can't do anything once the game loads. I followed the oh-so-helpful support tips to remove non-essential USB devices but after unplugging everything except my mouse and keyboard it still wouldn't work.

Don't waste your money on this one. Play one of the free games online or find some other game if you really want a standalone PC game.