I had my doubts with this game...but they were quickly erased. Addictive, never the same, great price--->A must have for poker fanatics
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Description
This is plain and simple a collection of Poker games blown onto the Xbox console and made available on-line. The games range from Texas Hold Em, to 7 Card Stud, 5 Card Draw, Shanghai, it's got it all. Not to mention the price is nice at a mere $15. So here is the breakdown of this game.
- Creating a Player - Single Player - Xbox Live - Tutorials - Gameplay
Creating a Player
A great addition to this game. You can customize absolutely EVERYTHING on your character. From eye and hair color, to the strength of your chin and placement of your cheekbones. This gets very interesting and funny on-line to see everyone's creations.
*note: I kept my player to a conservative liking of myself rather than make a freaky looking guy/woman.
Single Player
To be blunt, this mode is utterly useless unless you need to brush up on your looks and rules. The computer AI never bluffs, and never plays anything that will not be a strong hand. It plays very tight. IMO they should have had pre-loaded profiles with players with distinct playing styles. Perhaps one that played real tight, another that bet freely, another that bet big anytime he played, players of that nature, but they are all the same.
Xbox Live
Now we come to the reason you will play this game. Yes, it has the same problems free on-line poker games have, and that is betting unrealistically. The best way to combat this is to find strong realistic players your first few days out and put them on your friends list. By doing this, you can keep track of realistic games, and they will also have good players on their lists, so you will usually have a good game.
This is also voice compatible, so you can sit and say absolutely nothing during the whole game, or you can trash talk your opponents and put them on tilt. Completely up to you, but I like this feature, as it separates this game from other free on-line poker sites.
This has quickly become the most addictive game I play on Live, more than Halo 2, more than anything. You can sit and play, and have a good time. Don't have to worry about getting blindsided by a sniper or focusing on the TV so hard after hours of gameplay your head hurts.
Tutorials
This game features 18 different poker games you can play. They include:
Texas Hold 'Em Super Hold 'Em Pineapple Crazy Pineapple Shanghai 7 Card Stud 2-7 Draw 5 Card Draw
and others.
Each game has a thorough tutorial for any game and makes each game easy to learn. So if you want to try something new and don't know exactly how to play, just hit up the tutorials, they do take care of you.
Gameplay
Each game is fully customizable, from the buy-in or stakes, to the background you are playing. You can play in a saloon, a speakeasy, outside, on a riverboat and many other places. The betting system is extremely easy to use. If you can't use this, you don't need to be playing video games. The in-game sound effects can get kind of repetitive and that is the only thing I can really say I don't like about this game. The graphics are good, could have been great, but they are good enough for this game.
This is a good game well worth the $15 dollars it takes to catch it, even less if you can get it used or on this site. You can always find a game, and it's fairly realistic, so there is no reason any poker player should not be on their game now.
