Customer Reviews

World Championship Poker Deluxe Series

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I recently purchased this game in the hopes of honing my skillset in reading hands and betting strategy. As a veteran of poker for almost 20 years, I'm always looking for new ways to practice. This game isn't up to par.

The AI is terrible. I have seen the computer go all-in on a 7 & 2 unsuited...and won. Likewise, any time that I have a descent hand, the computer folds like crazy. I'm almost afraid to get pocket aces as I am assured that no one will bet. The ability to purchase skillsets is interesting, but I don't see any advantage to it. All in all, the AI is not up to snuff, and leads me to bet understanding the betting patterns of the computer rather than on what an actual real life player would do.

The UI for the game is annoying to say the least. You automatically have to turn off animations as the game comes to a crawl. Likewise, every time a bet is made, the game rotates to view the player making the bet which takes forever. Walking the streets to me is time consuming and uninteresting.

The only thing good about this game is that it does expose the average player to many different poker varieties. Omaha, Stud, Hold-em. If you want to learn poker games, this could be a good place to start (or just buy a poker book and you may be better off).

Summary: Bafflingly bad interface and poor computer-player AI make this collection of poker games an unplayable mess.

Showing unmistakable signs of having been programmed by someone who has never played poker before, "World Championship Poker: Deluxe Series" suffers from so many flaws it's hard to know where to begin. It's hard to believe that anyone who knows poker was involved with this game at any stage -- certainly not with the game play, programming, or play-testing of the game.

Really, the game is a total mess. Play is slow. The character animations are repetitive and annoying (for example, virtually every hand played seems to end with the computer character pronouncing "Read 'em and weep!", even hands where, due to player folds, no cards are shown down. Weep indeed..) And critical information needed for understanding opponents' betting patterns is inexplicably absent (e.g.: fold a hand in hold'em or Omaha and the board cards are not displayed, only the resultant five-card hand formed by each remaining player. This latter behavior alone would be sufficient cause to reject the game but sadly it's just the tip of the iceberg.) Throw in a host of other bad interface decisions (e.g.: after every single hand the DS asks you whether you want to leave the game) and you will start to wonder whether the designers weren't just unfamiliar with the game of poker but were unfamiliar with the rudiments of game play in general. Seriously. It's THAT bad.

The computer's play is so awful I consider this game a potential hazard to beginning players trying to learn how to properly play the included poker variants. Habits which this game would reward would quickly bankrupt a player in a real-life card game.

I strongly recommend against purchasing this game. Not suitable even from the bargain bin. Choose another title instead.

I don't know what game Mr. M.D. Rutter was playing but, it couldn't have been this one. Not only are the graphics terrible, along with the above mentioned interface but, and this was the killer for me... on more than one hand, more than one player had the same cards. On one hand, three players, including myself, had 3 kings. This game is not for beginners, for intermediate, or for advanced players. This game isn't for anyone. If someone offers to pay you good money, to take this game off of their hands, DON'T DO IT!!!

I don't even know where to begin with this game. I VERY rarely give 1 star reviews to begin with, but this game doesn't even deserve that.

The pros:

-.....? None that I can think of

The cons:

-Slow game play

-To get to another casino you have to walk down a long road with lots of turns and it takes forever. Pointless!

-The description SAYS there are text instructions for every one of the games, but whether because of my own inability to find it or otherwise, I did not see any instructions. They were POSSIBLY in the manual, which I don't have (bought it used). But I had to look up the rules online. Not even worth it!

-Cheesy cheesy cheesy! The characters are irritating. I had to turn the animation off, but even that didn't eliminate it entirely. Every time a hand was over, if I didn't win one of the characters was sure to pipe up with some dumb comment. The description itself says, "Then you head to the table to confront a menagerie of old guys, cowboys, mullet-heads, bikers, young studs, babes, and little old ladies. In short, your usual Tuesday 2 a.m. crowd in Vegas. CPU-controlled characters tend to violate the number-one rule of poker by showing more emotion than a soap-opera vixen." Who wants to play poker with a bunch of characters who are more irritating than soap characters?! (Granny is the worst in my opinion, with the cowboy being second worst) I wish I had read that part of the description before I wasted my money. Shame on me.

And the most maddening thing of all:
-Twice I had a straight but lost the hand because it said I had "one pair" or "high card." TWICE!!! And believe me, I went over my hand 5 times to make sure I really did have a straight. Those are only the times that I lost because of it. It missed a couple other straights that I had but I won either because no one had better than a pair or because I was lucky enough to also be dealt something better that it actually DID recognize like a flush. I hate being cheated, and that's exactly what the game did.

I bought a poker game on my cell phone that was better than this one! That's just sad. Absolute waste of time and money. I really really hope that whoever reads this review takes it seriously, because it's a terrible game. If you don't mind a game that cheats, is slow, cheesy, and just overall flawed, then fine, buy the game. I'm sure there will be someone out there who enjoys it. But it's useless. If you know how to play poker, it's a waste of your time. If you're trying to learn poker and you use this as your tool to learn, don't! This game will NOT teach you how to play poker. You're better off just READING about poker games than you are playing this game.

I bought this for my Husband. He has been playing it more than any of the other games he has. He really likes it.

it is fun! lots of different card games not just poker which is nice different casinos to beat keep you busy for a while!

My 8 year old recently learned how to play poker & wanted us to play constantly....this game gave us a little break. He would play it all the time if he didn't have time limits for "gaming"

I've enjoyed this game, it's nice because you can link with other people. Pretty realistic.

Would be nice to be able to decide how many other players you want to play against. Too slow.

I recently ordered this game to work on hold em when I dont have a chance to play with. This game is slow paced and frustrating. I wish that they used more buttons to help with options like all in and folding. It does have a wide variety of card games. But, overall I did not enjoy this game and it will collect dust on my shelf.