500 Points

Texas Hold ‘em Tournament is the first poker game that has been developed as a WiiWare title. Brought to you by Digital Leisure Inc., this No-Limits Texas Hold ‘em game should satisfy all the poker-heads and maths boffins alike. Considerably cheaper than other poker games for the Wii, how does this little fella hold up?

In the last decade, we’ve seen the popularity of Texas Hold ‘em poker explode with televised cash games increasing and professional poker players almost classed as celebrities in their own right. With fairly simple rules, the game’s attraction is its balance of skill and luck.

Most card games rely on an element of luck. Some more than others. With No Limit Texas Hold ‘em (no limit on what you bet), psychology can often play an unrecognised part of the game.

This game supports your Mii avatars which is very cool. For those who don’t know how to play, I’ll go through the rules as concise as I can. Incidentally, the game does include a rules section so new-comers need not worry.

Players are dealt two cards each, these are their Hold Cards which only they know what they are. Little Blind and Big Blind are positioned left of the dealer and must post mandatory bets to start the pot off. Player after Big Blind goes first.

Moves in poker are Check (do nothing, only if no-one has made a bet), Bet (make a bet), Call (to match someone’s bet), Raise (increase a bet made by someone else) and Fold (declare yourself out).

This first round of bets sees who’s in and who’s not. After everyone has called or folded, three community cards are dealt out. These are faced up and can be used by anyone. The aim of the game is to have the best hand using 5 cards; you must used both your hold cards. These three cards are called the Flop. Once the Flop’s been dealt, there’s another round of betting.

After this round of betting, we see another community card. This fourth card is called the Turn. We then have another round of bets, which is followed by the fifth and final community card, called the River. The last round of bets takes place before everyone who’s still in shows their cards. The winner is declared and a new round begins. The nominated dealer shifts one to the left and so do the blinds.

Now, I can tell you the hands you can get, but there’s not much point in that. The game has a list (in order of best to worst) in the tutorial section, and me including one here won’t make the review any better. Suffice to say that the less likely you are to hit a hand (probability-wise) the better it is.

Texas Hold ‘em Tournament lets  you play offline against the computer, and online against friends and gamers around the world. Playing against the A.I. is a polarising experience. They don’t seem to play with any logic at times; calling and raising when they have absolutely nothing.

I suppose it must be near impossible to simulate the thought and reaction process of an intermediate/advanced poker player. At times it can be too easy playing the computer as long as you know you have the Nuts (the best possible hand at any one time). If you know you have it, you can sometimes get the A.I. to call some ridiculously hopeless bets. Other times, they will call with nothing and hit some stupidly low cards and beat you.

More often than not, it’s impossible to make a computer player fold. But then again, we don’t play poker games to try and beat the A.I., we play to play other people. The only reasons to play offline are to unlock some clothing for your character to wear at the table and to build up money; although that last reason will only appeal to hoarders.

There are five different tournaments to choose from, each with different buy-ins (how much it costs to enter) and cash prizes.

Playing other people online is where it’s at. Up to six of you can play at a table with a tab of several facial expressions and gestures that you can perform at the bottom of the screen.

An annoyance that occurs now and again is failing to start a game properly. Sometimes, when the game has found five other players to join you in a game, it crashes and you can’t do anything. When (not “if”) this happens, you will have to resort to pressing the home button on the wii-mote and reset the software. I don’t know what causes this; most likely it’s server-related but if it doesn’t get sorted out at any point, we’ll have to stick with this make-shift solution.

I’ve noticed when players get eliminated and their avatar remains on the table; if they’re sat left of the dealer, they get “dealt” in even though they’re out. No money physically gets moved to the pot but it means if everyone apart from the Big Blind folds, they don’t actually win anything as Little Blind wasn’t technically there. There’s also the error of paying Big Blind twice in a row, which is very frustrating. If that sounded like drivel, trust me, it’s a couple of examples of bad-programming.

Another thing is when eliminated players remain and then quit mid-way through a hand, it forces the game to re-deal. Good if you have 2, 7 off-suit, but very annoying if you’ve been dealt pocket kings.

Aesthetically, I don’t like the way eliminated players just float up out of view. If the developers had put more effort into it, a more sensible approach would have been them getting up and walking off. Also, there’s limited choice when it comes to personalising your Mii. With only a few tops and bottoms, it feels half baked.

As with all online poker clients, expect people going all-in with nothing; thinking they can bluff/chase their way to something. As patience as you may be, this can still be annoying as they are basically “giving”their chips to someone else, especially if all this is happening in the early rounds – this creates a massive chip-difference between players which maybe they don’t deserve.

At the time of writing, there’s about 13,000 people on the leaderboard. How many of those belong to people with more than one account, who knows. I shouldn’t think many as the point is surely to get as much money with the one. Hopefully, with time, this number will go up as it seems ridiculously low for a cheap poker game.

I think it’s good that there’s no text input in this game as it’ll only just get filled with a succession of lower-case Zs. Children and idiots do this, but the yawning gesture is a fairly similar alternative for people with short attention spans. It used to annoy me at first but now I make sure I only acknowledge the stupidity of their wishful thinking. Also, I may take extra long if they think there’s any kind of a point to them doing it over and over again.
You can almost use it to gauge how much poker experience a player may have. There will always be people out there whose only experience of poker is what they see on TV and play-chips poker clients on their PCs. Having said that, I’m not saying everyone who “yawns” are rubbish.

The automatic upping of the blinds every three minutes gives every game a relatively quick pace. When Big Blinds reach 12,800 chips, you’re guaranteed a winner will be declared soon enough, but rarely does a game reach this point. I’d say an average game may last between 10-15 minutes.

The audio of the game is simple, much like its premise. There is an announcer that introduces every game, but personally, I wouldn’t like it if the dealer spoke. I always turn off unnecessary sounds with my poker clients so this is perfect. Background music consists of ambient casino noises which aren’t too loud.

I can think of several improvements that could have been made to Texas Hold ‘Em Tournament. More choice with items of clothing and more appropriate gestures to use in-game. For example, nod your head, shake your head, clap your hands and maybe an “ouch” gesture. The yawning one is asking to be overused by immature people.

You can enter your friends’ codes and play them online. If you want a poker game that does what it should, this is close enough. 500 points is very decent and if you’re any good, you’ll be wanting to see yourself on the leaderboard. Everyone make way, Trev [UK]™ is on the path of domination.

In conclusion, for what you’re paying, this is quite worth it. 500 points is peanuts compared to the other poker games you can buy for the Wii. For such a simple format, I’m surprised no-one has made an excellent poker game yet. There always seems to be some faults that prevent them from scoring higher with reviewers. If you want a Texas Hold ‘em poker game that you can play other people online with, this is it. There are a few annoyances but again, for 500 points, this plain and simple title deserves a go.

+ Play people online
+ Online leaderboard
+ Cheap game
+ Lots of replay value

- Occasional server problems (and a couple of bugs)
- Could do with more items of clothing to personalise with
- A.I. is relatively predictable
- Some pointless emotes

Score – 7.5/10 6/10

[Score has been revised to better reflect the game's performance. Unfortunately, due to the bugs found in-game and poor programming, patience is pushed to the limit. Crashes causing you to lose money/progress in a multi-round table is very frustrating. For such a simple card game, Digital Leisure Inc. has really let us down. Maybe you shouldn't call yourselves that.]

[UPDATE]
In a recent email response, Digital Leisure Inc. has confirmed that the latest update for the game should resolve the fail-to-start-game issue. All European gamers must download this update as crashes can still occur without it. Read more about this here. Therefore, I think it’s fair to raise the score of this game slightly. However, you can do that in the comfort of your own heads as I’m not editing the score again!