Most poker games I’ve played have horrible AI. This game does several things a lot better than in the other games that I’ve played. For instance, in another poker game that I’ve played, if you wanted a call then all you would have to do is go all-in, not so in this game. They behave much more like they really should. Using the odds to help, they will fold when it’s not worth it to chase or when they don’t have a realistic chance at winning the pot. Of course though, they will also bluff and play with junk to try and take the pot from you. Although sometimes it seems like they know just when to play the junk to catch a big hand. It seems like it might cheat sometimes, but maybe it just seems that way.

There are a few modes to choose from. If you just want to play just for the fun of it then you can choose Quick Play which allows you to set up a quick ring game or you can customize your own tournament. The real game though lies in Career Mode where you can play in the World Series. It allows you to create your own player, though not quite as in depth as some create-a-player features, you can still come up with a decent look. You have 10 years to play with in your career and 26 different events in each of those years. The events consist of Limit, No-Limit, and Pot Limit Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi-Low, 7 Card Stud, Stud Hi-Low, and Razz. Of course one of these is the No-Limit Hold’em Main Event. You can try and collect as many bracelets as possible from winning these, and winning just one is pretty dang tough itself. Also, there are invitational tournaments in which you play one table with only the pros. Winning these will unlock a special chip and also let you play in the next invitational. The chips can also be won by doing other stuff, such as making a certain hand, knocking out more than one person at once, or by knocking a pro out. Knocking the pros out will also unlock them so you can use them. You don’t gain any kind of advantage by using them, it’s just for looks. So with 26 different bracelets and 100 special poker chips for you to collect there is plenty to do. But the thing is, I got pretty bored with trying to do this stuff. If you want to get all of the stuff then you’ll definitely need the 10 years, but it’s just not interesting enough to go through that much just for the sake of completing everything.

Another thing that bothered me was that, while you can fast-forward through hands you’re not in, you can’t do this with Omaha. I don’t know why they decided that you could do it with any other type of game except this, but it’s really stupid and thus, you’ll tend to avoid Omaha more. If it were a real game with real people then you would want to see what the others did, but since the computers don’t give off tells and stuff there is no point.