Product Review: Apple's Texas Hold 'em app

When you get to know me, you find out that I love poker. I like to watch it on TV. I like to read about it as much as I can and as you can see, I like to write about it as well.

My pokering adventures have been pretty meh to losing lately. There is something wrong there. My letter to the poker gods has yet to be answered. We are 2 weeks and a half weeks away from Vegas and I can't wait.

One of the ways I keep my mind on poker is to maximize my opportunities to play. Besides being a poker degenerate, I'm also a geek. I've had my iPhone since a few weeks after it was introduced. The first app I ever paid for was Apple's Texas Hold 'em app.

This app runs for $4.99, not exactly the most I've ever paid for software but I'm a guy that doesn't like to part with his money easily.

One of the first things I noticed about this game was really how well done the graphics were. This app looks very good. At right is the vertical view of the game. You get movie view of human players and this isn't just the cardboard standee version like Swank or Party Poker. These players come to life and look like movie based animation. Very nice.
Turning the phone horizontal reveals a look and feel we only players should be used to.

It actually looks to me to be much more intuitive than many of the online site software.

Most of the tournaments built into the game are 2 table games. You start in the Garage playing a freeroll single table SNG, but after winning a few, you move up to the bigger games. These are all 2 table SNGs.

The problem is, there are more like a shootout sng then a true 18 person sng. Once you beat the first table, you advance to the next table only taking a portion of your stack. This seemed odd to me.

The bots play is pretty horrible. It seems to me that each character in play has a built in style. Some players seem to be looser and others are very aggressive. These traits do seem to follow the avatars around. But don't expect much. It's truly donkey bad poker.

One thing I've never been able to try with this game is the multi-player version. If you are on a wi-fi network with someone else with an eye phone, you can play them live. This would definitely make this game much more interesting.

All in all, I do like this game. It's really not good for your game and playing these bots will probably make me dumber over time, but it's only $5.

I can now play poker in the can or in an extremely long boring meeting held in a lecture hall.

Have you played this? Are there any simulated poker games you've found that are fun to play? You still think the Crackberries are cool? Let me know!