The Special Olympics of Poker
With the wife still away down south volunteering in the Hurricane Katrina mess, it's sort of imperative to keep a phone line open at the house so she can call. Unfortunately, I live in the sticks, where DSL and cable internet access are nonexistent, so that pretty much means laying off the poker playing quite a bit.
That's a conundrum in and of itself, but especially lately. Having signed up to play in the PokerStars blogger tourney, and wanting to do well in it, I've been wanting to get some practice in a few multis, which I don't usually play. I prefer to stick to cash games or SNGs. Of course, it's kind of hard to play in one if I can't get online, so I thought I would do the next best thing and picked up a copy of the World Series of Poker video game for Xbox. Actually, given my druthers, I would have rather gotten Stacked, Daniel Negreanu' game, because I've heard of a lot of good things about it, namely that its AI learns your style of play and adopts a counter-strategy. But it's not out yet, so I figured the WSOP game would be a good substitute.
Unfortunately, it's not. This game's AI suffers from major brain damage. Raise 4xBB in the main event and just watch as six people call with such spectacular holdings as J4. In other words, it's just like playing an online play money game.
To make matters worse, it isn't really a simulation at all. For instance, during the course of one hand, I decided to pause the game and look at the tournament leader board, which shows the top eight or ten chip stacks, to see how I stood. I was sitting on a stack of $27,000 at the time, which was good enough for fifth place at that point, with first place somewhere around $29,000. When I returned to the game, that particular hand turned out to be a huge one for me, and I had increased my stack to $41,000. As soon as I raked the chips, I paused the game, eager to see my name at the top of the leader board, but I wasn't even on the list. Instead, first place had grown to $48,000 and the bottom stack on the list was $45,000. Oh yeah, that's realistic. The game was just manipulating the size of the chip stacks in order to make the game more challenging.
Okay, I know I sound a little nuts right now, complaining, in so many words, that "video game poker is rigged!" But that's not what I'm getting at. I'm just disappointed that this game isn't going to give me a realistic simulation for honing my skills. It should be plenty of fun for the casual poker player who wants to play pretendsies, but it is next to worthless for a serious player. It is most certainly not a poker tool, but instead Space Invaders with playing cards. If you're looking for a risk-free way to work on your game, you could do much better spending more money to get a copy of Wilson Turbo or DD Tournament Poker. Even though I don't think either of those provide very realistic play from your competition either, they're not quite as retarded as the WSOP game. Or you might want to wait until Stacked is released, assuming it lives up to the hype.
That's a conundrum in and of itself, but especially lately. Having signed up to play in the PokerStars blogger tourney, and wanting to do well in it, I've been wanting to get some practice in a few multis, which I don't usually play. I prefer to stick to cash games or SNGs. Of course, it's kind of hard to play in one if I can't get online, so I thought I would do the next best thing and picked up a copy of the World Series of Poker video game for Xbox. Actually, given my druthers, I would have rather gotten Stacked, Daniel Negreanu' game, because I've heard of a lot of good things about it, namely that its AI learns your style of play and adopts a counter-strategy. But it's not out yet, so I figured the WSOP game would be a good substitute.
Unfortunately, it's not. This game's AI suffers from major brain damage. Raise 4xBB in the main event and just watch as six people call with such spectacular holdings as J4. In other words, it's just like playing an online play money game.
To make matters worse, it isn't really a simulation at all. For instance, during the course of one hand, I decided to pause the game and look at the tournament leader board, which shows the top eight or ten chip stacks, to see how I stood. I was sitting on a stack of $27,000 at the time, which was good enough for fifth place at that point, with first place somewhere around $29,000. When I returned to the game, that particular hand turned out to be a huge one for me, and I had increased my stack to $41,000. As soon as I raked the chips, I paused the game, eager to see my name at the top of the leader board, but I wasn't even on the list. Instead, first place had grown to $48,000 and the bottom stack on the list was $45,000. Oh yeah, that's realistic. The game was just manipulating the size of the chip stacks in order to make the game more challenging.
Okay, I know I sound a little nuts right now, complaining, in so many words, that "video game poker is rigged!" But that's not what I'm getting at. I'm just disappointed that this game isn't going to give me a realistic simulation for honing my skills. It should be plenty of fun for the casual poker player who wants to play pretendsies, but it is next to worthless for a serious player. It is most certainly not a poker tool, but instead Space Invaders with playing cards. If you're looking for a risk-free way to work on your game, you could do much better spending more money to get a copy of Wilson Turbo or DD Tournament Poker. Even though I don't think either of those provide very realistic play from your competition either, they're not quite as retarded as the WSOP game. Or you might want to wait until Stacked is released, assuming it lives up to the hype.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home