Poker In The Media: Stacked With Daniel Negreanu

by Bodog Poker | Nov 25 2010

The lead-up to Kid Poker's own video game back in 2006 was pretty excruciating for those who liked the idea of a poker simulation where they'd get opponents worth training against, including simulations of Evelyn Ng, Erick Lindgren and Juan Carlos Mortensen. After a long, long wait, however, the final product was a flawed, if affable look at Texas Hold ‘Em poker and while it suffers no small number of flaws, the game's AI and learning curve makes it a passable way to learn the game. I found a copy at a used game store recently and picked it up out of curiosity, and here's what I observed in the afternoon I spent playing it.

The game's interface is, politely, a hot mess, with entire swaths of things that are upfront and center on most online poker sites hidden, including — and this genuinely baffled me — your hole cards. You have to click to view them in a slide-out menu and trying to figure out why any poker game would hide the players' cards from them is likely to give me a nosebleed, so I just accepted it. On top of that, information is constantly being hidden and shown to you at seemingly random times, with bets being nearly unreadable, and stack sizes for folded players disappearing entirely.

The pop-out menu is filled with things that are completely useless, including "smile" and "frown" functions. In a computer game. Where you're playing against the computer and simulated opponents. When thrown in alongside an abysmal betting system (it's hard to select an exact amount and for some stupid reason, the bet amounts doesn't include the calling amount, only your raise) and mislabeled games (a $2/4 game is actually a $4/8 game,) an incredible amount of frustration is generated.  The fact that I couldn't turn off the repetitive animation really ground my gears, as I'm used to a smoother online poker experience that's very tailored to my playing style, with an emphasis on the cards more than anything else.

However, this game does offer some really good bits, including Negreanu's take on the video lecture "poker school," which gives solid advice to amateurs even if more experienced players will generally find his advice non-offensive at best, particularly when it comes to talking about poker tells, something that seems outright useless unless you're planning to take your game into a casino or poker room sometime soon. Also, the in-game advice, frankly, tells newcomers to play far too loosely, no matter what their position and there's no explanation as to why Negreanu or the programmers believe you should play a certain way.

All of these complaints aside, the artificial intelligence in the game offers a genuine challenge for the player that knows their way around the table.  I was outbluffed and outplayed more than I'd care to admit in the middle-stakes games and the tournaments, while ridiculously fast in the levels, offer a great chance to get a look at how you should play.

Overall, if you can find this game used (it should be easy enough to do,) it's worth it as a training simulator, if not out-and-out poker game.

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