With the monumental growth in poker’s popularity, it should come as no surprise that the number of titles for poker on Xbox and PS2 systems has grown as well. Sadly, most of the games tend to be somewhat one dimensional and offer just one type of game style, Texas Hold’em. However, for those that like to play something different than Hold’em, you might want to give World Championship Poker a try on either the PS2 or Xbox.
While most poker games offer you just Texas Hold’em, World Championship Poker offers you 12 different variants of poker. You can play Hold’em, Stud, Stud Hi-Lo, Razz, 2-7 Razz, Crazy Pineapple, and more. Games are split up into cash game and tournament format and for those of you that like to play six-handed tables, this game should be right up your alley as it defaults to six-handed play.
The only real drawback to the game is the offline AI. Don’t go into this game hoping to improve your overall poker game, unless you are planning on improving your aggression and punishing other players. In the basic mode, players make all types of horrid moves with bad cards. On the flip side, they do tend to sit on monster hands, costing you the minimum when you run into one.
Once you up the difficulty level a bit, you will find that the players tend to bet a little more realistically, but they still will slow play hands much more than they should and with some players, it will become painfully obvious as to their mode of play.
However, if you like to play online, World Championship Poker is great for online play. Like offline mode, you can play in cash games and in poker tournaments against players around the world. Since you are playing against live players, you can throw predictability out of the window and get to playing some serious poker.
For those looking for something other than Texas Hold’em in their poker gaming, World Championship Poker excels. If you are looking to learn new poker games like stud, this would be a good title to cut your teeth on and learn the basics. Considering that you can find this title for $20 or less at your local game store, this title is an inexpensive way to get your poker fix.
