PokerTH 1.1.2

I'm not a fan of Poker. It's not that I don't enjoy bluffing games. For example, I would happily play The Sheriff of Nottingham or Coup if there's enough brandy to fuel my Poker face engine. However, I could never remember all the hands and the idea of playing over real money never fit right with me, although If I were ever forced to enter a casino, I would go straight to a Poker table and avoid all the other chaff like the plague.

Considering the importance of feigning and reading others in this type of games, playing Poker on a digital platform is rather pointless if you ask me. That's because there's so much left to chance. I must admit though that the Texas Hold'em variant provides much more information and control than the regular five-card draw. Hence it's more suitable as a digital game and very popular as a consequence.

PokerTH is an open-source Texas Hold'em simulator. It can support up to ten players (human or AI). Local games can only be played against computer opponents. There's no hot-seat unfortunately. The AI emulates the strategy of a complete nincompoop. It goes all in when it gets flushes or other premium hands but flops instantly in case you decide to go all in first. It's relatively easy to game, and there are no difficulty settings, so playing against AI can go stale very quick. But you can organize local network games and also connect to an Internet server if that ever works out for you (in my case it didn't).

When setting up a multiplayer game, you will want to review the network game settings. There you can work out the starting cash, blinds, delay between hands and player timeout. You can personalize your avatar and also chose between two table graphics and card styles. Whatsmore you can set custom card-back images like I've done. You didn't think PokerTH comes with a Rainbow Dash SS Pony card-back, did you?

PokerTH goes way overboard to show you all you need to know. On the left side you have all the possible winning hands, and on the right, you get live percentages of getting any of them. This sort of removes the joy of figuring it out for yourself, but if you want, you can just ignore that tab or even hide it.

Final Thoughts

PokerTH is an adequate way to spend the last hours at the office and also beats Solitaire in this regard. Anyway, happy gaming and Hail Hydra!