Joker poker

The only games I've ever programed were text adventures I wrote in BASIC many moons ago on the Commodore 64. Essentially "Choose Your Own Adventure" books made electrons, they rarely offered the user more than two options, at least one of which would lead to a grisly demise. The closest these things got to number-crunching was in a karate sim I co-authored with my schoolfriend WD (now MIA), where a random number was secretly generated to determine if you passed your grading and rose to the next rank. As much fun as I had creating these corny quests, I was well aware of their shortcomings. They had zero replay value, so as soon as I'd convinced a pal to sit through the various in-jokes and insulting remarks whenever an incorrect option was chosen, it was deletion time.

Long story short: it's beyond my ability to write a decent computer game, but that doesn't stop me recognising when one's lame.

Which brings us to "World Poker Tour" on the Xbox. Initially, it seemed no different to the many Texas Hold 'Em Poker titles I've encountered, apart from the fact the competitors had groan-worthy names like Tim Buck II and Mandy Lifeboats. I had little trouble winning the satellites or super satellites, but the best I could manage in a tournament finale was second. (When it's only virtual money at stake, I tend to get impatient and take unnecessary risks.)

Eventually, I abandoned my customised character's lacklustre career and decided to give one of the pros a shot. I chose Evelyn "Evybabee" Ng for the simple reason that she's a hotty. Selecting a Quick Draw tourney against the WPT All-Stars, I was horrified to see, among my five opponents, a second, identically dressed Evelyn. "That's even worse than when Blogger says '1 comments'," thought I.

The lovely Ms Ng didn't triumph at that table, but my newfound contempt for "World Poker Tour" gave me an idea. I switched to Antonio "The Wizard" Esfandiari. That wasn't the idea - I just felt like a change. Again selecting a QD showdown against the pros, I went all-in on the first hand with crappy cards. The famous five folded and I won a small pot. In round two, I repeated the manoeuvre. And they folded. It took 11 hands before my bluff was successfully called with pocket aces. It didn't matter - by then, I was far enough in front to sustain the loss.

After 30 hands and as many all-ins, I'd won the tournament (having collected 24 pots and directly knocked out three opponents). Despite being on the highest difficulty level, the AI had spectacularly failed to detect that I was using the same strategy every single time and had to be fibbing my fundament off. Now, we all know that as your stack grows it becomes easier to bully, but surely even imitations of world-class players should have realised what was happening.

What a joke! Next time I want a challenge, I'll hunt down a C64 and that classic trial'n'error text adventure "Deadlands". I must have given a copy to someone...