Stacked with Daniel Negreanu
 

Not sure how many of you have heard of this oft-delayed game that is supposed to have a killer AI (developed at University of Alberta) but I got an email today inviting me into the closed beta of the software. I'll let you all know what I think after I get it d/led and installed.

ditto.

also is out soon.

Sorry for the off topic post but...Robbie, I just realized you only live about a half hour away from me. My sister lives in London. Small world...

Edit:I live in St.Thomas btw.

I just registered with pkr.com, I'm a big fan of getting free stuff for beta testing. Looks like The Sims: Poker Night. :D

good deal, im with them too...

A video preview of the PKR site can be seen here for any of you who haven't yet visited the site

Glad you're liking what you've seen.

Any other questions let me know

Andy

Huh? You work for the site? If so i emailed you a while back, didnt hear anything back...

Ill PM you now

Yep - I work for PKR
Let me know your details and I will check the details you set up

Andy

To those who have not signed up for pkr.com yet and plan to, I am waiting to hear back from their affiliate department. Would appreciate if you'd wait for me to get a link.

Thanks.

My take on it, btw - it definitely looks interesting, but I wonder how it will play. I have to think after the novelty wears off, people will prefer a less fancy interface and faster action. I guess we'll see...

Personally, I think plenty of the low-level players will get caught up in the geewhiz graphics/animations, and end up playing even worse than usual.

And I intend to be there to take advantage. :D

Initial thoughts
 

My first reactions on Stacked...

Well, let's see here. It was nice and easy to skip through the plethora of intro videos. That's a plus. The interesting thing is, it launched in a window rather than fullscreen. That was suprising to me.

My first attempt at playing met with VERY minimal success. I checked out the online functionality but there were no other players so that didn't happen. Next up a I tried a quick play and it closed. bummer. I had company coming over so I gave up for the night.

I fired it up again today and started a 'Career' mode. Like most games, you need to progress through various levels to make it to the big games.

For the most part, the game is pretty cool. There's supposed to be an online tourney tonight that I'm going to try to get in to see how that works.

My biggest beef is the speed of the game. You can click on the logo to speed up the game during the deal. If you fold out of the hand, you can also click on the logo to speed finish the rest of the hand. However, when you stay in the hand, you have to play through at regular speed. Which is SLOW. I think if any dealer in real life moved as slow as the one in the game did, they'd be fired.

I haven't played enough yet to determine how good the AI is vs. other games such as WCP or WCP2. Well, that's not true, my cat has a better poker AI than WCP (the first, not the second).

The other thing I've found is that changing the resolution from 640x480 to 1024x768 didn't really seem to do anything. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or the way I'm interpreting (or perhaps MISinterpreting) the setting. Must play some more to figure that one out.

Good stuff Robb, keep us updated if you can. I wouldn't mind checking this game out if I here good things about it.

Well, they've extended the beta a bit. They also released a patch to deal with that sudden exiting. They *think* it has something to do with the specific protection they put on the released beta. I've upgraded and it hasn't booted me out yet. I'm hoping to play in one of the beta tourneys this weekend.

Quick update on


Phill "the unabomber" Laak, and his missus, Jennifer "the tits" Tilly, have both signed up as their pros, they will help with the graphics and artwork and be sponsored by them