World Series of Poker-WSOP provides fast-paced, high-quality poker fun (review)

While there are tons of casino & poker games available in the Play Store, there are only a few that can provide a quality gaming experience nearly every time. One such option is World Series of Poker – WSOP by the developer Playtika. You may be a fairly experience digital poker player, or you may be a newbie looking for a good entry into this gaming land without getting burnt. Let’s take a tour of this game to see just how it works.

Setup

Setup couldn’t be easier; simply download from the Play Store. Upon downloading, you’re shown several options; though, at the beginning, only the “Play Now” option will likely be available. This takes you right to a live table ready to buy-in on the next hand. As you gain experience (and digital money), other options will become available in the form of tournaments with varying locations, purses, and buy-in levels. It should go without saying that Las Vegas is the biggest tournament you can enter (and the most costly, with a buy-in of $2.6 billion dollars…yes, billion).

Gameplay

One of the highlights of WSOP is the “clean” gameplay. I know that’s quite the term, but it might just be the best one for describing the experience of this game. Upon entering a game or tournament, you appear at a poker table with a varying amount of other players already there (people jump in and jump out, but it’s not as random or as quick as other poker games, in my opinion). You are asked to wait until the next hand to play (duh), and then, you are dealt in. Most people play Texas Hold-Em, but Omaha (where you are dealt four cards in lieu of two) is an option as well.

Upon deal-in, you should be paying attention because, for the most part, other
players certainly are. The gameplay is brisk, and you’ll find little waiting-around for your next turn on any given hand. To me as a reviewer, this is a great thing. I’m the type that gets bored easily, and there is little in this gaming world worse than being stuck in a poker game where the other players are taking the maximum amount of time possible to make their decisions coupled with an annoying amount of lag from the game itself.

WSOP suffers from neither of these. Your fellow players are generally pretty quick on the draw, and the game is excellent (a term I don’t use lightly in my reviews) with it’s speed and consistency. Rarely will you encounter any kind of lag from the game (at least in my experience across multiple WiFi and cellular networks and devices).

In game, you are positioned at the bottom of the table (and therefore the bottom of the screen). There, you can see your cards and your play options. These depend of the stage of the hand, but generally vary between fold, check/fold, check, call X amount of dollars, bet, or call-any. You can pre-select an option so that when your turn comes up the game automatically grabs your selection and moves to the next player.

If you choose to wait until your turn, then there is a timer that burns around your avatar quickly counting down to zero. You need to make a selection or upon hitting zero you are hereto folded. The beginning game tables usually start out at a lower minimum bet, but quickly climb as your digital experience and wealth grows. It doesn’t seem to take much to find yourself at a $20,000 table.

Visuals/Sound

If I had to ding the game anywhere, it would be here, but only because I have to. The visuals could probably use a slight refresh as the screen can get a tad busy as times with small text and lots of things often flashing around. Perhaps an overhaul to larger texts and more rigid text locations would help with this. The overall color scheme is a rather cooling blue, which is nice.

One more niggle is the amount of splash pages you’ll encounter from time to time touting all kinds of bonus chips, money, and such. This is particularly the case if you sign up for an account tied to your Facebook. I simply do not trust this so I can’t speak to the consequences of doing it, but I can only guess that your Facebook page would start to show quite a few gaming app ads. No thanks.

Sound is good, but that’s because it’s pretty muted (which is a good thing). There are standard sound effect for card dealing, button presses, and money movement, but it’s nothing revolutionary and generally keeps to the background. I personally play with the sound off and don’t feel I’m missing anything in terms of experience.

 Overall

I can only recommend World Series of Poker-WSOP and do so wholeheartedly. If you can get past the splash pages (which are part of most gaming apps), I’m sure you’ll enjoy the look, feel, and speed of this option.

Download World Series of Poker-WSOP from the Play Store here.