Overview

Texas Hold’em Poker is an app that allows you to play poker, Texas Hold’em style against anyone who is on Facebook. There are 9 possible players to a table and you start with 100 chips. If you run out, you can buy 40 more points and go from there.

In a nutshell

If you want to play poker on Facebook, look no further.

Set-up

Set-up went smoothly.

Origin of App

Presidio Media, LLC

Where can I find this app?

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2389801228

Facebook Stats

152,000 total users as of 07/16/2007. Also, there are about 900-1000 people playing at any time, and that number seems to be growing.

Pros

Some of the fun things about this app (other than play Poker) are you have your Facebook profile picture above your name at the poker table, you’re ranked based on your chip count, and you can see the network people that you are playing with are from. You can even grab the chips in the middle of the table and toss them about. The countdown timer is efficient enough, but could use numbers to go along with the spiraling colors.

Cons

Up until the time of this review, there were only a few nit-picky cons about this app, but recently the gameplay has been excruciatingly slow. It takes a full minute or two to login, another minute to join a table, and then the gameplay itself isn’t exactly lightning fast either. Hopefully this slowdown is only temporary, or a fixable problem. A few features I would like to see incorporated are the ability to make your own table and invite others to your table, optimize the table screen – sometimes players’ cards cover their bets so you can’t see, or the cards cover the person’s profile picture, depending on which seat you’re in, and also there are a few glitches if you join a table mid-hand.

Update: As of 07/17/2007 there is an announcement at the top of the home screen addressing the slowness of the app. So at least they know there’s a problem.

The Final Verdict

Barring any connection issues, this is a pretty good app. The potential for this app is also very strong. Even now there is a ‘tournament’ tab on the home screen, and in the past day a couple new features were added, so the developers are clearly not going to sit still with this one.

Tournament Tab but no tournaments – maybe to come?

Can’t make your own table but you can join a table where your friends are playingChat box could be bigger – would like the option to see/close chat box

Sometimes the cards cover what the person did

Not obvious enough when it’s your turn – have to pay attention; could make the outline of ‘call’ ‘fold’ etc more noticable

Could be easier to join a table – sometimes already full, wish you could just double click to join

Table Info could be a more readable font

Didn’t carry over my winnings to next table – have to log out/ log back in to get it

Slidey bar should slide hole numbers, get rid of fractions

Glitches here and there – esp when joining mid-hand

Can’t add to your stack mid-turn

My cards suck!

Overall Rating

4/5