Play can be sped up after you fold so that you do not have to sit there doing nothing for long. However, when you’re in the game you’ll still spend a lot of time waiting for other players while hearing them utter the same few stock phrases over and over again. For a game that makes you spend so much time with the same people it really gave them very little to say.

If you just play it straight Stacked will help beginners pick up the basics of the game of poker and it does this well enough. However, if you’ve played your share of poker games before you’ll find that the game won’t be challenging enough for you. Play the game for a bit and you’ll learn that being consistently aggressive will have you winning more games than not. When you’re betting with play money and your opponent’s AI is exploitable, there’s not much reason to not play aggressively. This is not really a realistic recreation of live poker games, so hopefully the game doesn’t encourage any misguided players to run out to the nearest casino and quickly drop their rent money.

One of Stacked’s big selling points is the online play and the promise of regular tournaments against human opponents. I had a fair amount of trouble finding and connecting to games online, though, and the players who weren’t complaining about their experience with the game online were spending their time demonstrating their knowledge of rudimentary obscenities. Overall the online side of the game was a big disappointment and it’s hard to recommend the game to anyone primarily seeking an online experience.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 59%. If stacked wants to play with the big boys, it needs to bring more to the table.

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