Sep 29, 2011
Best Poker on the PSP – Don’t Lose Out!
There’s no doubting the massive interest in Poker over the last few years in particular. Fortunately for PSP owners, there are some great poker titles available that will offer the opportunity to practice your poker skills even when you are on the move. Let’s take a look at the range of best Poker games for the PSP and identify the truly best of the best PSP poker games, and the ones to avoid! If you are a pokerjunkie or just a beginner, there’s a PSP Poker game for you here…
World Championship Poker
featuring Howard Lederer All In
Originally released in 2006, and re-released in 2008, All In was popular with poker players because it featured all the names they were familiar with, i.e. Howard Lederer, Annie Duke, Amir Vahidi, Greg Raymer, Paul Darden, Marcel Luske, Thomas Bihl, and Erin Ness. 
All In features a huge range of different poker games including favourites such as Texas Hold’em, Seven Card Stud Omaha and many more. Additionally there are Multi-Table Online Tournaments. and a Scenario Mode. Scenario mode is particularly useful for learning and improving your poker skills in gradually increasing difficulty.
We found that playing against the artificial players was quite rewarding and really seemed quite realistic. The only complaint we have is quite long loading times from the UMD, apart from this, “World Championship Poker featuring Howard Lederer All In” is a solid poker game on the PSP.
World Poker Tour
Also released in 2006, World Poker Tour achieved higher review scores than All In. It was very popular with regular poker players not least because it featured real World Poker Tour venues such as Commerce Casino and the Aviation Club with commentary by well known poker pundits Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten. The best liked feature though was being able to play against your poker favourites, such as Antonio “the Magician” Esfandiari and, Michael “the Grinder” Mizrachi, to name just two. Apparently these artificial players play just like their real world counterparts.
The most loved feature of World Poker Tour though has to be the solid online experience that allows you to play against anyone on your buddy list, complete with handy chat feature so you can trade insults! If your friends are beating you a little too often you can always dip into World Poker Tour’s included tutorials and pay heed to the games tracking system that analyses how you are playing!
World Poker Tour comes with 14 pre-set poker games, and you can even customise your own games! World Poker Tour is known as the best poker experience on the PSP, don’t miss it!
World Series of Poker:
Tournament of Champions
This 2006 version of World Series of Poker, Like World Poker Tour, is a highly regarded poker title for the PSP. Similar to how the Dirt3 racing franchise puts the player as a rookie starting a new racing career, so World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions puts new players into the Pro Circuit as a protégé of Chris “Jesus” Ferguson. Along the route to poker stardom, the player will play against many names that they will recognise from the pro circuit including Joseph Hachem, the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion. There’s also a chance to play against the one poker player that has probably had more hits on You Tube that any other – movie star Jennifer Tilly!
Online multiplayer works great, although the offline artificial intelligence has come in for some criticism. Still, for the chance to play against Jennifer Tilly, it has to be worth it!
World Series of Poker 2008:
Battle for the Bracelets
Two years after the release of Tournament of Champions, WSP 2008 Battle for the Bracelets was released to very mixed reviews. Some players found Battle for the Bracelets to be the best poker game available for the PSP, while other found it lacking in some areas. There are in excess of 30 top poker champions to challenge in many different games. We liked the poker tutorials complete with strategy clips from Phil Hellmuth and Phil “The Poker Brat” Hellmuth Jr.
Stacked
Featuring a detailed poker school rich with tips and strategies direct from expert Daniel Negreanu, Stacked is a popular PSP Poker game with poker fans. The main reason for this, and the thing that separates Stacked from the other games, is the adaptive learning artificial intelligence that it features. For this reason Stacked has been called the best single-player Texas Hold ‘em game available for the PSP. On the downside the interface is a little clunky, but if you can overlook that, you are in for a treat.
So there you have it, poker games for the PSP really are fantastic, and if you shop around you can get the best for next to nothing these days!
