FB Review

I’m going all-in, I’ll even throw in the pooch.  Today’s review is on Texas Hold’em Poker by Zynga Games.  The application is what we have come to expect from a big player like Zynga.  It is well built and thought out and the application performance in terms of seating players, timing, graphics, sounds etc. etc. is about as good as you can get with a non-client flash based application.  It is not quite on par with what you would see from commercial poker websites such as PartyPoker or Full-Tilt Poker but on the other hand those games have the advantage of being run on installed clients.   Texas Hold’em on Facebook would probably be more suitable to novice players, reason being is that its free poker and no actual real currency is being exchanged.  As a result game-play does suffer, you will see players being far more reckless then they would be had they been playing with real dollars.  This sometimes can be annoying as poker hands that would have been instantly folded in real money tables are seen all the way to the ‘river’ (the final card).  As one player succinctly put it “dude its free poker who really cares”.  Another worthwhile feature of the application is the tournaments that are offered to the players.   You can join a tournament at anytime, so long as you invite some friends.  I supposed Zynga did this to grow the application, but I found it a bit intrusive.   The game also includes leader boards, so you can see how bad your poker is compared to everyone else.  Poker buddies are friends who play poker and the application will try to place you into a table where one or more of your buddies are already playing (assuming there are open seats).   Texas Hold’em is also iPhone compatible and Zynga did a good job integrating it to that platform, the game runs smoothly albeit a bit sluggish if you aren’t using 3G.  Overall the application does provide great entertainment (assuming you like poker), but is more suitable for novices and beginners.  Experienced players will likely find the actual game-play torturous and would probably opt to play real money games in commercial poker providers.