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What you think of this game will depend very much on your attitude towards playing solitary card games. Personally, I've always felt that playing card games (or board games) on a computer was a poor second to playing against a 'real' opponent. This is especially true of a game like poker where the element of bluff is such an important part of the game.

The presentation of the game is quite slick; the screen display is a replica of the video poker arcade machine, with the five cards in the top half of the screen and the 'hold' buttons, betting information and your money displayed beneath that. The cards slide onto the screen from above, and there's quite a neat effect that gives the impression of the cards being turned over.

The inlay gives details of all the different types of winning hand and there's an on-screen table of betting odds that can be called up.

The weakness of the game is that you're really just playing on your own. All the computer does is to deal the cards and keep track of your money; there's no attempt to use the computer as any sort of 'intelligent' opponent, so you're reduced to just deciding which cards to hold on to. You can't bluff your opponent because there's no opponent to bluff (There goes my Cool Hand Luke impersonation), and as you make your one and only bet before you see any of the cards you can't even risk losing your shirt on an inspired (or insane) series of 'raises' and 'calls'.

There are five skill levels provided, but the only effect they seem to have is to load the pack against you, which is an easy way around the need to provide a computerised opponent.

Visually this is one of the better implementations of a card game that I've seen on the Spectrum, but until someone can program the machine to play poker like Edward G. Robinson I'll stick to the real thing.