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Why don't people play poker any more? There was a time when everybody used to sit in dimly-lit halls, trying not to let any emotion show on their faces as they held their cards closely. Then came TV, and people could sit in dimly-lit halls, with no emotion on their faces, watching the "Wogan" show instead.

But, every so often, someone seems to produce a poker game for various computer formats, usually with stripping women involved somewhere. This is exactly what we have here.

Apparently, the "newspaper", the Daily Sport, has got involved with Emotional Pictures to produce Covergirl Poker. The major pulling power of the game is the line-up of 'Daily Sport' "stunnas" who have put their names (and, er, other bits) to this game. Famous girls like Amanda Godden, Trine Michelson and someone called Jane make an appearance, although no-one in the CF office seems ever to have heard of any of them.

The thing is, if you're the sort of person who wants to play this game, you'll know exactly who all these gorgeous, pouting girls are. You'll probably even have seen reproduced images of their breasts, too.

Right. The game itself is pretty straightforward. You get given $2500 to gamble with, as does the female opponent of your choice. At the bottom of the screen, you see your cards. At the top, there's a small mono picture of the girl you have chosen. At this stage, she's fully (albeit bizarrely) clothed. One girl wears a Santa outfit, another a sort of doily thing, while a third parades in an American Football kit.

What you must do is decide how good your hand is, whether to swap some or all of your cards, and how much you should bet. You obviously have to win as much as you can per hand. If you reach zero cash, it's game over. If your opponent reaches zero cash, her fully-clad picture is replaced by one with her top off.

And that's it. The girls strip until you can see their, er, chests (nothing more). But the game is written so that the more money you win, the harder it is to keep winning. It's a kind of balance.

The poker bit isn't badly done. In fact, it's actually easier to beat than a load of human players. The pack seems to get shuffled after every hand, though, which makes predicting the cards impossible. But do you really want to spend up to 15.99 on an okay game with some crap graphics of some busty models? If you are that keen to see them, the paper is cheaper (and the picture quality is better).

We think the C64 world can get by perfectly well without such software. We also think it's just a mediocre poker game (the sort you would expect to find on a compilation), with some poor black and white graphics. If you still want to buy it, fair enough. But don't write in to us asking for pokes.

1. Easy to understand (if you know the rules of poker).
2. And it has got most of the features that you'd expect to find in real poker.

1. The game is weighted unfairly so you can't keep winning.
2. Just a simple poker game underneath it all.
3. The computer seems to deal you random cards, so you could get the same ones in adjacent hands.
4. The graphics are pretty dire.
5. Would you really want to see them even if they weren't?
6. Not joystick supported. You have to keep hitting various keys.
7. The rules aren't explained very well for beginners in the manual.