Poker World Reviews

This game will NOT allow you to continue to play unless you spend “Chips” which must be won or purchased to buy stupid things like fake sunglasses, houses, and motorbikes. Even if you win every tournament, you will not have enough chips to continue playing unless you purchase them for outrageous prices. The more you play, the more expensive this game becomes. Further, you’ll find their algorithms provide you with about 70% straight and flush draws during an average tournament table while also providing your competition with an 85% likelihood of pocket pairs or two pairs per tournament. Further STILL, the algorithm isn’t sophisticated enough to enable computer generated players the opportunities for true poker finesse. Thus, they consistently lay traps for you until the river is played or they immediately go all in before the flop. This occurs with about an 89% rate of repetition per tournament. Garbage app.

So I play this game enough that I see glaring issues with it in every event game especially with the way the cards are dealt.
But the “enough is enough moment” went like this. I’m playing the biggest tournament in the first area. I make it to the final two (by folding everything that doesn’t include a king or ace which is an entirely different problem this game has btw) at that point I lost 17 hands in a row and was knocked out. It was insane. It was like the game wanted me to lose so I would have to pay actual real world money to buy more chips to try and play again.
There are several points where you realize this is the case. I believe this game is meant to take advantage of poker addicts and that it’s rigged for you to lose until you pay money. I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone especially someone who already struggles with making good decisions playing microtransaction games like this.

4.3 out of 5? Uh huh. The tournaments aren’t worth playing once you advance. You actually lose money in every tournament you play in no matter what place you take. If you come in scone or third you may as well not even play. Buy in for 40k. Third place gets 7k in a 16 person tournament. Ok. It’s all just a way to get you to buy chips. If the payouts were more realistic there’d be no reason for you to have to pay to keep playing in the tournaments so they keep the prize money low so you end up running out. I refuse to pay for more chips so I end up waiting 4 hours at a time to spin or play free heads up games. I’ve been beaten so many times when the computer only has 1 out, or to 4 card straits or a 4 card flush. It happens way too often in this game to be coincidence. You put your money in with the best hand and more often than not you’re losing. The only way to win these tournaments is to play extremely tight and only bet when you have the nuts. But then the screwed up blind system catches up with you and you’re basically done. Again all a way for them to keep your chips low so you buy more. Waste of time, don’t waste your money by paying.

The developers of this game is a thief. If you purchase any chips or other game items, beware because your purchase will not last long. Within a week or so of your purchase, the programmer will glitch your game, forcing you to reinstall it and purchase all of your purchases over again. It’s a nice scheme, I cannot believe it’s legal. I’ve reported this to Apple, so hopefully something will be done about it in the near future.

As for the game itself, it’s adequate. It was clearly created by a rookie developer, who does not really know what they are doing, let alone knows anything about Texas Hold ‘em. The one thing that a certain, and if they are robbing their customers blind.

In the Old West, cheating players out of their money would earn the cheater a bullet between the eyes. Not everything about the old west was bad.

I used to love PokerWorld and I played it all the time, until one day I opened PokerWorld and it immediately crashed and brought me back to my phone Home Screen. I've tried everything to try and make it not crash. Unfortunately nothing works that I've tried. I know the only way to play again is to uninstall and then reinstall PokerWorld , but then you lose all your progress in the game and have to completely start over. There hasn't been an update, atleast for iOS on PokerWorld in over a year. If they just fixed bugs and crashes, maybe more people would continue to play it. Highly disappointed. I suggest downloading governor of poker 2 offline. I've been playing that and have had no issues. Really sad that I can't enjoy poker world anymore. To anyone that downloads this don't ever shut your phone off while your mid poker tournament game. That's when it starts crashing all the time. Hope this helps others who are considering playing PokerWorld.

A smooth, entertaining offline poker game (albeit perhaps a bit strange algorithm design at some points) utterly ruined by blatant attempts of getting its players to pay real-world cash. The Ticket System in the game is a slap in the face to people who simply want a decent offline poker game.

There comes a point in the game where it quite literally does not let you play any more poker until you reach for your real world wallet. Once you win a tournament in a certain area, you can’t go back and play it to get more chips or even just play it for fun. On top of that hurdle, they also have areas that you cannot play without having a Ticket, and you can’t take on any bosses without completing the whole area. In short, the game is designed to draw you in for cash, just like 99% of all of these horrible excuses for mobile games nowadays. It’s completely pathetic. Whatever happened to Angry Birds and Plants Vs. Zombies, where you didn’t have to vigilantly wait for ads to pop up every time you do ANY ACTION on the game? It’s a slap in the face.

Loved it at first. Was cruising along, all of the sudden I lose 3 games in a row on unbelievably bad beats on the river and I have 900 chips left and the cheapest tournament I can play is 30,000. I refuse to spend any more real money, it’ll be a month before I can do enough daily challenges or watch 4 ads every 3 days before I can even play another tournament with hopes of getting at least second place to salvage some money. In what world do you lose money if you get 3rd? I mean seriously. The payouts are not nearly high enough compared to the buy in. A very obvious cash grab and it must be working well because they will not change it. I have now deleted the game in search of a more realistic and fair playing experience. P.S offer some type of exhibition or allow old tournaments to be played. Don’t want to shell out 30k in chips every time I feel like playing a game. Hopefully they fix it to stop the exodus of users. Until then I’m moving on.

This game is not only free but in a sense a subscription service game. Here’s why

1. The ticket system.
In each region, there will be at least one city where you must pay a ticket to play, not the chips you’ve won. Tickets are cash only items. The way the game is designed, if you win a city (get gold) you can not play the city again. So eventually you are stuck in a situation where you can’t play any poker game unless you buy a ticket from the cash shop.

The response from the company to that will be there is a free daily challenge system where if you win 10 games, you get a ticket for free. Fair enough. Here’s the catch: you need to wait 4 hours in between each game so even if you are playing on the dot, you can’t play a real poker game (daily challenge is 1:1, not a tournament style) for 40 hours.

The game is designed to get you stuck where you have to pay cash to play any more.

2. The ads. The unskippable, long, video ads before every single game. I understand they need to play ads because the game is offered “free” notwithstanding my point above. But the sheer amount of as on this thing was unbelievable. I did pay the money to get rid of the ads - that is before I got stuck in the situation mentioned above with the ticket and ads don’t matter anymore since I can’t play a game without paying more money.

Good game, but terrible cash cow design.

Only free for a little unless you like losing to ridiculous hands over and over. This game was honestly fun for a while. I am by no means a programmer nor am a math magician. I am however very intelligent and have advanced degrees and in doing so I studied statistical analysis. Without going into too much detail the game feels like many other poker games with micro transactions where you’ll play well for a while and then while you’re riding the “high”, they suddenly hit you hard. I picked this up while traveling around the holiday season and it was good for killing multiple hours connecting with flights etc. but once you start to do well in the first zone you seem to get trampled, what I assume is up until you make a transaction. Was playing normal for a while then I got to the first tournament without paying for anything with my real money, I stopped receiving strong hands or if I did, it was beat by the best possible hands. Demoralizing unless you’re completely willing to dumb your actual money into it.

I have spent hundreds of real money to play this game and will not spend another cent. WHYI have played PokerWorld for over two years without any problems. Played around the world numerous times. Lost a lot but also won a lot. I felt this was the most realistic packer app of all that are free for download. Now l only give this game two stars for its foremat, down from from almost a five star. Reason for; it crashes every time I start a new game and 80% of that time it takes my money without letting me play that game. It takes tickets away when you try to use them. The games screen now is like magnified and people’s chips overlaps faces, and three of the players I can’t even see. I have tried multiple times forfeiting my existing chips that I either won and or payed for as to reboot this game hopefully for better results. Still did not fix my problem. Don’t even get me started on the annoying advertising . ?

This game is well designed, and could be five stars - but it is clearly geared toward skimming money off the users. If you don’t want to constantly spend your real money for more chips etc, you will have to patiently use the ‘Spin’ and ‘Free Games’ features to build up cash - then expect to be beaten by your cartoon opponents making successful bad bets against your rational ones. You can also expect to frequently receive a ‘five-two’ (or similar) hand three times in a row and/or frequently be beaten by a flush or full-house that is one card better than yours. It’s annoying that the game doesnt produce an honest card distribution and result. If you can overlook that, then you might have some fun with this game. Is it really too much to ask to have a well-designed, honest play, Texas Hold Em App?

Like the other reviewers have said, this game has an algorithm that lets you win with crazy impossible long shots, but then you lose with them too. I’ve been playing B/M poker and online poker 20 years, and the number of 1 outers and runner-runners when you have the computer dead to rights is just silly. I understand apps are meant to make money, but I’d rather just pay $9.99 up front and have realistic odds. Instead I refuse pay a dime and just move on to other games until it will let me win again. (Also some of the tournaments are structured where if you fold the first 8 hands you’re blinded out which is just bonkers. But anyway...) So if you’re looking to pass time it’s a good game. But don’t think that you’re learning anything about realistic hand outcomes- for entertainment purposes only.

If you expect to play a poker simulator, this is NOT the game for you. If you just want to kill some time playing around with a poker game that you don’t expect too much from, this is okay. I haven’t spent a dime on this game and I’m glad. This game has up to 39, so far, cartoon characters that you play against. Remarkably they play aggressively and are extremely lucky - like going all in with a pair of threes before the flop against a pair of aces and surprisingly; snicker, snicker; hitting a third three. The probability of winning with pocket aces is 31.6% or about once three hands where you have pocket aces. I’ve had pocket aces numerous times and have yet to win a showdown with them and have only won twice going all in with them. The main point to this game is to make you watch commercials or pay for extra items, in other words, to make lots of money for the author.

There’s a lot of things to like about PokerWorld however, after a little while of me playing, PokerWorld crashes & doesn’t stop until I completely delete PokerWorld . The first time this happened (I had put real $$$ into it to earn more coins) I was in the middle of a game & PokerWorld crashed so I closed out PokerWorld & tried again. It opened up but 5 seconds after, it closes again. Since this kept happening I decided to delete PokerWorld then download it again and when I opened it up, everything was reset & I was back on square one so I lost all my money! I kept playing like usual then not too long after playing it, it crashed again. After deleting it again & re-downloading it, it happened AGAIN. This must be only happening to me because I’ve looked at reviews for this game & that’s never been mentioned.

I’ve been playing for a week. Very fun the first couple days. 2 main problems.
First, they try to get your money. If you lose a few tournaments (highly likely), you can’t go back and replay a tournament you’ve already won, and it takes virtual currency to enter most tournaments. It’s very tempting to drop actual money to get some VC to play tournaments.
Second, the goal is to increase your world ranking. I’ve already noticed that a head to head challenge is very difficult...it’s as if the AI can see my cards and/or knows what cards are coming up. Several times, the AI went all in with bad cards and then caught a straight or flush or 3 of a kind on the river. Like the AI doubled up on me 3 hands in a row via a river miracle.
So occasionally, the odds are stacked against the player, you lose VC, they try to get you to spend real money.
Very fun game if you don’t care about progressing and just want to play a hand of poker on the toilet every once in a while.

I appreciate that this poker app has tasteful, elegant graphics and photo-realistic avatars. However, after four months of play, I have come to the conclusion that this product does not (yet) employ fair game play algorithms nor random shuffle. For example, your simulated opponents will frequently go "all in" before the flop for hands they could not win without the turn or river. Low card and other junk hands that most players would fold become full house or straight draws that justify open bets. It is as though the outcome of each round is known and your simulated opponents bet accordingly. That is frustrating. Also tournaments seem rigged in your favor such that, unless you really botch your hands, you'll likely end up at the top so it's easier to advance to the next tournament. I hoped for an authentic experience in order to improve my betting game. If you just want to practice Texas Hold 'Em in a gorgeous environment and don't care strongly about authenticity, I would recommend PokerWorld. However I plan to look for another poker app that better simulates real game play.

Overall I enjoyed this game. Like every other game with in-app purchases there are aspects of it designed to make you spend some money while playing and I can accept that. A couple of those affect game play, but just like every other poker situation you have to learn to adapt in order to succeed. I’ll describe a couple of those -
1) the AI is very aggressive in its betting and bluffs way more than real world players
2) way more hands are played by the AI than should be
3) the AI is set up so that raises happen in succession by different players, requiring you to continuously call higher and higher bets in order to stay in the hand.

How do you handle these - the same way you do in a real world game. Good stack management practices. Recognizing the games betting trends. Developing a strategy and sticking to it. And most importantly being patient and not just betting because you’re bored. If you utilize these strategies then ultimately you’ll win all of the tournaments while spending as little as possible. If not, then just like the real world, you’ll end up spending more money than you intended too.

So, I’ve completed the entire globe. All but one. Re-played the ones I didn’t get gold trophies until I did. I spent $1 to not get ads. I think this is a great value! Yes, it can be frustrating in the beginning when you don’t have tickets. You earn them for free by playing the 2 player free portion every 4 hours until you hit the ticket. I literally have over 50 tickets now because at the highest levels it is $6 million buy in. I wish I could pay with tickets.
For $1 and many hours of entertainment, who can complain?! Here’s my question. I have the final tournament to win. Then what? Do I have to delete and start over or is there more beyond this with an update?

I loved playing this game until I could not go to next level and I had already complete all the spots but it kept saying finish previous spot well I looked several times there was no more spots so I installed it and I keep my progress I had played daily I was a good bit far in the game well when I reinstalled PokerWorld it kept wanting me to start at the beginning I emailed I know 10times or more they gave me every reason you can think of as to why I couldn’t get back to my level everything they ask me to do did now I can’t even get email back I suggest not getting PokerWorld there support system is not worth nothing

I enjoy this game. It’s well-designed and fun to play (there’s a big But coming…read on). I’m a seasoned player, do not mind losing fairly, and play this game on my iPad at least 1-2 hours every day as a side diversion while working at my desk. I’ve achieved the #3 ranked player in “the world,” and have (eventually) won tournaments on nearly all continents.

But after playing for a couple months now, and spending some $100 in Real Money for additional chips (the pleasure has been worth it to me), I’ll soon be letting my $20 million bank play out and move on.

The honest reason is simple: the “house” (in this case the developer) uses shills, in the form of cartoon players, who make completely unrealistic bets having only one obvious purpose: to separate you from your money. No reasonable player ever goes All-In with the absurd frequency of these toon bozos; no real player ever bluffs that much or that foolishly. After all, cartoon players have nothing to lose. The end result, with frequent annoyance, takes away from the true enjoyment of this game when you know you’re being cheated by the house.

For beginners, this is a good and fun way to learn Texas Holdem, with beautiful graphics. But if you expect fair rules in the long term, find another version of the game. (To the developer: this isn’t a decent way to make money, folks. Offer honest players an honest game, and you’ll have loyal users like me stay all-in for the long haul.)