I’m not very good at poker.

Magmic Games’ Texas Hold ‘em King 2 didn’t help me with that, unfortunately, as the apparent randomness to the computer opponents makes it so hard to actually play that, honestly – I’ve never gotten past the first round.

Magmic would also have you think that poker is all about the private jet (with the numbers/call sign of “PLYR”) and briefcases of money.

But that’s neither here nor there, as you start off with a generous purse of an entire $500. Your initial opponents do as well, though they’ll start coming in with more random amounts (often around $1000) later in the game.

Your goal, for the first round, is to get enough money to go to the second round. You do that by playing hand after hand of poker until it’s just you and one opponent. Defeat that person, and you win.

My favorite bit was making fun of my opponents. I gave most of them nicknames. There was Kevin Nealon, Paulie Walnuts, Ice Queen, Nazi Doctor…

But it’s still a maddeningly frustrating game. No strategy other than just hand after hand of play, and for low stakes – you can’t play any of the other games until you get out of the “Casino Floor” area.

So I went back and played it again, while writing this review. Was there something I missed? Why do I keep playing this game on my Blackberry when there are other, more fun games to play?

Honestly – I don’t know. I think it’s something like that I feel like there’s something I’m missing, that I’m looking for coherence and an underlying pattern where there isn’t one. It could also be that the AI is ridiculously good – there isn’t any difficulty feature to it, so if that’s the case, it’s simply not a good game for anyone who isn’t already pretty darn good at Texas Hold ‘Em poker.

I read other reviews of the game – they all claimed about good AI. So it might just be my bad poker skills. Though they also show features I haven’t seen – so perhaps they have a different version than my free one. (I’ve got version 2.1.9 and no multiplayer options.)

Was the game worth it? It was free – I just had to download it. Was it worth free? Yeah, maybe, I guess. If you want something to play. But if you want to really play poker, then no – it’s probably not worth free.