Not only does it help train you to play like a pro, but it offers enough features to make it a worthwhile investment for the serious poker player.

World Class Poker with T.J. Cloutier is the latest game from Masque, a company with a long history of casino and poker tutorial software. They have published the World Series of Poker software for the last 12 years and the experience shows in this effective poker training game.



As far as poker players go, T.J. Cloutier is considered a legend, so he was definitely the right guy to go to for a game like this. He is responsible for all the tips in the game and you can definitely trust his advice. Some of his achievements include winning the same $10,000 buy-in tournament 3 years in a row, winning 59 major tournaments, and 36 final tables with 6 wins in World Series of Poker tournaments.



The game itself provides several modes of play from ring games to small and large tournaments. The player can choose to play Texas hold ‘em (limit and no limit), Omaha, 7 card stud, or 5 card draw. When playing hold ‘em, the player can receive tips from T.J. every hand that vary according to factors such as position at the table and stack size. The downside to this is that there are no tips available in games other than hold ‘em.



In addition to the hand-by-hand instruction, there is a separate quiz section that includes questions and tips to improve your game. After you answer each quiz question, a video clip of T.J. is played where he explains which answer he would have chosen and why. There is also an informative guide to probabilities and outs to read while you’re not playing.

During actual play, there are many useful features available. You can turn on an option that estimates the probability that you will win a given hand. Also, if you click on your hand you will get a list of percentages showing the likelihood that you will improve to certain hands. This feature will also display pot odds when appropriate to help you decide when to call a bet.



In tournaments, there is a useful and satisfying replay feature which allows you to replay the previous hand. During the replay, everyone’s hands are revealed and you can go through the hand step by step. If you’re a real spaz, there’s also a feature that lets you replay an entire tournament. Another nice touch is that the game lets you speed through a hand by right clicking the table. This is useful if you’ve folded your hand and want to get on to the next as soon as possible.

The game has over 2,000 players to play against including a virtual T.J. Cloutier and each player has their own AI. This is a nice touch and you can use it to your advantage by remembering the playing style of a player you’ve encountered before. Also, the players will occasionally make comments during the hands, but these don’t add much to the game.

In addition to monitoring the play of your opponents, you can monitor your own play through a feature that tracks your statistics. This tracks things such as hands played/won, flops seen, folds, calls, raises, etc.

Overall, this is a solid poker tutorial featuring multiple options to help someone improve their game. The game is pretty straightforward and doesn’t feature anything that’s very visually exciting, but the layout is clean and well done. The only major problem with this game is that it doesn’t devote the same amount of time to all the variations of poker, preferring to focus on Texas hold ‘em. Having said that, the coverage of hold ‘em strategy is impressive.

Basically, there is one question to answer if you are considering getting this game. Are you a poker player who is looking to get better? If the answer is no, then there is no reason to get this game. If the answer is yes, then your money would be well spent on this helpful and informative release.


Review by Adam Parker.