Yahoo Texas Hold 'em Poker E3 2005 Impressions

The Texas hold 'em poker genre is badly overcrowded on mobile decks, but the current players at the table had better made room for a new entrant to the tournament. As part of a complete overhaul of its Web-based gaming service, Yahoo Games is about to unleash a fully connected, cross-platform version of its Texas hold 'em game for mobile phones. After seeing how well real-time multiplayer works between a PC and a phone, we think that this is the game that is going to put Yahoo Games on the mobile map.

Yahoo Games just retrofitted its online poker service to run on Flash instead of Java, which has allowed it to instantiate much higher production values and a brand-new avatar system, which supports tradable prizes and the like. Some of this polish is wearing off on the mobile offering. Yahoo Texas Hold 'em Poker can download those same avatars from Yahoo Games' servers, so you'll never be without your precious little character and his or her earned bling. It's also the only mobile hold 'em game we know about that allows for 10-player tables. We witnessed some play between a Sanyo 7400 and a PC, and it was pretty much seamless--the Web-based game didn't even indicate that the opponent was playing on a phone. The latency tips in at about 300ms, which is more than adequate for a multiplayer card game.

Yahoo Texas Hold 'em Poker is expected to go live on Sprint PCS on or around July 1, with a BREW version to follow. We'll conduct the full review of the game at that time.