Isn't it a quaint thought to remember back to last year, when a game like World Championship Poker could provide a fairly unassuming but playable game of console poker, and could be good simply by virtue of the fact that there weren't 12 billion other poker games available on the market? Yeah, well, those days are over. Marginal poker games are the new World War II first-person shooters, and you can't walk past a bargain bin in a game store without tripping over the spillage of middling card games for various platforms. But even with all that said, that doesn't mean that a poker game can't still deliver the goods when done right--it's just not done very often. World Championship Poker 2: Featuring Howard Lederer does just that. Despite a changing of the guard for the franchise to developer Point of View, the game bearing the Professor of Poker's name manages to improve in a number of key areas over its predecessor, not the least of which is in the realm of artificial intelligence. It's still got some presentational hurdles that you'll need to overcome to truly appreciate it, but in a year in which poker games became the most groanworthy trend in the industry, World Championship Poker 2 stands out as a diamond in the rough--if only comparatively.

As you might expect, World Championship Poker 2 is yet another poker game for your consoles, PC and PSP. But by Jove, this one's actually pretty good!

There's a bunch of games to play in World Championship Poker 2, including a multitude of draw and stud variations. But of course, like all modern poker games, Texas Hold 'em is the star of the show, and thus the game that has had the most focus put on it. But unlike a lot of other poker games, these other games of poker don't play completely broken because of that focus. You'll find quite intelligent players across the board in WCP 2. Opponents follow realistic betting patterns that fit certain personality types. You'll encounter specifically aggressive, tight, and midrange players, though none play precisely to type. Aggressive guys won't just go all-in on every hand. They'll pick their spots just like everybody else, and create completely believable betting styles. Computer opponents will check raise, fold good hands when they think they're beat, and even try to bluff you now and again. Certainly, the system has its flaws--you'll see questionable calls, and even more questionable raises in certain situations--but even with those issues, this is the most realistic-playing poker game out there. Sometimes, it's even a little too realistic.

While realism is something poker games seem to be eternally grasping at, there's something to be said for creating a game that snaps along at a brisker pace than your average card tournament. Artificially creating action via dumb bets and calls definitely isn't the right answer, but when you find yourself up against players this smart, it can be very, very difficult to get through any elimination match in a timely fashion, especially if you're playing in a limit game. No-limit games are, by nature, easier to knock people out of, since some moron can just go all-in with a pair of twos and be on his way to the nearest bar five minutes later. In limit games, it's tough to really milk large sums of chips out of opponents, unless you're in a rare situation in which all the players involved think they have a made hand. What this leads to is matchups in which you could find yourself playing in the same game for hours at a time. Maybe the answer is just to avoid such matches, but the game's career mode dishes out plenty of these limit games, so you'll have to deal with them eventually. It's not that they're not fun, but you'd better be willing to commit some time.

Computer players play any of the available games quite smartly. No more endless strings of checks and opponents you can bully to death.

If things like fancy AI and realistic pacing don't impress you, you might be swayed by a couple of unique mechanical spins on the game World Championship Poker 2 offers. For one, as you play through the game's career mode, you'll find yourself earning points you can use to upgrade your game. No, this isn't some insidious method of cheating. Basically, these are just subtle little things you can use to help measure the strength of your hand based on odds, detect specific tells in an opponent's game, and the like. It's all clever stuff, and it adds a cool dimension to the game you won't find elsewhere.

Slightly less inventive, but cool all the same, is the new tell/bluff system. World Poker Tour did something like this earlier this year, but not to the same extent. Basically, whenever the game feels like you've misplayed a hand or are generally doing something devious, a little circular meter pops up. In it are two notches, red and black, as well as a yellow icon you can move around. The circle starts spinning, and it's your goal to keep the yellow marker inside one of the other marks as the circle spins. If you pull it off, you'll either give off a stalwart poker face, or do some goofy theatrics to try and trick your opponent (depending on which marker you picked). Screw it up, and you'll do precisely the wrong reaction for the given situation, like, say, groaning loudly right as about you're about to bet big on a bluff, or act excited as you check to slow play a big hand.