Wordking Poker is a brilliant combination of two of America's favorite parlor pastimes, and is--dare we say it?--better than either one. In Wordking, you use Scrabble tiles in several poker settings and bet on your hand at intervals. You can play the fairly standard games of hold 'em, seven-card stud, and five-card draw, all the while flexing your left-brain literacy skills. The game's extensive dictionary won't let down word lovers, who will find ample challenge in the game's higher-difficulty settings. A compelling game with lots of replayability, Wordking should supplant traditional poker on the national circuit. It also should be regarded as one of the best mobile games to date.
In any of Wordking's variations, you're dealt two or more random Scrabble cards. Each card bears a single letter, along with the point score with which that letter is associated. These correspond to the typical Scrabble point values, which are inversely proportional to the frequency with which the associated letters are used in English words. Your goal is to manipulate the letters available to you, both in your hand and in the community card area (if applicable), to create long and complex words. The player with the highest value wins the hand. The player who bets high and wins, wins big. This amalgam of parlor games is greater than the sum of its parts.
For many people, poker is plenty entertaining. With each hand, a psychological drama unfolds. You learn which of your friends keep cool under duress, and which ones telegraph their intentions as fast as you can call their bluffs. Plus, poker is a great excuse to drink, which many people appreciate. However, if you strip away poker's lore and its cultural significance, you've got a game that's essentially about raw probabilities. Not everyone can appreciate a cunning gambit for a full house.
In contrast, the value of a rare word is apparent to everyone. When, in a game of Texas Hold'em, the community cards are all vowels, and a human or artificial-intelligence player still manages to get a seven-letter word like "moineau," it's universally impressive. In "insane" difficulty, the AI opponents will drop any pretense that they aren't calling upon vast dictionary files, and will come up with amazing words. Unfortunately, the game lacks online play, but you can play against up to five opponents, either by passing one phone around or by playing against computer-controlled players.
Wordking is presented in a very appealing way on the Nokia 6600. Its cards look like Scrabble tiles from the front and poker cards from the back, blurring the distinction between the two games. The game takes place on a round poker table, lined with the usual green felt. A ring of gold surrounds the surface, glistening with the fortunes that can be won or lost, depending on your spelling and betting choices.
An authentic-sounding ragtime piano tune plays over the splash screen and menus, hearkening back to the Roaring-Twenties heyday of poker. During the game, you'll hear chips being placed every time a player bets.
Scrabble fans are probably already clicking their "buy" buttons, but poker aficionados are probably a harder sell. To clarify, Wordking encompasses all the psychological warfare of poker but adds an additional challenge. Now, success is contingent on your intuition, your memory, your knowledge of probability, and your vocabulary. Overall, this makes for a much more challenging and rewarding experience than Scrabble or poker alone. The use of letter tiles makes Wordking Poker much more a game of skill than a game of chance.
The parlor-game channel is one of the most competitive on most download decks. On current handset technology, it's much easier to make a decent game of cards than of a fun shooter. Wordking Poker is absolutely the best parlor or word game to appear on a wireless phone at this point, and it will prove endlessly entertaining to just about anyone. If you can get this game on your handset, don't hesitate.
