poker

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Phillips scales back its TV business.

The District of Columbia is aiming to legalize and tax online poker.

Google is about to shut down Google Video once and for all.

Google also is funding research to teach computers how to feel regret.

The sequel to Uncharted will have direct integration with Facebook and YouTube.

Samsung may be selling off its hard-drive business.

Several founders of the three largest Internet poker companies doing business in the U.S. have been arrested as part of an indictment that includes charges of bank fraud, money laundering, and other online gambling-related offenses, the U.S. Attorney's office said today.

The three offshore companies--PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker--are accused of circumventing a 2006 U.S. law that prohibits financial institutions from handling transactions for online gambling sites. Prosecutors say they allegedly tricked U.S. banks and credit card issuers into processing billions of dollars in transactions that appeared to be legitimate sales on hundreds … Read more

Editors' take: There are few things better than a good game of no-limit Texas Hold'em. One of them is a free game of no-limit Texas Hold'em. Heads Up: Hold'em HD for the iPad is a surprisingly polished title that offers 1-versus-1 competition (more would be nice, obviously, but beggars can't be choosers) against the CPU or a friend--someone you can hand your iPad to when it's his turn, or someone who has his own iPad or iPod. (Heads Up supports wireless play via Bluetooth.)

Poker is more popular than ever, thanks to both interactive online games involving real poker players and good old video poker games that let you kill time while you sharpen your playing skills. Poker 2010 is the latter, a basic video poker game with a built-in slideshow to add some visual appeal. While you can install your own pictures, it comes with a "vintage" photo set featuring risqué black-and-white images from the 1950s that probably won't be to everyone's taste.

This poker game sports a colorful but low-resolution interface. Depictions of the various winning hands … Read more

NowStat Texas Holdem Poker is a simple but strange game of five-card draw. Its basic play and easy opponents make it a great game for new players, but it might disappoint experienced card handlers. Unless, of course, they're Jessica Simpson fans.

The program's interface is simple to operate but very odd to view. There's a nice poker tutorial that runs through the rules, and all the command buttons were easy to understand. However, the game's theme is based on the "Dukes of Hazzard" movie and features one of the film's stars, Jessica Simpson, … Read more

Choose your hottie opponent and play a hand of Virtual Strip Poker with her. As you play, your sexy opponent teases you while wearing slinky lingerie. You're allowed to cheat and to try to get her drunk, but she'll try to make you lose by getting you "virtually drunk," too.

The free version of Virtual Strip Poker offers only one opponent, so we chose her. "Jill" was listed as "hard to beat," and that she was. We kept getting bad hands, and Jill lost not a stitch of clothing. The instructions explain … Read more

Enter the high-stakes world of poker with 3C's Texas Holdem Poker. With a simple layout and challenging options, this is a great tool for learning and perfecting your poker game.

This program impressed us with its flexibility, offering great options for experts and casual poker players alike. The interface resembles a poker table, with a comfortable and familiar layout. All commands were simple to control. We were able to easily select our bets, call, hold, and fold our hands during a game. The program's built-in opponents were intelligent but not impossible to compete with. There was nothing spectacular … Read more

Poker Mania offers a single game of draw poker, but leaves a lot to be desired. While it was easy to pick up, we quickly grew bored with the program's lack of variety.

Even though we are not regular poker players, we felt instantly at home with this simple interface. The program's onscreen instructions were great and the Help file's list of winning hands clarified a lot. Poker has countless variations and we were expecting to find at least a few to choose from. Instead, we were quickly disappointed to find that the program only consisted of … Read more

This free, poker-inspired toolbar is one of the blandest we've seen. It fails to offer users even the most basic of toolbar features.

Mega-Poker.Net Toolbar offers a plain user interface that stretches across your browser window. A large button with what appears to be the toolbar name (you'll need a magnifying glass to read it), features a drop-down menu with options to customize the interface. But don't get too excited; you can only change the toolbar color or remove the default buttons that you don't want. You can't add your favorite applications or gadgets, … Read more