Stacked with Daniel Negreanu

From The Outset, Stacked feels pretty rudimentary. Character selection is a matter of fat/thin, white/black, man/woman, with fat women conspicuous by their absence from the MTV-inspired selection of 18 character types. We have the technology, and one of very few options being 'Cap/Cap on backwards/No cap' seems pretty shoddy. Where's my top hat? Moreover, Stacked only offers you one kind of poker; Texas Hold 'Em. There are plenty of games that offer you plenty more variety than that -most offer you a dozen variants. But Stacked is specific, and that's because it boasts university-programmed Al. Al that ain't all that hot.

Your guide, Daniel Negreanu, is on hand to offer advice at any time, and he's your finest insight into the game's Al, given that you rarely get to see the other players' hands. It all seems by-the-book and ploddingly sensible, but when it's not real money and you're playing robots, that's pretty dull. The super-advanced Al claims to learn your style of play, but after many outrageous bluffs, I was well ahead with no-one looking to call me. I'd even called my character Dr Bluff...

Stacked does have a fairly solid online multiplayer system, which is where you'll get your challenging play. But the menus are too awkward -selecting a betting amount is fiddly beyond reason - and there's too much competition out there for Stacked to distinguish itself as anything other than one of the ugly cliches from its own character selection menu.