  urlLink Donhoe Digital’s Tournament No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em is a poker program that is by far a much cheaper alternative than the Turbo Software by Wilson. The question is whether or not the program can act as a true replacement. To start off, the interface is just fine. You’re immediately presented with the choice on the program’s loading of a full screen game or a small window so one could multitask. While this choice doesn’t seem significant, this has been a major criticism of Wilson’s Turbo Software for years.
Once on the menu screen, you’re presented with two options- Tournament and Poker Night. I’ll get into Poker Night later; for now we shall venture into the Tournament option. Once Tournament is selected, the program has you create a profile that will track your poker career on the program. Don’t read too much into this- all it will do is show how much you’ve won from the tournaments you’ve played on the program versus the “cost” to enter these tournaments. You’ll be presented with a number of pre-designed tournaments, from a setting that emulates the most common type of home game tournaments, to common card room tournaments. It also includes a satellite and super satellite for the Big One, as well as the 2003 and 2004 Big One itself.
The best aspect of this program is hardly unique- it allows you to create a custom tournament with unique settings. I’ve used this option to create a tournament I planned on hosting/playing in for practice. Once playing, I advise you hit the options button and raise the AI to their hardest level. Even here the game is laughable in skill. Simply playing tight and raising on crap once in awhile will guarantee you money in any tournament, possibly even a win.
Not once was I check raised by this program. I’ve watched a number of AI’s go all in with 2 pair on the board, simply because their programming told them that they held two pair. The AI is also extremely tight- an especially weak aspect of the program since loose play is expected of early tournament play. Also, to make the game quicker, I suggest turning the AI Time Delay all the way down as well. Turn off that annoying background music as well. You’ll also be presented with a number of “cheat” options. These options, due to the weak nature of the AI, these options are rarely useful. Playing is easy enough, and I recommend learning the one touch keyboard shortcuts to quicken your game. Though I’ve accidentally told the computer to call things I shouldn’t have because of it, this is mere lack of attention on my part than a bad setup on the keyboard shortcut.
Since the program first on default 30 hands an hour (you can change this) you can take forever on a decision for a single hand, and it will still only register 2 minutes for that hand. There is no advice for your play- the only thing presented to you is your hand strength percentage. There is also a “slow motion for all-in” option that will show, just like on TV, the strength of each hand as the flop, turn, and river is dealt.
There is no advisor, no statistics presented for your play, no way to practice certain hands, and no practical way to see where your weaknesses in tournament is. Now onto the Poker Night feature! Poker Night is actually quite useful for me, so I have very little negative remarks on it. However, if you don’t plan on holding a home tournament or ever helping in holding one, then this feature is damned useless. It provides a counter on the image of a table that counts down until the next blind level, and will audibly count the last 5 seconds of the blind level to alert players. It will then show the new blind/ante level. It also show’s the next blind/ante level. If you programmed the tournament settings with rebuys or add-ons that stop at a certain level, the program will also track this. On top of this, once you designate buy in, house cut, and number of people, it will automatically calculate the payouts for the tournament.
You can also force it to pay a certain amount of spots, percentages, and dollar amount if need be. If it wasn’t for the Poker Night option, the program would be completely useless. In fact, if you aren’t in need of such a feature that I’m sure you could live without even if you were, this program is not for you. If you’re looking for something to seriously practice on or improve your play, then don’t bother with the program. It comes across as more of an amusement than a serious tool for a poker player. 
