Is the AI on that any better than GOP (harder than playing in one of the tournaments in on of the outermost towns)? I've played the flash version and thought it was much easier, maybe because you only play against 4 players in the free version.
there are at least two versions of poker superstars, II and III, not to mention the demo version vs. the full version of each. personally i only played the full versions. that is, my point is, AI might vary between the four versions.
i always thought the AI in the PS series was a bit better than the GOP series. for one thing, it had to be, because in the beginning rounds you are part of a six-player table versus GOP where most tournaments are 27 players in size, rewarding the top five players. in PS, the further you go the tighter the fields become- from six to four to head-to-head. if the logic was the same as in GOP then the tournament would be too easy IMO. but the game itself is also intrinsically harder because the hurdles are higher- in the four-player table you must finish in the top two over the course of two rounds, and in the head-to-heads you play three rounds and must win to advance, of course. once you're out, the tournament is done, whereas in GOP you just lick your wounds and re-enter on your quest to take over all of texas.
of course GOP does have that five-player room, the cash game, in which you can use your property assets as markers. that might be the closest format to the PS series, but again, it shows me that the GOP AI is a bit easier when i compare them head-to-head. although the
format is quite difficult because you only start with 3-4 big blinds in assets IIRC.
GOP is perfect or near-perfect in many ways- the top-down view with the hats cleverly placed to avoid showing faces is a stroke of genius IMO; the economic property-management aspect is another one; the creation of a quest a great idea. it's just such a fun poker experience. the problem for me is that it's too easy to make money in the tournament system, although the same could be said for online tournaments due to the number of novices that play them.
example:
when i have somewhere between 20-40 BB's i play a lot of hands, even if they are crappy, and wait to see what the flop brings. 95%+ of the time someone will start betting heavy-ish and i simply get out of the way. but occasionally i'll be in with something silly like 2-4 and a 3-5 will come down in the flop, which gives me an almost 40% to hit my straight if i can see the river. well, those hands can be worth absorbing some medium bets on, because by playing a random crappy hand like 2-4, nobody is going to put me on a straight. typically someone will be in the betting with an ace and a good kicker / other pair and can't imagine that the ace that comes on the turn or the river actually kills them and makes my hand, so they'll tend to go all-in in which case i gladly agree to take all their money. hitting this or a variety of other possibilities when you're in the 20-40 BB range practically guarantees you money in the tournament format.
by comparison, when you get down to around 10 BB's or less there is a high sense of urgency and you want to actively look for that situation to go all in on. or when you get down to four BB's, you have to go all in on pretty-much anything because you can't afford to be bled any further by the blinds and can't afford to win nothing but a tiny pot.
anyway, the thing that i like about PS is the much higher level of pressure than GOP- not only due to the tournament setup, but because the IA itself puts a lot more pressure on you with the regular massive raises and all-ins. it forces you onto the razors edge, making you evaluate all the components of the situation, thus honing your decision-making. but if your goal in poker is simply to play it as a computer passtime, this may not be important- it's moreso something that will help if you plan to one day play live / online for real money.
basically, GOP helps teach you certain areas, like how to act on position and how to titrate your assets and betting, as i exampled above, while PS will concentrate on some other areas, like how to read styles and bluffs and deal with pressure.
damn, that was a long post.
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