Card games are a cornerstone of gaming, and far from being history, are still played today. Poker is still a popular card game, and its variants are played either casually or professionally the world over. PokerTH is a free and open-source emulation of this card game and a rather well-done one.

The specific variant of poker this game emulates is "Texas Hold'em". In this style of poker, each player is dealt two cards while the table starts with three cards, and over the course of four turns (hands), the rest of the cards are revealed (up to a max of 5 cards on the table). In the versions of this game where betting (chips and/or money) is involved, the players can bet increasing amounts to bluff the other players into folding (quitting) out of the game. The goal is to be the player whose final hand (your two cards plus three of the cards on the table) is the best one out of all the other hands by the other players. In the variants of this game with gambling involved, a loss is incurred by running out of gambling chips, money, or both.

Like classic five-card draw poker, Texas Hold'em makes use of the standard 52-card deck, minus the two extra Joker cards. It retains the 2-10 cards, the Ace cards, and the face cards. Players can only have the winning hand if they have the highest score combination of winning cards at the end of the four hands. These can range from a mere two pair to the Royal Flush. While real-world games are limited to how many people can get around a table and the amounts of cards in the deck, this computerized version supports from 2 to 10 players.

Graphically, this is a simple game. Using a stock green card table backdrop and a stylized suit of playing cards, that's as much as is shown aside from user interface information showing the remaining money held by each player. Unfortunately, the only negative aspect to note is that the interface scales very little, so games between a large number of players will have small fonts and card graphics.

Sounds and music are deliberately minimalistic. Aside from the noises of bets and cards, there is little else. Given this is how a real-world card game would play out, that is entirely satisfactory for the intended experience.

This game is heavily mouse-driven. There are no tutorials; this game presumes some basic knowledge of poker on startup. With that in mind, the controls are very simple, with clearly marked buttons for raising bets, calling bets, checking (not betting), and folding, respectively.

This game supports playing against artificial opponents or human players. The former can be played alone, with the latter requiring at least one player to set up a server in the networking menu for other players to join. I found this system to work entirely satisfactorily, and there is a dedicated Discord supported by the developers for support if need be for setup.

PokerTH has native builds for Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android. It is a free and open-source game, so it can be compiled to possibly run on other environments as well.

Morally, there is really only one major concern. This game does simulate gambling. While no real money is being gambled, it still does simulate the loss and gain of money like would be done for a real game of this sort. If anyone has a real-world gambling problem, we advise avoiding this game lest it be a temptation of any kind.

If you want a Texas Hold'em game to play and don't have real-world friends (or simply want to play them online if you do), this will do nicely. Technically, it's mostly fine aside from the small user interface elements. Morally, it does simulate gambling. Overall, it simulates a variant of poker very well and is recommended if you are a Texas Hold'em fan.