Poker, namely Texas Hold-Em poker, has really taken off worldwide as of late, mainly thanks to the influx of TV attention. Hell, ESPN consider it a sport. Naturally, with this recent world wide obsession and its creation of 'arm chair poker experts' in the 20-something's male demographic everywhere also comes attention from the video game market. Oxygen Games have been a publisher known to target this market and this is not set to change any time soon with their recent release of World Championship Poker 2 for the PSP.

When you think about it, it's very hard for a video game based on such a proven and popular activity as poker to really fall short, as you don't exactly have to reinvent the wheel. This theory rings true for WCP 2 as it is basically a "what you see is what you get" type of game that doesn't try anything risky. With that said though, this game does feature quite a lot of depth and detail, which is perhaps best showcased by the amount of different poker variations you can play in this game - 15 to be exact, ranging from the obvious 'Texas Hold-Em' and '5 card draw', to lesser known games such as 'Pineapple' and 'Razz Ace to 5'.

These games play how you would expect them to if you are familiar with the rules, but don't fret if you're not, as the basic rules for any variant are available from the pause menu. The poker table environment is rendered in 3D, and each player including yourself (which is a character you can create before initially playing) is visible. This is a key part of the game as a "tell" system is present, where characters may show signs of their hand strength by their actions, which can range from subtle movements to, well, total amateur behavior.

For yourself, a mini-game is in place that requires you to use the analog stick on a gauge in a moving circle cut into three parts like a pie chart, representing "tell", "bluff" and "poker face". If you can keep the gauge in a specific area for long enough (usually only a few seconds), that is how your character acts towards the hand. This mini-game comes up in only special circumstances, such as when you play a strong hand conservatively, or when you play a weak hand aggressively.

Although this game does have online capabilities via the PSP's WiFi, I had trouble finding anyone else online to play with over the net so I was limited to offline play. Given this situation, I paid special attention to the AI that CPU players exhibit and it was ultimately impressive AI that felt quite authentic. The only qualms comes with the perhaps slight over emphasis on betting patterns by certain CPU characters, which can create some repetition and predictability, but overall the offline experience offers some great games of poker that I imagine will pose a challenge for just about everyone.

For those wanting more than just a pick up and play portable poker game (try saying that 10 times quickly), an offline career mode is included which itself doesn't offer many surprises but still contains nice depth. You can choose your next poker game via a world map which vary in type from the aforementioned 15 games quite regularly (and can sometimes include challenges from real pros), and to advance to the next week, conditions are usually specified, such as "win $100 in this game", or "come 3rd or better in this tournament". There is also a side attraction in pimping out your pad with the money you earn (which starts out as you mother's basement), and you can view your career profile at any time to see how you're doing, and what style of play you generally enlist to.

While the career mode is a great inclusion and definitely adds quite a lot to the gameplay, there is one rather large flaw we experienced, and this is the amount of time some games require before completion. When you watch Texas Hold-Em poker on TV for instance, you're not seeing every hand - what you're usually seeing is a cut down "highlights" version showing the more eventful hands with some less eventful ones thrown in to space them out. With that in mind, when you actually play poker in real life, you get to experience the patience and persistence required to stay alive that you may not see on the TV. Since WCP 2 is trying to be a real world poker sim, you get that same experience here.

So where am I going with this? Obviously, poker games you want to complete from start to finish just aren't ideally built for hand held gaming where battery life is a concern, and time limits may be in effect (such as a half hour train ride to work). This is fine in the "quick play" mode as you can quit at any time, but in "career" mode, you will definitely need to have some time on your hands as meeting the criteria for advancing to the next week can sometimes take hours - literally. In a game of what I think was 'Omaha Eight', despite playing for hours in an afternoon I actually had to put the PSP into suspend mode so I could pick up where I left off the next day. One sleep, recharge and lengthy retry later, I finally quit the game because the end simply wasn't anywhere in sight.

The negative impact of the occasional lengthy nature of poker games could have been negated by adding an in-game save option allowing you to span one game of poker across multiple power ups and downs for your PSP, but unfortunately this wasn't included. Another area that could have been improved to speed up career mode is the pace of the games themselves - the game renders each card being dealt, each character peeking at them, and then each character reacting by either calling or folding or whatever. This is nice to make the game feel somewhat authentic, but sometimes minutes can go by before you even get a chance to fold a crappy hand. It must be said though, that I generally found these time issues to be present in games other than Texas Hold-Em, which generally offers a much quicker and fast paced experience. Naturally, it isn't surprising to conclude that WCP 2 is built for Texas Hold-Em - probably the mostly popular poker variant in the world at the moment.

With career mode's occasional awkwardness aside, there are a few more minor negatives and these mainly relate to the technical side of things. First of all, load times are a bitch. I know this is not exactly rare with PSP games, but it almost seems every time you choose a menu option in this game there is a lengthy load screen waiting. Secondly, when you are in-game, the frame rate suffers with regularity producing quite a lot of jerky moments. In defense of both of these issues though, the load screens do feature handy poker tips to keep you from getting totally bored, and the frame rate is really not important at all in a poker game such as this, so they definitely are minor at worst.

To enhance some of the game's 'pick-up and play' appeal, also accessible from the main menu is a "mini game" mode, allowing you to play a few quick and simple games designed to test and expand your poker skills. These mini-games range from practical activities to trivia style questionnaires, testing your knowledge and understanding of hand strength's and poker in general. These are just the icing on the cake for what already was a pretty in-depth poker sim and definitely make good time wasters.

As mentioned previously, for a poker game to be bad, something would have to be terribly wrong as all you need to do is stick to what works. WCP 2 does this, but at the same time it also manages to add enhancements that make it more than just a mere 'pick-up and play' time waster. Whether you want some fun poker action on the go or a more in-depth and involved experience that captures the more advanced aspects, it's hard to go wrong with World Championship Poker 2 PSP. It could still use some fine tuning here and there and one could argue a lot of the game isn't ideal for PSP gaming, but most of the important things are done right in this game, and it shows.