Texas Hold 'em patched

By Tom Bramwell Published 29 November, 2006

Leaderboards reset, too.

Those of you pitching up on the hunt for a new Xbox Live Arcade game will have to go to sleep for another week - this week's "arcade action", we're told, is an update to Texas Hold 'em.

If you sign into the game after 8am GMT, you should find you're prompted to download the update automagically. You'll also discover that the leaderboards for the game have been reset.

"This update incorporates much of the feedback that we have heard from the community over the past couple of months," writes Xbox Live director of programming Major Nelson, who adds that early next year will see the team as Live Vision camera support, too.

Here's the full list of changes Microsoft says is being put in place this morning:

  • Game-play has been sped up.
  • Post the blind and play right away! - Players can now, if they wish, start playing immediately when joining a table by posting the big blind, rather than having to wait for the blind to come to them.
  • New 'Away' mode - Players can now set their status to 'Away'. Hands will be auto-folded and blinds auto-posted until the player returns.
  • New 'Auto-boot' mode - Players who continuously let the timer expire (more than three times in a game) will be booted from the table.
  • Faster overall pacing - Timers and messaging durations have been adjusted to speed up game-play among experienced players, but still allow novice players plenty of time to play.
  • Improved blind structure - Initial blinds, as well as blind increases, are now more proportional to table stakes, ensuring more meaningful increases during game-play.
  • Matchmaking improvements - Players are no longer matched into games they cannot afford.
  • Improved interface controls - Improvements to controls, such as increasing/decreasing stake amounts.
  • Leaderboard display - A player's full winnings and rank are now properly displayed.
  • Art and text improvements - Game art and spelling issues have been addressed.
  • Online exploits addressed - Certain known exploits that enabled cheating have been addressed. As a result, the online multi-player leaderboards will be reset to eliminate inflated scores as a result of these exploits.
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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (17) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Darren #1 5 years ago

    Nice that it's patched but you'll have to keep downloading the same patch if you update around ten more games after that as I found out when I played some old launch games over the weekend and they all prompted me to download patches. When I returned to later games like Gears of War and NFS Carbon, I was again prompted to update the games. I even had to redownload the Xbox emulator as well despite only having redownloaded it a few days before. Basically if Xbox Live is down and I decide to play Saints Row (in tear-free form) or some old Xbox games offline I won't be able to because these patches are cached rather than stored permanently on the hard drive unlike on the original Xbox. Crap really considering that these patches must surely only be a few megabytes each and the 360 has around 5-6 GB of HDD space reserved for system use.

    I emailed Microsoft and Major Nelson about it but so far only the Major has replied. He didn't deny it either and said that he'd pass my comments about making these updates permanent (stored in the save folders like on the Xbox) to the "team".

  • s33r #2 5 years ago

    does this sort the glitch with the every hand type achievement?

  • KineticOnline #3 5 years ago

    @s33r
    I emailed Tikgames about the achievement and they said there isnt anything wrong with it:

    First, under the program rules for Tik's Texas Hold 'em, the probability of achieving the "Luck of the Draw" is roughly equivalent your winning the Powerball lottery. The fact that the number of players reporting having achieved this is at odds with the probability of achieving such.

    Second, Tik's Texas Hold 'em is a joint venture between TikGames and Microsoft with regard to the Xbox 360. TikGames developers and Microsoft have examined this issue. To date they have not reported having found any issues with regard to this particular feature function. However, they have not reported to us recently with regard to "Luck of the Draw" so we cannot provide you with an immediate answer on this issue.

    Most probably, this problem appears because the cards combination is accounted as "got" only after more than one player has finished the hand with this combination (i.e. if you got a Royal Flush from the pocket cards and 3 table cards, went ALL IN, all other players FOLDed and you win this hand, this "Royal Flush" will not be accounted, this player finished the game early, before the showdown round. We have found this to be the case in most reported failures to achieve the "Luck of the Draw."
    Edited by 1 at 29/11/06 @ 09:28

  • rodpad #4 5 years ago

    Fantastic. Really happy they've sorted out the issues.

    I wonder if they've sorted out the hanging that happens sometimes. I've found it happens in really big games (ie $500,000 entry). Almost as if someone is somehow exploiting the game to make other's crash.

    Could just be a weird coincidence, but it does look very odd.

    But yeah, auto-boot on folding is SO welcome :)

  • PlugMonkey #5 5 years ago

    It's nice that they've fixed some of the issues (my favourite was that the game ran at the same speed offline whether I turned the animations off or not), but I still don't see the point of playing poker on Xbox Live when I can play on one of the hundreds of internet poker sites for real, actual money.

  • moggsy #6 5 years ago

    but I still don't see the point of playing poker on Xbox Live

    For fun?

  • trevd72 #7 5 years ago

    its is really good because of the rolling bank account.

    a quick question for you guys. i moved house so my adsl is not up so i took my hd to my brothers house and bought and played small arms...however when i got home it was only the demo....what has happened.

  • moggsy #8 5 years ago

    i moved house so my adsl is not up so i took my hd to my brothers house and bought and played small arms...however when i got home it was only the demo....what has happened.

    You bought it under your brothers Live account? Game purchases are tied to a particular Live account - doesn't matter which HD you download them onto.

  • kangarootoo #9 5 years ago

    @trevd72

    If you get yourself a memory card you can take your account with you (or simply recover it on your brother's system, saving the need for a memory card). Then if you buy stuff in future you can do so under your own account and it should be intact when you get home.

    Does XBLive keep a record of what you have purchased, so if you get a new 360 you can download all the same stuff again without paying twice. At first it seems obvious, but then if everyone else on the same 360 can use the paid for content (as is in fact the case) one account moved around could unlock content for numerous 360s. You would think MS would be aware of that as an exploit, so I'm not sure what restrictions are in place.

  • kangarootoo #10 5 years ago

    @trevd72

    Oops. Just read your post again. You did mention taking your HDD with you, so my talk of memory cards is bollox.

    Thats interesting. I would guess that you used your own account, as it was present on the HDD. I wonder if the potential exploit I was on about (or the protection against said exploit) might account for the issue.

    Perhaps the serial number of the 360 is logged in some way, and when it detected a different system to that on which the download was performed it set off alarm bells (sort of). I would give MS support a shout to get the facts.

  • penhalion #11 5 years ago

    Yep your 360 is locked to your account as each one has a unique serial number. You can take save games etc. to afriends house but, your live account will not work on their machine. You can have a new profile stored on their box though.

  • trevd72 #12 5 years ago

    bugger. i thought that logging in as me would allow the game to be played at home. why should it matter though. cheers i will talk to M$

  • Corben_Dallas #13 5 years ago

    Four Colour Deck Options?

  • NeoNichu #14 5 years ago

    @trevd72
    When purchasing a game on XBLA, you get two licenses for it, one is tied to the console it was bought on (not the hdd) and the other one is tied to your live account. To prevent people from sharing their live account offline and make a game playable on multiple consoles at the same time, you need to be signed in to live to make the account license work. The console license also works offline.

  • suicida #15 5 years ago

    @penhalion
    Thats not true. I have my profile stored on a memory card rather than the HDD and I can take my profile round my friends house, plug it into his 360 and play on Live no problems.

    Arcade games are locked to the console they were downloaded to. I know a few people who have had faulty consoles replaced and they can now only play the full versions of any arcade games if they are signed into Live. If they are offline they can only play the trial versions.
    Edited by 1 at 29/11/06 @ 18:07

  • CordableTuna #16 5 years ago

    Anyone tried this yet? Last night after the patch I couldn't find a single multiplayer game and no-one would join the games I made, which is very odd. Also, the stats were reset at one point, but came back later.

  • trevd72 #17 5 years ago

    turns out if you buy a load of xbla games and the 360 goes pear shaped then when it is returned fixed you can only play when attached to the net and only with the gamertag that purchased the game and the same goes for stuff bought on other 360 and brought home.....bullshit. they tend to give refunds if you push apparently then you need to set up a silver account with a new name then buy them through that to allow them to work without restrictions.