Texas Hold'Em Patched News

This week's Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday brings an update to one of the most popular titles available on the service, Texas Hold'Em Poker.

Having listened to some of the complaints and feedback from the vocal community, a host of improvements and new features will feature in the update to speed up gameplay and eliminate cheating. As a result, the online multiplayer leaderboards will be reset to remove the inflated scores that are currently ruining the experience for others.

Features and improvements include:

• 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.

The update will be available for download from November 29th 08:00 (GMT). Xbox Live Vision support will also be included in a further update, planned for release sometime in early 2007.