In this second part of our in-depth review we'll look at the basic rules and game play of World Poker Tour. We often give this warning when reviewing games but in this case it's especially important to note that the software for the game we're reviewing is far from complete. It's only a snapshot of the state of development at the time we got our hands on it combined with some extra information from Keith Johnson at Stern about how things have changed. By the time you read this, the development will have continued and features could have been changed, added or deleted. We've highlighted those changes we expect to be made before the game goes into full production.
With that in mind, let's press the start button and pull back the plunger. Shooter Lane Awards 
| With the ball in the shooter lane, the three insert lamps cycle from top to bottom indicating the award you will receive when the ball reaches the kicker at the top of the lane. The award is only given when the ball actually arrives, not when it leaves the plunger so what you get depends on when and how hard you plunge. The awards are (top to bottom): Advanced Hold 'Em (sic, the spelling mistake will be corrected in production games): The next cards are dealt to your Hold 'Em hand on the playfield display. If you've just started and only have your two hole cards revealed, the three flop cards are dealt. If you've already got the flop, the turn card is dealt otherwise it's the river card. Mystery: This is a random points award and is quite substantial. It's between 1,000,000 and about 2,500,000 points. This will change to include a full range of feature awards for the production version. Skill Flip: You need to shoot the Lights Mystery hole on the upper playfield with your first shot for 1,000,000 points, rising by a million for each subsequent skill flip. You only get one of these awards when a new ball is served and not autolaunched. So you don't get it for ball saver relaunches or at the start of multiball for instance. Once you receive your chosen award the ball is kicked up through the enormous VUK and along a wireform to the upper playfield. It should land on the right mini-flipper for you to make the skill flip but on some games it went straight between the mini-flippers instead making a skill flip impossible. |
The upper playfield is a very bouncy place with lots of rubber down the sides making control of the ball challenging. The mini-flippers don't move up far enough to trap the ball but you can slow it down significantly by trying a trap. There are three things to shoot for on the upper playfield, all on the back wall. On the far left is the Light Mystery hole. This isn't the Mystery in the shooter lane but a different one called Cut The Cards at the left scoop. Shooting a ball in Light Mystery doesn't send it anywhere. It comes straight back out but registers a hit which is the main thing. The three white standup targets advance a hits counter shown on the main display. When it reaches three a countdown is started at the Ace In The Hole between the standups. The countdown starts at 1,000,000 and is collected by getting the ball in the Ace In The Hole. Hitting the standups again boosts the countdown value.
Ace In The Hole Multiball The Ace In The Hole function is described in the first part of this article but hitting the bars produces a display and vocal announcement of the number of further hits needed before the bars rise. Make those hits and the bars move up so the ball can be shot into the hole. If you lose the ball from the upper playfield the bars remain raised ready for you to get the ball back up there. 
Once you get the Ace In The Hole, the ball is trapped and another is autolaunched to the upper playfield. Because it's autolaunched, you don't get a shooter lane award. Your aim now is to hit the (now) captive ball. Again, you have to hit it a certain number of times as announced and shown on the display. When you complete this the captive ball is released and Ace In The Hole multiball begins. The jackpot shots are all down on the main playfield but you can add more balls to the multiball by relocking a ball in the Ace In The Hole. This autolaunches a third ball and you can keep hitting the bars to get all three balls in play. You can repeat this again to get up to four balls. Letting any ball get away from the upper playfield makes this harder to achieve but there's a generous ball saver that kicks in whenever a ball is autolaunched. So with judicious timing, it's sometimes a good tactic to let escaped balls drain, so the ball saver relaunches them straight back to the upper playfield. Do be careful doing this though as there is almost no grace period after the ball saver times out. Another way to keep your eye on the upper playfield is by using the two stage flipper buttons. You can trap a ball or two on the lower flippers and continue to flip the upper flippers independently. The locking of balls in the Ace In The Hole continues throughout multiball when you have fewer than four balls in play and it's possible to use it as a free ball saver if you get the timing right. Down on the main playfield the left and right ramps score jackpots which start at around 400,000 but can be boosted by collecting a lit X3 in one of the inlanes first. 
The left and right loop shots score sidepots which are much smaller values and appeared to boost the jackpot value but more importantly build towards a lit extra
ball at 10 side pots. Ace In The Hole multiball ends when you're down to one ball. No Limit Multiball While we're talking of multiballs, let's take a look at the regular multiball called No Limit multiball. 
This one's very straightforward to start. You shoot the Light Lock standup and lock is lit at both the left and right scoops. The standup is a tricky target to hit reliably and is usually scored by a kick off the right slingshot but it's not especially dangerous to shoot for from the right flipper because there's plenty of rubber in the area to prevent a left outlane drain. Hitting the target once lights lock for one ball. You need three hits to lock three balls to begin the first multiball but you can stack the lit locks and collect them at your convenience. After the first No Limit Multiball, things get a bit trickier. For the second multiball you still only need one hit per locked ball but only the right scoop is lit for locks. For the third multiball you need to hit the Light Lock target twice per locked ball. Hit it once and it flashes, hit it the second time to activate the lock. So the first multiball is fairly easy to start but it progressively gets harder which is just as it should be. In the multiball, the left ramp is initially lit for the base jackpot value but you can boost the jackpot by shooting the drop targets which stay down. Once you've collected the jackpot, the drop targets reset and you need to re-light the jackpot by completing a bank of drop targets. Completing the middle bank first lights 1x jackpot, completing right bank first lights 2x jackpot, but if you complete the left bank of drops first you light 3x jackpot. 
After re-lighting the jackpot, the drop targets reset again and return to adding to the jackpot. Don't forget, if you save your 3x scoring until you've got the left bank of targets down first, you can get a 9x jackpot and some seriously big points. Throughout all this, the loop shots score sidepot values and increase the count towards the extra ball at 10 sidepots. It's perfectly possible to combine these multiballs too, so if you're playing Ace In The Hole multiball and collect the lit locks you'll start No Limit multiball and get another ball autolaunched if that's possible along with its ball saver. Above all else, this is a game about poker so we'll move on to the two types of poker taking place on the main playfield. Two types▪ Yes, because although this is tagged as a Texas Hold 'Em game there's also another type of poker running alongside. We'll come to that in a moment but for now it time to play Hold 'Em. Texas Hold 'Em It's impossible to ignore the fourteen LED displays in the centre of the playfield and it's here that your Hold 'Em hand is dealt. 
Initially you just have the two hole cards on the left. Like in a real game, you have no control over what these cards are but your aim is to get the remaining five cards dealt to complete the hand. To do this you shoot either of the two ramps. The ball is held at the top of the ramp by a post while the next cards are dealt. If you've only got the two hole cards, the three flop cards are revealed and you get a comment by Mike or Vince about the possibilities for this hand. The ball is then released and play continues. The next time you shoot a ramp, the turn card is dealt and the third time gets you the river. When the river is displayed, the hand is complete and your best five cards flash to highlight your final hand. Now, there's something missing in this poker game and that is opponents. Without someone else's hand to beat, every hand you make is a winner and that's what happens here. No matter how bad your hand may seem, it's guaranteed to win. So if you win every time, what do you win▪ There's a points pot value that is reset at the beginning of each hand but you can build by shooting the spinners on the two loops. Repetitive loop shots really get the spinners flying and the pot build up nicely. But it's not that simple of course. You don't just get the pot value when you win. Your award depends on the winning hand you have and the better it is, the more points you get. The worst hand is a high card and that's so bad you only get half the pot when you win with it. Two of a kind gets you the full points pot value. Two pairs wins you double the pot and so on. So before you go thrashing those spinners to build the pot you need to consider whether the hand you have, or think you will have, makes it worth the effort and risk. You don't ever bet your existing points but you do bet your potential reward for completing the hand. On the whole, this approach makes more sense and keeps the game flowing while adding an element of gambling. There's something else you get from winning a Hold 'Em hand.  Below the LED displays is a ladder of WPT locations. You start the game at one of the bottom six places and when you win your first hand you complete that location and move on to another. The second place requires two winning hands to complete, the third, three hands etc. Completing the locations scores you 1,000,000 points for the first, 2,000,000 for the second and so on. Getting the second location also lights extra ball at the left scoop. When you collect one of the locations you also light Victory Laps at all six big red arrows for 100K points each, while the upper playfield scoop relights them all. If you collect another location, 150K gets added to the Victory Laps value, then 200K for the next one and so on. They extinguish when you lose the ball. When you have completed all six of the lower locations, you're ready to play at the WPT World Championship final. The WPT World Championship is a 4-ball multiball where the hand value starts at 250K, while each drop target adds 10K to the value. Every lower playfield shot scores a flop, turn, or river. After the river, you collect the current hand value along with the same multiplier used in the regular Hold 'Em game (x0.5 for a high card, x1 for a pair, x2 for two pairs etc). You need to score 10M points to win. The mode continues while you still have any balls in play, not when you're down to just one. If, however, you are still in multiball when you win, then all shots score 1M until you drain to one ball. If you thrash those spinners to build up your pot there's another payoff here too.
All-In Multiball Build the pot up to a certain level (750K the first time around) and All-In Multiball kicks off. This immediately finishes your current Hold 'Em hand and starts a three-ball multiball where the 100K jackpot builds by 1K per switch hit and can be collected at the inner four major shots (ramps and scoops). This multiball can also be stacked with other features and multipliers.
Poker Hands
We said earlier that there were two types of poker game and the second one is referred to as five card stud but it's a bit different to that. Here's how it works. 
| This ladder of inserts on the playfield shows the different poker hands you need to create starting with a single pair, two pairs, three of a kind etc., all the way up to royal flush at the top. Your aim is to produce these hands using the cards on the drop targets. As soon as one of the hands is created, the insert lights up and the drop targets are reset. Hands are completed from the bottom up and once you've made a hand, it cannot be made again. So if you've already made one pair, making it again doesn't do anything, leaving you free to carry on and get the second pair, three of a kind or whatever else you still need. It might sound difficult to shoot all these hands with just five cards but fortunately it doesn't quite work like that. You can keep shooting drops and collecting cards until you have all the cards you need to make the next hand. |
So, say you need a four of a kind. The only card with all four suits on the table is the king (an Elvis reference perhaps?) so you can keep knocking down drop targets quite freely but the moment you knock down that fourth king you've completed the hand and the drops all reset. Of course, in going for that 4 of a kind you're likely to make lots of other hands but provided you've already collected them it's no problem.  As you can see, it doesn't demand precision shooting but the point is, you'll save yourself a lot of time and risk if you can nail the right cards at the right time.
Poker Hand Multiball What you're trying to achieve is to collect all the different hands and when you finally do, you start Poker Hand Multiball. In poker hand multiball you need to complete banks of drop targets to score single, double, and triple jackpots (all of which can be tripled again with x3 scoring, of course). The catch is that the banks are on timers of about 20 seconds (the first time around) after which they reset. Completing a bank immediately scores either a single jackpot for the centre bank, a double for the right bank and a triple jackpot for the left bank of targets. Your aim is to collect a total of 9 jackpots during the multiball play. Your progress towards getting all 9 is shown on the poker hands inserts as well as the display and if you manage to collect 9, a roving super jackpot is lit on the big red arrows. The super jackpot value can be greatly boosted by getting more drop targets before collecting it. Once you do collect it, the process starts all over again.
Poker Corner When you complete a hand of Hold 'Em - that is, you reveal the river card - apart from winning points and possibly advancing your location, you also light Poker Corner at the right scoop. Poker Corner is a selection of six timed modes which are shown on inserts either side of the tournament locations on the playfield. At the time this game was reviewed they were still in development. There was little information on the display and one of the modes even had a different name to that printed on the insert so these details are liable to change. In all cases, the modes continue until the timer (initially set to 30 seconds) expires or you lose the ball. Steal The Blind - One of the big red arrows is lit. The remaining shots score small blinds while the lit arrow scores the big blind. You get some nice animations of a cartoon thief stealing stuff on the display. Spin A Card - This is actually called Play The Button and will be corrected on the production games. One shot's big red arrow is lit and scores big points. This is the button (the white disc passed around the table to indicate where play begins). The adjacent shots score smaller values but the closer to the right of the button, the more points they score. Know Your Outs - The "Out" is an undealt card that can improve your hand. Keep shooting the cards on the drop targets to collect points. Repeat this until the timer expires. A Chip And A Chair - The name for this mode comes from the oft repeated phrase on WPT that the only things you need to become the World Champion are a chip and a chair. The mode involved shooting the drop targets as quickly and as often as possible for points. When you hit them they reset immediately. Spot The Tell - The "Tell" is the reaction from other players to the cards they've been dealt and is thought to be a tell-tale sign of the cards they might be holding. This mode involves six faces of the other players on the display, corresponding to the six major shots. You have to study them, work out which is The Tell and shoot the corresponding shot. Get it wrong and you get a small "no tell" award. Get it right and you get the larger "tell spotted" bonus. The faces on the display may look rather familiar too. Change Gears - A poker phrase indicating how a player can alternate between aggressive and conservative play, it's also used here as a reference to The Getaway. The display shows the ball shooter and suggests you can move it up and down to change gears. The first time we saw this we were trying to wiggle the shooter rod to see if it really did move up and down. Of course it doesn't and what you need to do is make the indicated shots on either the upper or lower playfield. The lit shots alternate between the two playfields every seven seconds or so. Upper playfield shots can be scored repeatedly and quickly due to their proximity to the flippers. Lower playfield shots take longer, so score double.
Trophies and Poker Wizard
Each mode has a certain goal you need to achieve in order to "win" it. It obviously varies depending on the mode but will be shown on the display. When you reach the goal, you win the mode's trophy. This helps you in two ways - the more trophies you have, the more jackpots are worth in Poker Wizard (the poker corner wizard mode) and when you play modes a second time, if you had previously won the trophy the mode will score double.
Cut The Cards
The Cut The Cards mystery feature is lit at the left scoop at the start of the game and relit by shooting the "Light Mystery" hole at the top left of the upper playfield.  Unlike the shooter lane mystery, this one doesn't just award points. Among the selections are: advance Hold' Em, add bonus multipliers, award poker hand, light lock as well as small, medium and big points.
Scoring and Strategy
The average scores seem to have crept up slightly on WPT compared to previous games. A decent effort will net you around 100M and we can compare the various feature scores to that, to get an idea of their relative worth. Jackpots during multiball start around 400K but can be multiplied once relit up to x3 and then again by the 3x scoring from the inlanes if you make the shot quickly enough. That makes them very worthwhile, especially as their fairly easy to repeat a couple of times. Starting No Limits multiball can be tricky because of the difficulty in shooting the light lock standup but some careful nudging when the ball is bouncing between the slingshots should push it high enough to hit the light lock target. Completing a location is a Million Plus score while the individual hands vary depending on the cards dealt and the pot built, but in general they're certainly worth playing and collecting plus you get the victory laps afterwards to double the reward. Just think carefully about when you need to build that pot up and when you should let is slide. Poker hands build in value as you move up the ladder topping out at around the 500K mark. In practice, you collect many of these automatically as you play the game so only need to concern yourself when there are just a couple left to get. They'll normally be the royal flush and straight flush as you'd expect. It's attractive to keep the ball on the upper playfield as much as possible and keep shooting the Ace In The Hole. But you'll want to play your Hold 'Em games too so the right ramp is a good way to combine these two features as it deals the next cards and put the ball back up top.  As for the other awards, Chip Tricks are in the order of 100K-200K but collecting them all gives you Super Tricks of 400K+ which suddenly become quite lucrative as they're so easy to collect. Basically, roll through an inlane and shoot any of the three major shots on the opposite side of the playfield within a couple of seconds. Throw in 3x scoring and we're talking serious points. Don't choke though as you probably wont get a second chance before the 3x timer runs out. The bonus though, never becomes a significant part of your overall game score. Even if you use the standups above the pop bumpers to build your bonus multiplier, it still usually comes in well under 500K points. The bonus consists of a regular targets-hit based score and a small Sharpshooter bonus although it's not clear how that is scored.
Gameplay
In common with the last few Stern games, this is quite a bouncy playfield. In fact both playfields are quite lively and make ball control a little more tricky. In fact, the most surprising events in the game are when the bounce fails you and a ball heading for an outlane just sails straight down into the drain without any chance to use the expected bounce to save it. The upper playfield is just right with a well judged gap between the flippers to give you long enough up there without it becoming tedious or repetitive. It might be annoying to lose the ball when you just need one more hit to open the Ace In The Hole but that's tempered by the fact that you have a safe return to the right flipper. You might expect a great flowing game from Steve Ritchie but actually, out of the six lower playfield shots, four of them lead to ball traps. It's only the loops that allow you to get the speed up so it's much more like The Simpson Pinball Party than Terminator 3 in that regard. But I guess you could say that the drops are major shots too and they certainly don't trap the ball. These drops are much better than the old clunky style we've seen before on Stern games. They operate smoothly and most importantly for a game with so many, it's possible to roll the ball down the drops knocking several at once. Always a satisfying result.  The six real major shots themselves vary in difficulty. The loops seem easiest followed by the left scoop and then the ramps. The right scoop has quite a narrow entrance but that just makes nailing it all the more satisfying, especially when all four arrows are lit for lock, Spin-A-Card, Poker Corner and Chip Trick. World Poker Tour is a game of broad appeal. Beginners can enjoy just playing Hold 'Em and No Limits multiball and getting the Ace In The Hole, non-poker players can quickly pick up everything they need to know while more advanced players benefit
from the possibilities way beyond just collecting the first jackpot. It's great fun to play, there's lots to do and even more ways to do them. And that's what makes you come back again and again. ? Pinball News 2006 - The # 1 source for up-to-the-minute global pinball news !
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