While Texas Hold ‘em on the Xbox Live Arcade was free for a short time it was plagued with bugs. Mismatched cards and slow blind raking were problems. The new patch fixes these bugs and addresses gameplay issues to make the experience hopefully equal to a free PC poker game. Now you won’t have to wait until the big blind comes around to play, you can post the big blind right away and an auto boot mode kicks out people who leave their consoles on to prevent tournament cheating. The patch does come with a downside, the leaderboards are reset so enjoy gloating about your chip count until Wednesday comes around. What is missing from this patch is support for the Xbox Camera, which was supposed to be compatible with Texas Hold ‘em. That patch isn’t going to be ready until 2007. See a full list of changes past the break.
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.
