I haven’t had a chance to give this one a good run through yet, but I’m making plans for the weekend.  Over Poker is a patented video poker game developed by Cryptologic with the promise that it will give the players more control over the cards and the hands they play.  Sounds good.  Of course your goal is the same as any poker game — get the highest ranking hand.  So your current video poker knowledge will work for you there.  A winning hand is a Jacks or Better hand, but the payout table is different from a traditional Jacks or Better game, apparently because the play of this game gives players an advantage and of course the goal is still for the house to win most of the time.

Over Poker involves playing different levels of hands, which I’ve written about before in Level Up poker, but the play here is different.  You are dealt two cards at the lowest level. After that cards are dealt one at a time and you have three options.  Hold. Discard. Shift.  Hold and Discard work as expected. Shift moves the card up to a higher level.  So, you can move cards upward in hopes of building a better hand at a higher level. But you do have to bet and complete hands at each level.  This could take some strategy.  This could be fun. 

Today, I’m just writing this introductory post explaining the game.  Because I want to take some time to play it and really learn how it works before I give an opinion on whether or not it’s a worthwhile game for video poker fans.  But it sounds promising, doesn’t it.