"Stud Poetry" Critique

On the surface, Stud Poetry by Marko Niemi is a fun and interesting of presenting literature in the electronic medium. The idea of competing in a word based poker game against some of the world's most famous poets seems like a compelling challenge but ultimately the game makes little use of the words used but rather simply substitutes them for the numbers in the deck.



The way the game is played is simple. There are five players each of whom is initially dealt two cards. The players then bet or raise until each player has five cards, also, the players may fold at any point. Each of the cards has a word on it, as well as a suit of some kind. The goal is to have more matching words than the other players and then you win their money. I would also assume that it is possible to have a flush though it is not stated anywhere and it never happened in the multiple hand which I played. As far as I could tell there is no way that you could have a straight in this game.

As I have previously stated, the idea of this game is much more intriguing than the execution. One of the biggest problems I found was the lack of words. In total, there were eight words that I counted in the five hands I played. For a work that claims to be all about the power of words it doesn't seem to have a whole lot of variety, granted not every piece of work needs a great number of words but it seems to make the game feel repetitive. Even if there were 14 words to represent the 14 numbers/face cards in an actual deck it still would not seem enough.

Another gripe I had was with the ultimate goal of the game. The best hands you can get are hands comprised of the same word multiple times. While repeating the same word over and over again can be poetry it just felt like there should have been a different way to garner points that would be more in the spirit of the game. For example, maybe the goal would be to match types of words such as nouns, verbs or propositions and the rarity of said words could make it worth more in the deck. You could even have it so that the ultimate goal would be for the line to form a coherent thought, but that is just a suggestion.

Overeall, I really did like the idea of this particular piece of work and the introduction by the author really got me interested in playing around with it. I think it was that initial interest that caused me to be so dissapointed when I actually played.