Are you a big-time high roller, or just addicted to poker? Maybe you’re into more elite games of chance like baccarat or the like? With a few different flavors of poker along with a sampling of other bet-based games, Sega Casino gives you the opportunity to feel like you’re losing your money wherever you go, without actually doing so.

Games of Chance

In Sega Casino you start out with very little; basically no money and access only to five basic games like blackjack, roulette, and Texas hold ‘em. On top of that, in each of these games you have access only to the most low-brow and low-stakes tables. But, with some success at these games you’ll earn some cash, and then things start to get more interesting.

As your overall winnings increase you’ll earn access to more games and higher risk tables for the games you already have access to. New games like keno and seven card stud open up, giving you more ways to lose your money. Certain games, like roulette and baccarat are almost exclusively games of chance, while others like the many poker variations require more thought and strategy.

Unfortunately, the game’s AI opponents don’t really put up much of a challenge. They seem happy to just check and check and check every time until the showdown. Or, if you make the slightest bet they’ll often fold in a heartbeat. If they do happen to make a bet, you can more or less tell exactly what based on how high the betting goes. Since everything plays out so linearly, games against AI opponents have a tendency to drag on for quite awhile with seemingly no end in sight.

Stylus Betting

Regardless of which game you’re playing the interface is solid, letting you quickly drop chips on the table or select cards with the stylus. Gameplay always moves quickly, and while your opponents may make stupid moves, at least they don’t spend very long pondering them. The graphics generally fail to impress, but all the tables look as they should.

The game also supports multiplayer for blackjack, Texas hold ‘em, and seven card stud with a single card, enabling much more challenging and entertaining games…assuming your friends know what they’re doing. And if they don’t, at least they’ll be less predictable than the AI.

Safe Bet

Sega Casino doesn’t make gambling terribly exciting with flashy graphics or sound effects, but it does present solid representations of a number of popular table games, all intuitively playable thanks to the stylus. The AI opponents may not provide a terribly great amount of challenge, but that only affects a few games, and for those there’s always multiplayer.