Masque Video Poker

Video poker at a shopping mall arcade where everyone who has nothing better to do hangs around smoking and playing — and me among them, with money and whatever hope I had left from a lucky streak. Masque Video Poker is exactly that game, just on a computer board.

It's classic video poker in DOS style — sit down here and there, deal yourself cards and count which combination will pay out. You've got five cards, you decide which ones to keep and which to swap, and then you wait. No chatting with your table partner, no reading the expression on the stranger across from you. Just you, the computer, and the betting numbers. Tens, face cards, suits — it's all there like in a casino, just without the smoke in your eyes.

The gameplay is primitive — cursors, selection, confirmation. Graphics are forgettable, sound barely there. The only visual flourish is the name itself: Masque. As if it were having fun at its own costume party. The mechanics are what you know from every video poker room — you're limited by your budget, you see the payout table, and then you just guess whether you should hold the king or go for an all-in swap. No emotion, no drama. Pure math of chance.

This game had no ambition to entertain. It was a simulation, industrial routine that programmers stuffed somewhere for people who wanted to play poker without casinos. In the nineties it was new and interesting software. Today it's an artifact — proof that you can play this simple mechanic practically anywhere.

If you want to play it today, you won't be bored — but you won't remember it much either. You sit down, pull off a few combinations, and then ask yourself why you're bored when you're looking at the same colors and same figures. It's like watching TV in a dentist's waiting room — something keeps your hands busy, but your mind is already somewhere else.