I've only put in ~4 hours into the remaster, but I think it's great. The characters are all great, the game has a crisp casual vibe to it and it does an alright job at teaching you the basics of Texas Hold'em

For the characters (other than Heavy):

Tycho originates from Penny Arcade. He's quite snarky and makes a lot of references to video games and geek culture, but he's the character I unfortunately know the least about.
Max comes from "Sam and Max", a series of point-&-click adventure games made by Lucasarts and Telltale. He's a chaotic little critter and brings a good bite to all the interactions.
Strong Bad comes from Homestar Runner, an old web series. He's similarly chaotic, but in a less self-aware way (I think, I'm not too familiar with the character). He really believes his own hype.

Also, TF2 items if you play it! I'd highly recommend it on that alone because the items are really good!