Category / Poker / Gaming

I got a fever, and the only prescription… November 25, 2007 at 11:04 am

Rock Band is extremely cool.  Yes, it’s basically just a compilation of the Guitar Hero, Karaoke and a drum game.. but when put together, it’s more then just the sum of it’s parts.  The solo careers are pretty much run of the mill; much like the previous games already listed.  However, when you play in a group, it’s so much fun it’s insane.  We played for several hours over at my parent’s house on Thanksgiving, and man was it fun.  Of course my parents and grandparents didn’t care for a lot of the music included, but even they were singing along with some of the songs, like Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive.


The new drum set (the one real new addition to the game over previous Harmonix games) are both extremely cool, and quite hard.  My niece was actually the most talented out of the box.   She was wailing on stuff on Medium with barely any practice at all.

Not having played the karaoke games, this is the first experience I’ve had with the singing.  While everyone seems embarrassed to try it in front of a group, it is a lot of fun to do in the privacy of your own home without anyone around to hear. 🙂

Anyway, to refer back to the title.  The BOC classic is included.  Even better, there are periods in songs where the vocalist can hit the mic in time with some marks on the screen as a tambourine.  However, in this track, you actually are doing the cowbell… I started laughing so hard when that first happened.  Here’s a little taste to show you (yes, it’s crappy quality.. I just pulled out my little cam to snag this real quick):




No, I’m not posting any of me singing on here.  😛

If you already knew about Rock Band and were on the fence, then you need to get your ass off there and find yourself a bundle.  I’ve read that they might really be having supply issues on the east coast, but on the west coast, there are (or were before Black Friday anyway) tons of them in stock (for the xbox 360 at least) all over the place.  The Best Buy in Mission Valley near me had tons of them on Tuesday when it was released.

Update (12/17/2007): Switched to much better flash player

Posted in: Cool programs, Poker / Gaming by Miguelito /
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Damn.. that’s a lot of data. August 6, 2006 at 1:44 pm

For those that don’t know.. I finally broke down and bought an Xbox360 a couple weeks ago. For an MS product, they did a lot of things right. The ability to turn the unit on and off via the wireless controllers alone is rather cool. The tie-in to xbox live is very nice too: Buy some smaller games on the cheap (Uno is loads of fun.. yes Uno, the classic card game), you can buy add-ons/themes/etc, and the achievement system for 360 games is neat.

They also use the same live marketplace system to allow downloads of movies and demos of upcoming games which is nice. I already pre-ordered a copy of Dead Rising
but saw that they’d put up a demo for it so figured I’d snag it, along with the demo for Saints Row (a GTA clone coming out).

Then I noticed the size of the demos and took a crappy pic:

Damn those are huge.. we’re talking just under 1Gig per demo average. I knew when buying the unit that the 20gig disk wasn’t really big enough to last. Of course that’s 20 HDD manufacturer gigs too, which really means about 18-1/2 Gig. Remeber boys and girls.. the manufacturers like to say that 20 billion bytes is a gig, but computers do math in base 2 vs base 10 so take your drive size and divide by (2^30) for gigs to get the real size.. not to mention there’s a little overhead from the filesystem.

Anyway, we’ll see how the demos are, but man I hope there’s a way to put in a larger laptop harddrive sometime soon.

Posted in: Poker / Gaming by Miguelito /
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I was twice smoted by the poker gods… November 29, 2005 at 12:50 pm

[ Music: Hunger from the album “Black Hawk Down” by Hans Zimmer ]

So I played in 2 Hold’em tournaments over the long holiday weekend, one on Friday, and the usual Sunday game. The Friday game was a $35 buy in, $3k in chips, no rebuys or add-ons.

Friday’s game I played pretty well, building up to about $15k in chips. It was a large tournament, something like 35 tables.. payouts were fairly high, 1st was going to get $2500 and 2nd $1500 IIRC. Not too shabby. Anyway, I got knocked out just under 1/2 way and was annoyed at the hand that lost it for me…

I had K10s and was sb. Noone raised, and I called. Flop was A73s so I flopped the winning flush. I put in $800 (blinds were $400/$800 at this point) and everyone folded but one other guy, and I’m thinking he’s got the queen flush, which would be great for me. The turn comes out 5h. I check and he goes all in… so I call all in (thinking I’ve suckered him in). I turn up my hand and everyone “ooooh”s.. then he turns up a 3/5 off suite. I’m favored 92% I believe.. then the river comes out.. 5c! He hits his full house and knocks me out.. damnit.

Sunday’s tournament is similar. I was playing even better, and was up to $25k in chips or so, after rebuying 2x during the start, so horrible start but now doing very well. Blinds are up to $2k/$4k and I get J8d. A few call, noone raises. Flop is JJ7. I’ve got a set. The first to act goes in for $17.5k, everyone folds and I figure he’s got a jack too, but what the hell. He even says (after I call) “oh, you’ve got the jack, don’t you?” And I did.. he flips up AA. The turn comes out… Ace! Damnit.. he’s hit his set too, and it’s better then mine. River is something lime like a 3.. so I’m again knocked out with a pretty strong hand. Damnit. Well, actually, I had $7k left, but at that point I was basically out.. had to go all in with next decent cards as blind came around to me and I lost.

Will have to see how I do this coming weekend. I’m definitely getting better, learning to read people more and knock out people with only medium strength hands by betting properly. All in all, even when I lose I have fun so it’s worth it.

Posted in: Poker / Gaming by Miguelito /
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Shuffle up and deal… October 30, 2005 at 9:52 pm

[ Viewing: “C.S.I. Crime Scene Investigation – The Complete Fourth Season” (William Petersen) ]

So two weeks ago, Bert and Rick wanted to try out playing a real Texas Hold’em tournament, so we went out and played the $13 10am Sunday one at Sycuan. None of us won any money, though Rick made it to the last 3 tables before getting knocked out. While there, I found the new WPT table game… which I’ve come to really enjoy. Anyway, had enough fun with the tournament that I went back alone last weekend, and again today.

Today, I made it to the last table! Everyone decided to split the pot, well, the 2 chip leaders took $250 each, and the rest of us took $198. Sure, could’ve won a bit more if we’d played and I’d made 3rd place or better, but in the end, this was the smart play for us. Anything less then 3rd place would’ve been less and less money, this way, we all got a decent amount.

Oh, and I also got 3 $5 bounties for eliminating people. 🙂 Then I lost all the money playing the aforementioned WPT game… then won it all back, plus a bit. So a good day overall.

Posted in: Poker / Gaming by Miguelito /
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