Public Service Announcement x 2

A few words of wisdom borne of my own experiences.

1. Last year I bought a Dell PC. It came pre-installed with McAfee security software.

After a while I noticed a few websites I use - including a forum I share with friends - were loading woefully slowly. I mentioned this to my friends. It ran fine for them.

In the grand scheme of things this was no big deal, so I grinned and bore it.

Recently I got rid of McAfee, and installed the free version of AVG Anti-Virus. Suddenly the web browser is running like a dream across all sites.

At a guess, I suspect McAfee was doing some sort of real-time (sic) validation of embedded content such as adverts.

My recommendation, ditch it.

2. E started off as a really bad sleeper, but after a few months became capable of sleeping soundly for upwards of twelve hours. Fantastic.

Alas, as the early summer mornings arrived this year, they triggered a dramatic change. Suddenly she was waking as early as 5.30am and announcing herself to us, usually with a cry of 'Beebies'. Not good.

K picked up a tip on one of the mummies forums she frequents. The advice was to buy a Stay In Bed Bunny Clock.

My immediate reaction was this was an overpriced gimmick. But sleep deprivation makes a man desperate, so the purchase was made.

When it arrived, my cynicism grew. It feels like it was put together for 50p in some SE Asian sweatshop.

Within days, my cynicism was dispelled. The idea is devastatingly simple yet effective.

The clock is a very basic LCD unit, attached to an illuminated face, split into two halves, only one of which is illuminated at any given time.

The top half shows a little bunny, backpack on, out and about on a sunny day. The bottom half shows the same bunny tucked up asleep in bed.

The time each half is illuminated can be altered.

The child needs simply to be told it's OK to get up when bunny is up, but if bunny is sleeping then they should stay in bed.

I guess this works better for some kids than others, but with E it was an instant success.

She now bounds into our room at a mercifully civilised hour, and usually proclaims 'Bunny is awake'.

I can't guarantee success, but if you are a sleep deprived parent seeking a panacea, this is definitely worth a gamble!

Delusional

Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's that slightly off packet of roasted peanuts I started but didn't finish, maybe it's the bang on the head I got off an over exuberant toddler at the weekend.

Whatever the reason, I had a really daft thought last night. I could make Supernova on PokerStars.

The trigger for this ridiculous thought was the realisation that I'd burned through 1000 FPPs in what felt like a comparatively short session.

99 more sessions like that and I'd be a made man, in a manner of speaking! Throw in the fact I'm only at silver just now and the multiplier factor has a way to go yet.

Realistically I can't see myself being that focused over a year, but it's a real eye-opener the difference a couple of concentrated sessions of six tabling can make to the FPP balance.

As for the bankroll, so far the results are fairly positive too.

Peter Birks mentioned a while back that it's possible for two players to have wildly different results, different perceptions of their win rate, but identical results when viewed over a lengthy period of time.

The winning grinder will post lots of small wins, and occasional losses. The winning LAG will veer wildly between multi buy-in wins and losses.

Anyone who has observed me grind my way through a live tournament, and tutted at my nitty style, would likely find themselves gawking in disbelief if they found me at a cash table.

My cash game style being more blitzkrieg than trench warfare.

Playing six tables hasn't changed my results on a per table basis, but it's brought more stability to my hourly session rates. I'm still posting a multiple wins and losses, but the peaks and troughs have levelled out somewhat, and the trend is upwards.

Equally I feel that my game is in a nice balance. Whereas six tables on Everest was a rush, six on PokerStars seems quite manageable.

The boredom factor is low, which means I no longer find myself making silly UTG raises with trash on the grounds it's deceptive, when really it's just because I haven't had a playable hand for ten minutes.

All of which has combined to have my fairly limited time at the table this month making a decent impression in the cost of that flashy monitor.

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

...we have lift off.


It's symptomatic of the way things have been going recently that I splurge on a powerful new PC, and great 24" monitor, with the express purpose of multi-tabling and playing much more poker, then promptly go three weeks without a single hand of online poker.

All of which is about to change. Not only is the PC and monitor in place, but I've migrated to a new host for the Linux/PostgreSQL back-end for PokerTracker.

Saturday was the first trial of the new system, and it ran like a dream. Super smooth, even with email, RealPlayer, etc. running on the main PC.

Prior to the unplanned break, I'd managed to comfortably play four tables on Everest, and even had a crack at six. Four was perfectly bearable, but six got a bit much.

Several hands were sat out due to missed cues from the software causing me to time out. Much as the players on Everest are terrible, the software is not ideal for multi-tabling.

I was tempted back to PokerStars on Saturday night by their reload bonus. With double FPP also on offer I managed to clear a decent chunk of it on the first night, and wound up in black at the tables too.

Being a bit rusty, I didn't push myself too hard. Four tabling on Stars proved to be very simple. I was in cruise control all night. So, I'm planning to push it harder tonight by experimenting with six tables, which should look something like the shot above.

Let Battle Commence

Fresh from an enforced laptop replacement, I've finally bit the bullet and committed to a new desktop machine.

Some of the key specs for those who are that way inclined - 2.1Ghz Viiv Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB RAM, 500GB hard drive (2 x 250 with RAID 0), 256MB ATI Radeon X1300 PRO graphics card, Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme sound card.

All pretty impressive. I can remember my first ever computer being a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and mighty chuffed I was to get the top-of-the-range 48k model. These days there's probably 48k of memory in the average pencil sharpener.

RAID disk striping in a domestic PC. How times change!

Yet those stats are but the precursors to the key detail. Monitor size...

I couldn't resist it. It was just too tempting, and the price was too low to resist.

I went for the 24" Ultrasharp LCD monitor. Multitabling heaven here I come!

The next few days I'm away on work duties, but hopefully soon after my return the Dell delivery man will be calling and serious business will commence.

I'm optimistic the new set up will pay for itself over time. I've no doubt I can four table successfully but doing it with overlaid screens has been a pain, and even the resizeable poker tables on Stars, Party, and my new buddy Everest, can be awfully hard on the eyes over a sustained period of time.

The new PC should have me firing on all cylinders, and if I need motivation, I'll just need to check my credit card bill to remind me to get to work on the tables.

Bluffers Guide To Playing Poker On Your Home Network

The laptop died this week. Not a sudden death but a gradual ebbing away of its life force, as the connection between power supply and motherboard grew ever more erratic.

It's out of warranty, and appears to be suffering from the effects of having a toddler use it as a trampoline, so a replacement is the only option. Which should arrive from Dell later this week.

We have grown accustomed to the convenience of wireless networking in a short space of time, and I doubt we could do without a laptop for long now.

When we first 'went wireless' it gave us great flexibility, but it also presented a challenge in relation to one of my most commonly used poker tools - Poker Tracker.

The problem was my Poker Tracker database was on my main PC, so playing poker on the laptop meant I couldn't access all that juicy data I had accumulated.

At the same time, I was encountering an increasing delay on the main PC as the database grew to the point where auto updates could cause temporary screen freezes - which was quite alarming in the midst of a big hand.

So, I decided to kill two birds with one stone by making use of an old PC that was still functional.

Step one was to wipe the Windows 98 operating system from this old piece of junk, and replace it with Linux. Installing Linux gave me the opportunity to also load PostgreSQL.

I then ported my Poker Tracker Access database to PostgreSQL and loaded it on the old PC.
So, now I had a simple client-server system where my main PC was running Poker Tracker and my old PC was running the database. Which took some load off the main PC, thus eliminating the freezes.

Step two was to install Poker Tracker on the laptop, and get a new key from Pat - the creator of the software.

I'm not sure about the intricacies of the license but I explained the situation in an email and a new key was issued very rapidly.

I think it's fair to say that having Poker Tracker installed on two machines is fine, so long as you only play on one of them at a time.

With the database held on a separate machine, either Poker Tracker client can access it. Thus making the data available on both desktop and laptop.

For most people, I'd expect that should be just fine.

However, if you happen to have a fairly slow laptop, then the screen freeze may still be an issue. If this is the case then a solution is available...

First you need to fire up both desktop and laptop.

Share the directory on your laptop to which hand histories are written, and start Poker Tracker running on the desktop PC. Configure it to read from the shared drive on the laptop, kick off the auto import job, and presto, the work of loading and rating players moves from laptop to desktop PC.

Now you can start Poker Tracker on the laptop - but DO NOT start the auto import job - and your laptop will read the updated stats from the database without ever needing to do the calculation.

Thus you are free to roam with your laptop, whilst still making use of all that helpful data you have spent months collecting and without fear of timing out in a big hand when the auto rate kicks in.