![[LinuxBrit]](/images/linuxbritnew.jpg)
Poker fun
So for the past few months there’s been quite a lot of poker on TV, specifically Texas Holdem’, which has been gaining popularilty significantly of late. The main reason for this is the televising of the World Series of Poker which is very entertaining to watch, and (in the UK), Late Night Poker has been running for some time now on Challenge.
Having been an interested spectator for some time, and following Paul’s example, I decided last weekend to start playing. I hopped on to Pacific Poker and played some “fake money” games.
However I found the fake money tables frustrating after a while. Even playing No Limit it was simply impossible to bluff anyone - a big part of the NL game. With fake money, people call you just to “see what you have” because there’s nothing really to lose. Bah :/
Paul suggested playing the cheap real money tables to get around this, so I did. I played some ring games there, they were fun, then I hopped on to a cheap tournament ($2.50 entry fee, 10 players, no limit) and rather unexpectedly won! That was great :)
Later on I came 2nd in a $10 tournament ($50 1st prize, I got $30 for coming 2nd), which was cool - but showed I have a lot to learn about heads up. When we got down to the last two I was chip leader, 6k chips to 2k and the guy schooled me :)
Tonight I switched over to Party Poker (just to check out the alternatives) and I’ve spent all night playing a ring game (limit holdem, 50c/$1 bets). I started the evening by depositing $25, and have been sat at one table for 3 hours. I’m currently at $82.75 and about to call it a night :)
It’s nice when you can have fun and make a bit of money too :) Don’t worry - I have no plans to risk the higher stake games - that way lie sharks!
September 8th, 2004 at 5:18 pm
careful :) i used to play a lot of partypoker, its really addicting. luckily i quit while i was ahead, started with 50 dollars and last time i played i was at about 130. well technically i still have my account with all that money sitting in it…… hmmm..
September 8th, 2004 at 5:21 pm
I still believe the key to poker is to completely and utterly not give a fuck. The moment you start caring things go wrong. :)
September 8th, 2004 at 7:21 pm
Yeah, it’s fun, which can be addictive ;)
I think I read somewhere that if you care about losing the money, you play like shit trying not to. Sounds about right to me, that’s why I’m playing a 50c/$1 table =D
September 9th, 2004 at 10:01 am
Windows? Boo! :P
September 9th, 2004 at 10:19 am
Sure - you expect these places to have linux clients or something? I have to keep a blows machine around anyway for the DB vpn so it’s no skin off my nose :)
September 10th, 2004 at 1:16 pm
Wait now, “I have to keep a win32 machine around for the DB VPN.” *cough* IPsec, *cough* interoperable, *cough* standard.
(Please note that “fun to setup” isnt in that list).
isakmpd was a joy to set up, even with SSH Sentinel connecting to it. IM yet to find anything to suggest racoon is anything less than a total pain in the ass however :)
September 10th, 2004 at 1:54 pm
Er. You’re assuming that DB give a hoot about interoperability.. The DB VPN is a combination of proprietary bought-in crud, and in-house crud, all windows based. I do have the alternative of using their “desktop in a browser window” TS client, or their webmail front end, all of which are (of course) dependant on IE5+.
(The webmail even has an activeX “trojan scanner” component :p)
95% of the users of the DB VPN access it through company laptops anyway so who cares, right?
Fact is (and I can kinda see this point), they don’t actually *want* you to be able to connect interoperably with the bank’s network. It’s a bank. The *only* way they want you in their network is via their proprietary client which only runs on a specific windows version, forcibly virus/trojan scans your machine and uses a firewall to completely shutdown any other network routes you might have set up. (So you can’t make their network an extension of yours and thereby open it up to exploitation by third parties) etc etc.
Anyway, not owning a company laptop, it means the simplest thing for me is to keep a machine around for connecting to work. Especially as their vpn client basically takes over the entire machine, it doesn’t make it very useful for anything else..
September 14th, 2004 at 10:35 am
pokerroom.com has support for Linux (java-based), both no external client support for Linux.