Yup, I got sucked into an online tournament this afternoon and the UMPC is definitely the way to go. The gaming is for play money, but my Samsung Q1P and I…well, we were playing for pride. Samantha and I logged in a few minutes before the hour, paid our 33 fake chips along with 3,192 other card playing lemmings and took our spot at Table #23. Samantha the Q1P kept Beatles tunes rolling while I quickly started rolling people out of the tournament. For a brief shining moment, this tandem of UMPC and mobile goofball were the chip leaders. Not of the table, mind you, but leaders of the entire tournament.
We quickly went from the standard 3,000 chips that everyone starts with and in mere moments were up to over 30,000 chips with just a few finger taps. Making it through the first 15 minutes of tourney like this is our usual goal and at the first break, an hour in, we wrapped our digital arms around over 73,000 chips.
Through no fault of Samantha, I tapped the wrong button twice, yet both times we came out on top. Note to self: don’t press the planned action button of Check/Fold as the buttons change based on other player’s actions. Both times, I went to hit Check/Fold only to watch it change to Call just before I pressed it. I can’t blame Samantha as I have no doubts that her Intel GMA chipset was rendering the graphics as quickly as possible.
It was beautiful to behold: Samantha kept showing the table’s cards while I quickly tapped out bets and calls. We literally frightened the competition out of thousands…all we had to do was call the blind and everyone would fold before our mighty stack. And then it happened….
Against Samantha’s better judgment, I was bluffing too often. Word to the wise: bluffing with a pair of twos might scare people off with low chip stacks, but pay attention to folks with as much coin as you. Yup, we quickly faded. Actually, that’s unfair to say. I quickly faded, but the UMPC did everything I asked. Though I loathe to admit it, she even handled the WiFi connection when I couldn’t wait for the break and had to duck into the rest room. For the record, we won that hand too.
No, it wasn’t the mobile tech that ultimately failed; it was the human factor. Regardless, we did finish in the money with a 211th place out of the full field, and we have plenty of battery life for the next tourney. I should probably pass on it and get back to work. There’s mobile tech stuff to do!
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