Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Chinese New Year break

Happy Chinese New Year everyone. I've taken a break from (live) poker for five whole days amid the festive season and I'm ready to get back at it tonight with some PLO! Meanwhile I kept up my online game with the $57.50 turbo NLH HU and 4-tabling $33-55 NLH SNG. I've also cashed 838th out of 40864 players in the F40 Micro Million with a $40 buy-in and a near $1.5m pot.

Upcoming, I'll be in Macau for the Macau Poker Cup Warmup this Saturday to play the $4000 knock-out tournament. I'm staying at the Grand Hyatt at the City of Dreams (!) because all the rooms over on the Macau Peninsula are fully booked! I'll be out and about at MGM's Lion's Bar that night so come out if you're in town!

As always, follow me on Twitter during the tournament!

Update: I just shipped the $16+R online satellite for the KO tourney. I rebought twice so total damage is US$61 only! This is a great set up to an awesome weekend!

Update: Bonus: OH MY FUCKING LORD. Check this out if you're loving SSF4 as much as I am: http://up3.viploader.net/jiko/src/vljiko012430.jpg. Ibuki. Dudley. Holy fuck.

Monday, February 8, 2010

OMG I ordered a Kindle!


Holy shit guys. I ordered a Kindle. I was pretty locked on getting the Apple tablet, until the thing was actually announced. (See my previous posts for more on the anticipation and disappointment.)

It all happened yesterday when I was half-thinking about getting a B&N Nook but found out that its 3G won't work in Hong Kong. And then last night I've worked out that the time is now for e-readers and (after some more research) I submitted my online order for the Amazon Kindle 2. It'll be shipped on premium shipping for US$20 and arrive in two days. Pretty fast I say.

Here're my reasonings for getting it:

- Save shipping costs on book purchases. I regularly order books on Amazon.com which I can't find in local bookstores. (Yes this includes ALL poker books since gambling related prints are restricted here.) On average each box costs about $40USD in shipping. On top of that, the ebook discount over paper books are anywhere between 25-75%. On guesstimate it'll take only 3-4 orders of what-would-be paper books to fully fund the cost of the Kindle ($279.98). (edit: this is about 18-24 books.)

- Save delivery time on book purchases. This one is pretty obvious. A paper book takes 10-14 days to get here compared to under 60 seconds for ebooks.

- Free internet in many many places globally. On top of the seamless access to the Kindle bookstore, Kindle offers free internet browsing and Wikipedia use in many places.

- Ease of carry/use. I can't bring many books and magazines to a poker tournament but I can bring one Kindle.

- Battery life. 7 days of use is awesome. My bottomline is it'll need to last at least one long haul flight. iPad fails miserably.


Here're my concerns:

- One trick pony. Yes despite executing very well (or almost perfectly), Kindle has one and only one main function.

- Black and grey. Once in a while I might miss color.

- Durability. I expect to carry this thing around quite a bit, meaning I would expect a few bangs and drops. Let's hope the e-ink doesn't spill.


That's my quick preview guys. I'll do some in-depth review later. Or I might just post a link to Engadget.