« Rakeback Update | Main | Legalization »
April 1, 2008
Poker PC
Someone not too long ago asked me what I thought they should look for in a computer for playing poker online. It got me thinking. I realized I've learned quite a bit about that over the last 6 years or so, and that the information might help a lot of you, so here are my thoughts. I'm going to go more in-depth here and talk about the entire office, because there are other things just as important as the pc.
If you're a good player and playing for a living (or for a serious percentage thereof) a good home office isn't a luxury, it's an investment. And if you're good at poker, budget isn't really a concern for you. So I'm going to just assume that price is no real object, but that you're also not looking to spend just for the sake of spending.
First I should start with the setup. Buy the best office chair you can. I bought an Aeron, and it's the most comfortable chair in my house. Unless you count the ones in my car (and if anyone can tell me how to make a Lexus seat into an office chair, I'm all ears) it's probably the most comfortable I've ever sat in. I used to play in a very nice leather recliner, then in a reclining couch, but switching to an Aeron was the best thing I ever did. The reclining tended to make me tired, and caused back pains after very long stretches.
Aerons are the gold standard when it comes to office chairs, and they charge for it. It will run you about $1k new. You can find them on Craigslist used for half that, though if you go that route, be sure to go to a store first and find the right size for you. They aren't one size fits all like the crap you buy at Staples, so make sure you get the right one.
Even used that's a pretty damn expensive chair, but consider that even a mediocre $5/$10 player makes that back in 20 hours (on average of course) and that you're going to be sitting in the thing a hell of a lot. It will save you so many aches and pains that you'll probably work more just for owning it, so it will pay for itself many times over. And it will last forever. I've had mine for about 3 years, and have driven it across the country twice, and it's still almost as good as new.
As for a desk, who really cares? Get something made of sturdy wood since it will be holding a decent amount of weight in monitors (I'll get into that in a minute). IKEA sells passable ones for $50. There's a saying in the startup world that applies to any home office: "Always buy the cheapest tables and the most expensive chairs."
I recommend some stand lamps for your room if it's not very well-lit already. You'll reduce eyestrain by keeping your monitor's brightness down and the rest of the room's brightness up. I did this by replacing the bulbs in my ceiling fixture with compact fluorescents. Since your fixtures can only support a limited wattage (75-100 being typical) CFLs give you much more light (a 40w CFL is equivalent to a 150w incandescent) and save you money since they're going to be on a lot.
Get a good wired mouse. I'd search Amazon for a gaming mouse and buy whatever is highest rated. There's nothing worse than having a battery die on you while you're playing 4 tables, and if you have a wireless mouse, this will happen to you at some point. Keyboards don't really matter, you can play just fine if it runs out of juice. I'm rather partial to my Logitech DiNovo Edge (especially since it has a backup mouse) but that's neither here nor there.
Get redundant internet connections. I like to keep my cable company's highest speed internet as my primary line. If you have telephone service you can probably get their cheapest DSL as a backup for something $10-$15 a month. If, like me, you don't have a landline, get an EVDO USB adapter from Verizon or Sprint, or set your PC up to use your phone's tethering (much cheaper, and very good quality if you have a Motorola Q). If you're playing bigger stakes this only has to save you from timing out once every few months to pay for itself. It will. You don't realize how much your internet goes down until you work a job where it costs you hundreds (or more) every time it does.
If you go with cable and DSL you obviously will have two networks. If you can, have your primary one wired as it will save you some headache. Remember that with technology, each step in the chain is just one more place for something to fail, and wireless routers/cards are somewhat unreliable. If wired isn't an option, just get two wireless routers. It doesn't really matter which, the cheapo Linksys WRT54G that's in damn near every home in America will suffice. Password protect your internet using WPA, like you would any home network.
Get as many uninterrupted power supply (UPS) systems as you need. These are basically like surge protectors with a built-in battery. When a power outage occurs they'll keep things running. Be sure to plug your cable/DSL modems, switches, routers, etc. into the battery protected ports. Also plug in your PC and monitors. I once played a tournament for 3 hours (on a laptop) during a blackout. The UPSes will pay for themselves the first time the power goes out while you're playing. If you're using the setup I'm about to recommend you might only have 15 minutes or so, but that's enough to play until the blinds and then close all of your tables without a disconnect.
Note that all of the redundancy I recommend to avoid disconnects is less important if you play limit games, where you are typically just put all-in. If you play no-limit (which often has a no-disconnect protection policy) it's extremely important, as a power outage could cost you a lot of money. In fact, you theoretically gain a little edge over people who don't have that.
So we've got a great chair, a cheap table, lighting, and enough redundant internet and power that it's pretty much going to take a hurricane to force us to disconnect. And other than the chair, we've only spent a couple hundred bucks. Now let's blow some real cash.
First the PC. You're using PokerTracker/Poker Ace, so that means Windows. (I don't know if you can run PT with Postgres and PA using Parallels on a Mac, but I'd guess it would be a nightmare at best.) What version of Windows doesn't really matter, but you're probably going to be using Vista, so I'd recommend either Home Premium or Ultimate. Not for any poker related reasons, just in general.
I'm going to recommend a desktop as well, because PT/PA can be resource hogs, and we're going to want a workhorse and a couple big monitors to match. As far as desktop OEMs go, I like HP. Their products usually hold up better than Dell's, cost about the same, and have better service. You could buy any brand of computer though, so feel free to shop around. What you are looking for is:
Core 2 Quad processor. I've heard the new version of PT is threaded. Either way, like I said, PT/PA hog a surprising amount of resources, so horsepower is important.
4GB RAM minimum. More is better (though price increases exponentially after this) but don't go under 4, especially on Vista.
Discrete graphics card with 2 DVI/VGA ports. Don't get anything integrated, because we're connecting 2 monitors at high resolution and trust me, you don't want to go there with some turd Intel video chip that shares memory. You don't need a high-end gamer card at all because frame rates aren't a concern, so just get the cheapest one with 512mb and you'll be fine. I'm guessing most cards with 256mb would do as well, but I don't know for sure and the price difference is generally only $40.
Fastest hard drive possible. You don't really care about storage much, as poker hands don't take up much room in the old DB. But I've run PT/PA on a 5,400 rpm drive and it was brutal. Don't settle for less than 7,200 rpm, and if you can find one with a 10k rpm drive (and short of a very expensive gamer PC I don't know that you can) you're golden.
Best of all may be to get a computer with a RAID 1 (also referred to as mirrored) array. These are commonly available even in lower-end PCs now. I don't know how much performance increase you'll get from the increased read speed, but it's probably something, and it definitely won't slow you down. And you have protection from hard drive failure.
Either way, also get an external HD (or maybe one of those personal media drive thingies if you buy an HP) and buy Norton Ghost to backup your pc onto it. You should do this with any computer that has stuff on it you care about, and you definitely do not want to lose years of PT data. Hard drives fail. Trust me. I learned the hard way. And though a RAID helps guard against hard drive failure, that isn't the only way to lose data.
Get a built in 802.11b/g card. Most of the rest of the PC-related stuff doesn't matter. Sound cards, speakers, DVD drives, etc. Whatever you want there.
Now for monitors. I recommend 2 24" LCDs. HP's monitors are generally awesome. Do not buy Dells. I don't know about their current generation of monitors, but the old ones had awful brightness controls and won't let you turn it down far enough. HP does a pretty good job there. I bought 2 of their 23" models 3 or 4 years ago and still love them.
The reason I like ones so big is that they have resolution of 1,920x1,200. A poker table is natively 800x600, meaning you can run 4 on one screen with no overlap. The second monitor allows you to play another 4 if you wish (though I generally don't recommend that many tables). I usually use it for PT/PA and AIM, Rhapsody, Outlook, whatever.
True, you could get smaller screens and resize now that most good poker rooms finally have caught up to the same technology every other program had in 1991. But if anything, I'd like my tables to be bigger. I'm all about preserving my vision.
I priced the PC and 2 monitors at about $2,300 on HP.com. Toss in the chair, etc, and you're looking at $3,000-$3,500 (depending on if you buy the chair new or used). It's not a cheap setup, but it will pay for itself many times over.
Anything I left out?
Posted by themaroon at April 1, 2008 10:48 PM