pinata242

No fuckin' way could I use IE and Bing just to justify a couple bucks every month. I mean, I love free, but I love my sanity more.

IE9 might be nicer than its predecessors, but that ship has sailed long ago for me.

Michael Corvin

Umm, boot up IE, copy and paste a paragraph of text into the Bing box and delete a word at a time and re-search. It takes about, oh 90 seconds a day.

Even better when done at work. No need to make IE and Bing your default browser & search engine. Chrome and Google are my default, but I still hop on IE daily for the points.

$5 doesn't sound like it's worth it, but would $60 in free points a year sound more worthwhile?

Liver&Onions

Not when you're rich!

pinata242

Meh, I may try it but you see here in the corporate world we are burdened by being tied to what our clients use and that's still IE6. If I upgrade on my own, I'd be out-of-compliance for the few times that'll ever matter.

I'd happily install it into Chrome or even FF4 when that comes out officially, but Microsoft doesn't seem to want to allow rewarding people for only half-assing their product line.

mattysemo247

I believe so

pinata242

Anybody planning to play some Texas Heat today? I think the first games start at 4pm EDT. I should be on for most of it. Hopefully they fixed the stupid -1 ranking thing.

Matt

I'll be on at some point, probably later in the evening, though. I'm curious as to what the traffic/bot situation will be like on a weekday, especially in the early sessions.

chuckd21

4PM hell yeah kiddies get your poker on before mom and dad get home from work!

pinata242

You crazy Americans thinking it's afternoon everywhere.

orangecrush

I think I am going to get the game and try to play later this evening. Everyone talking about it here really makes me want to play. I suspect I will care more about my chip total than most other people online.

Matt

If we ever wind up at the same table together I suspect I'll care about your chip total quite a bit.

pinata242

So, I'm here in Texas Heat with 29 bots. Can't wait to see what the total player count is.

Seriously, WTF?

Edit: Oh, wait, I found two other players by busting down to Diamond Back up to Double Diamond now though and I'm alone again.

pinata242

14,625 players in the first game.

28,400 XP was first place.

I still got a -1 ranking. Lame.

Liver&Onions

28k? How is that even possible? The person would need to win every hand to get the streak bonus, and showdown with at least 4 people each time. WTF.

pinata242

I know, right? I know there are takedown bonuses and takedown-streak bonuses too. I guess if the cards just go your way and you get a bunch of callers and constantly win. Heck, maybe you can capitalize on the Smart Fold bonuses too.

I'm sitting here with 2:00 left, over 1M in chips and only 11k in XP.

Edit: Game 2 over, stats...

14,671 players. I scored 13,075 XP, -1 rank.

Top player (DA 13 BEATS) scored 22,600 XP. That guy also doesn't have the Gold Medal ach, so this -1 ranking is fucking everyone.

Groucho

3 live people? I think you're in the most populated lobby ever seen in "Texas Heat".

Wick

I played through Battle: Los Angeles three times this week and reviewed it. It's a weird game. Not incredibly well made by any means, but oddly compelling.

Looking forward to Ghostbusters tomorrow. Hopefully it ends up being fun. It looks like it could go either way.

pinata242

By the fourth game we were up to around 10. porieux (DethBoxx) was in there too. It's still fun even though the bots really "kill the mood" and the ranking system is broken. Once those issues are fixed, this will be something I spend a lot of time doing.

MrX

I played 2 games tonight and it was putting me to sleep.

I was in the lobby area with 8 other people, and then when we went into the game I ended up playing against all bots for the entire session.

pinata242

Saturday will be the real test when it's no longer "Beginner's Night". Hopefully a different game mode will work better.

pinata242

Wait... Is this right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_House_Poker

Developer(s) Krome Studios

NO FUCKING WONDER TEXAS HEAT IS BORKED!

Groucho

According to Wikipedia they currently have no employees.

pinata242

Yeah, I dug further and see that MGS took over after Krome collapsed. That worked out pretty well for Game Room so...

Matt

That last session was actually pretty good tonight--at least for me, in playing real players. I was at the Triple Diamond table and there were between six and eight real players playing there at any given time during the whole session. A good sign, I think. I saw more real players during that last session than I did in the three previous sessions combined across several tables.

MrX

I got to play at a table with more people than bots for about 10 minutes tonight. 10 minutes in the game glitched, but instead of freezing for the rest of the time, it froze for about a minute and then replaced the human players with bots

I turned Dragon Age 2 on at that point.