Quick update - motherboard ordered

Last night I did some research on motherboards and found what I think will be a mighty fine platform to build this system on. I decided on the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R after reading a ton of reviews. This board has SATA 3 and USB 3 which will provide some future proofing. I'm most excited about SATA 3 as it will allow me to use an even faster SSD in the future for quick boot times and table loads. I am going over budget in the motherboard and CPU department, but under budget in some other areas so hopefully it's a wash in the end. The only thing left for the computer that I need to pick up before I can start installing and testing is the i7 930 that I'll be picking up from Micro Center on the 22nd when I'm down in Anaheim. I'm also in contact with a guy on Craigslist about a widebody non functioning pinball machine, and if that doesn't work out then the auction on the 22nd might have what I need.

DMD screen purchased

I found a guy selling a 19" 4:3 LCD screen on Craigslist for $60 which would be perfect for the scoreboard and I talked him down to $40. It's a Samsung 191T, a pretty nice monitor and a good deal. It did take an hour each way to get to Venice, damn the 405 sucks, but anything for a deal ;) Yesterday I returned the i5-750 and miniATX motherboard to Fry's, will look at the i7 options later this month. The 285 GTX is currently locked in my mailbox, will have to wait until Monday to talk with the mailman about unlocking the box.

In poker land, played a 27 person tournament which had 6 rebuys yesterday. Didn't get much going during the first two tables, couldn't find my spots, arrived at the final table as the shortest stack, and within 3-4 orbits had built my stack from 11K to 34K. I raised 5K from UTG+1 with AQs at the 1K/2K/100 level and everyone folded. The very next hand I have AA UTG and raise it to 5K again and my friend Steve raises all in for 38K+ (he has me covered), it folds to me and I call, he shows QQ. Flop and turn are all blanks when the Q falls on the river to knock me out. A damn 2 outer at a crucial point in the tournament, if I win that hand, as I should 80% of the time, I'm left with about 28% of the chips on the table, with 7 people left and 3 short stacks, a nice spot to be in. That stack was probably worth $500+ dollars at the end. It wasn't meant to be, I took the beat well, but steamed a bit afterwards as over taking those beats when it matters most. The night before had been brutal at my Friday game as well with several 2,3,5 outers as well as losing with AA to K9 on a 999 flop. The savior for the night, playing chinese poker with Jorge, that lightened the mood and was a good time.

I'm keeping this all in perspective though, with the WSOP seat win I'll have a chance at some big money. I'm playing well right now, probably the best I have ever played and the most important thing is I'm confident. I used to play too tight and let people run over me, but I've changed that and it's showing. The plan this summer is to final table a Venetian tournament. The Venetian deep stacks have been a favorite of mine for the last 3 summers, but a final table has eluded me. The first year I was the absolute bubble in a 685 person tournament, losing to an A on the river when a guy played AK poorly putting his money in with A high with one card to come, and only 8% of the field getting paid. The following year I min cashed in one of the 3 events, but wasn't not playing well. Last year I played 3 events, went out in the first orbit with KK vs AA, the second event went real deep, but did not cash, and then in the last event when deep busting in 71 out of 890+ when I lost with KK vs J9. First place was over 60K, I made $35 due to a horrible payout structure. I feel that this summer I'm better prepared then previous years and I feel it's my time to shine. I'll be going into each of the events this year, focused and expecting to win.

Some of the parts have arrived

So far I've received the motherboard, processor, memory, power supply, cooler, ssd drive, and DVD drive. The main video card (GTX 285) that I ordered off of ebay is on it's way. I'm currently researching and finding my best option for the main playfield screen. In the running are several Sharp Aquos 42" and 46" as well as several Vizio 42". I'll be ordering a refurbished screen most likely because I don't need a warranty since the screen will be taken out of it's bezel. I've got a lead on a 19" samsung LCD to use for the DMD and I'll probably be buying a quality 32" for the backglass since I plan to play MAME on it. I'm also planning to take the processor and motherboard back to Fry's and look at getting the processor from Micro Center, they've got an i7-930 for a good price which is a step up from the i5-750. The only drawback is the i7 motherboards are more expensive, but I want this build to be solid and crazy fast. The 1356 socket will also be more future proof with hexa and octa cores coming soon. I'll post a complete parts list once I get everything here. One of the cool things since this is a project on a budget, I've focused on watching ebay, craigslist, etc and landed some pretty good deals already.


On May 22nd I'm planning to go to a pinball auction in Anaheim and hopefully find a non working, wide-body pinball machine to use as the base for this project. I'm also keeping an eye on craigslist and the other classifieds. I've heard stories of people finding such machines for $100-$200 complete with glass, plunger, buttons, coin door, legs, etc. If this doesn't work out then I will look to build my own cabinet, but was hoping to avoid that.

Start of a new project - Pinball Cabinet

Recently I got back into MAME so that I could play a bunch of the old games I really enjoy as well as try and find some news ones. The plan was to get MAME all setup and then consider building a stand up cabinet as I've always wanted such a setup since I was a kid. While reading several MAME forums I came across virtual pinball which I had never seen before. I've always been a fan of pinball, but wouldn't own a machine, because it would get old playing the same game for years on end. A couple of hours later I had Visual Pinball and Future Pinball running and I was hooked. Being able to play nearly all the boards I've always enjoyed as well as new ones and classics I've never seen is pretty darn cool. Shortly after I started reading about virtual pinball and found people that have taken either old pinball cabinets or made their own, put in a computer, several LCD screens among other things and the result is a virtual pinball cabinet with 100's of tables. This really intrigued me and it seemed like something I could and would want to do. The other kicker was that I could use the 32" screen that is used on the backglass of the cabinet to play MAME on as well so I could have both virtual pinball and MAME going. So the build is on, I've done a ton of research and started ordering the parts, more to come...

Won a WSOP $1K seat

A few years back I went deep at a tournament at the Bicycle Casino and with the winnings I bought into the WSOP $1500 event because I really wanted to experience it. Long story short, it was fun, but a real crap shoot and I decided not to buy in directly to the WSOP again due to the variance and not having a bankroll deep enough to play large buy in tournaments. However, if I satellited in I would play and so I set out to do that this year. I was running a WSOP league that didn't quite get off the ground, so one of my friends, Todd, decided to do a one day tournament with several mini tournaments to get a seat at the satellite. I had already won a mini satellite a month back or so for my league, and decided to give another shot at a mini satellite which I did on Sunday morning. I was the short stack when we chopped 3 ways, so I didn't win the complete buy in, but it covered about half, combined that with my other win and I was freerolling. So the main tournament was on Sunday after the mini satellite and I was able to make it into the top 4. After hours of playing 4 handed (the tournament only paid 3 seats), we decided to chop evenly and pay 4 seats. So in early June I'll be playing in my 2nd WSOP event, this time it only cost me about $20 to get in to the 1K event, not too bad. I also have a %5 share of the other seat winners, so there's a good chance we'll get something out of this. I'm also going to be playing several other tournaments in Vegas during that week, in hopes for a big score. I've gotten close quite a few times at the Venetian, and figure I have what it takes to win, just need things to come together on one day.