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Comments: 121 +-   How To Play Poker With Your Rock Band Guitar on Tuesday September 29, @12:48PM

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 29, @12:48PM
from the jumprope-can-be-hifi-if-it's-got-usb dept.
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An anonymous reader writes 'Sean Lind over at PokerListings has written a really interesting piece on how to configure Rock Band (or Guitar Hero) instruments to use them as controllers for playing online poker. The instructions given in his how-to could really be used to configure the instruments for any game.' Or how about a genuine chording keyboard?
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  • If you're going to play with the plastic Rock Band guitar, you might as well go whole hog and play all your games with it. It's just a controller, FWIW.

    If you want to pick up women, playing a real guitar is much more effective.

    • And also requires effort and skill to play.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by dunkelfalke (91624)

        Not really, as Sid Vicious has proven times and times again.

        • Que? Guitar requires effort and skill to play. The fact that Sid Vicious would stand and pretend to play bass (often with the volume completely muted) is completely irrelevant to this fact... Sid was there for looks and may as well have been holding a dead sea bass. The Sex Pistols were posers anyway, they were created solely to sell merchandise (Seriously, look it up).

          • Dude, I do know how to play the guitar, I even used to play in a small Pink Floyd tribute band some years ago.
            That was only a sarcastic remark.

          • Only poseurs spell poseurs as "posers". (Seriously, look it up).
            And I'm not even a Malcom McClaren.
            • How? PiL is not the Sex Pistols. PiL had John Lydon, not Johnny Rotten. There were real musicians in PiL, who could actually play their instruments before the band was formed. (Paul Cook was the only member of the Sex Pistols who could actually play an instrument before they were a band. Unless you count Glen Matlock.) PiL was Lydon's "anti-rock" band, and as stated earlier the Sex Pistols were basically a "punk boy band" put together by Malcom McClaren to sell bondage wear and "punk" clothing at his clothi

      • And also requires effort and skill to play.

        Are you talking about guitars or women?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ari_j (90255)
      Actually, it has been my observation that playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band is at least as likely to help you pick up women than playing a real guitar, if not more so. It turns out that women are not attracted to men for any rational reasons.
      • I can tell you have never been in a actual band before.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ari_j (90255)
          Your assumption is irrelevant here. Playing in a band has nothing to do with what I actually said. Playing in a band might work better than playing music-oriented video games when it comes to picking up women, but playing guitar itself is at best tied. At any rate, you are more likely to have a chance to show off your mad Guitar Hero skills to a girl than you are your mad guitar skills, since she can play along with the game or others can do so at a party she's at and it's then an activity instead of pur
          • Yep, never been in a band.

            And who do you think got more pussy - Billy Joel or Jimmy Page? Elton John or Ted Nugent (ok, that's probably not fair)? Ben Folds or Keith Richards? Barry Manilow or any other guitar player ever? So yeah, I guess if you want a girl "with a nice personality" (aka not hot) who appreciates a guy with a sensitive side, play the piano. But in real life, every chick wants to sleep with the guitar player. The piano player only gets girls if the drummer is already passed out. It isn't

          • or be a Greg Brady type nerd who walks around with a Pignose battery-powered amp and cheap electric guitar at all times. :)

            If only somebody would create a guitar that create audible music through well designed acoustical properties, rather than electric power...

            Of course, the guy who brings the guitar to the party is always much more of a tool and a loner than even the guys playing guitar hero.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by thesandtiger (819476)

        Attraction is almost never rational, or, at least, the underlying bits are rational if you think about it but there isn't always a lot of conscious thought involved. Thus, even if the underlying bits make perfect sense, it's still not rational as being rational requires thinking.

        Anyway, as a woman, I'll offer this bit of insight that may explain part of this (not very) baffling phenomena. I may get my chick card revoked for sharing this, but my ties to the nerd community are more important than the duties o

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rycross (836649)
      Why does this come up every time? [xkcd.com]

    • If you want to pick up women, playing a real guitar is much more effective.

      And I don't think you're playing video games for the right reasons...

    • If you want to pick up women, playing a real guitar is much more effective.

      If your goal is to pick up women, might as well go whole hog and ditch the video games, trolling message boards, studying IT/Engineering/Science/anything remotely geeky. It's just what you enjoy doing, FWIW.

    • If you want to pick up women, playing a real guitar is much more effective.

      Depends on the quality of woman you expect. If that's your pick, just go the whole length and create an emocore band.

      • wow. aren't you just mr. oblivious.

        Sorry pal, but I have dozens of friends in bands and not one of them "play bad zeppelin covers" (or any covers for that matter - that is for shit bands) or have ever played for a 6 pack before. Even if only 10 people show up they get like $50 and at least 3-4 free drink tickets. On a good night it may be more like $300-$600 and unlimited free drinks. And the band that I manage has made over $1000 for an hours worth of work on a few occasions. Let me ask you something -

  • Wow... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 29, @12:55PM (#29583165)

    I bet that guy rocks at poker.

  • That's nothing. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dunkelfalke (91624) <dunkelfalke.speznas@de> on Tuesday September 29, @01:00PM (#29583245) Homepage

    Those guys actually play music with it. [youtube.com]

    • Funny you mentioned that, I used my MacBook and a Guitar Hero controller and was able to play a few simple tunes on it with GarageBand. No real practical application (GH controllers are better for playing GH with than anything else, obviously) but it was fun. :)

  • I don't understand? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Useful Wheat (1488675) on Tuesday September 29, @01:01PM (#29583275)

    I don't really understand why this is news. I have a friend that can kick your ass at any fighting game using the guitar instead of a controller. Myself, I've played Halo with the rock band drum kit, and I had 1 kill. You can't move or fire, but you can do the melee hit, which I used to ambush people who thought I was AFK. I've played several Xbox live games with the guitar, including that free side scrolling shooter. The main disadvantage was I couldn't go left or right, but up and down was easy, and all you really need. The controls for poker are so trivial I can't imagine this took more than 5 minutes of effort. The real story would be if he was playing counterstrike with the guitar, or if he was writing software with the guitar instead of using a keyboard. Because really, what coder wouldn't want to strum a guitar and have code flow from his awesome chords?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by swanzilla (1458281)

      Because really, what coder wouldn't want to strum a guitar and have code flow from his awesome chords?

      This guy. Right here.

    • Because really, what coder wouldn't want to strum a guitar and have code flow from his awesome chords?

      Except for the fact that you're not strumming a guitar, you're manipulating plastic controls, and you're not playing chords.

      • What? So being able to "play" a "guitar" with only one string and 5 frets doesn't make me an actual skilled musician? Get ouuta town!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dmomo (256005)

        well, 31.. because I don't think "00000" would be a particularly useful "key press". But,point taken. But, I remember seeing a blind / deaf man using a braille typewriter when I was a kid. It was very similar to what you describe. The point there being.. with just a small amount of buttons (6 for braille, one for morse!), you can relay quite a bit of information.

        • well, 31.. because I don't think "00000" would be a particularly useful "key press". But,point taken. But, I remember seeing a blind / deaf man using a braille typewriter when I was a kid. It was very similar to what you describe. The point there being.. with just a small amount of buttons (6 for braille, one for morse!), you can relay quite a bit of information.

          Actually, 00000 is a useful keypress. The strum bar can be used to strobe in the value. Whammy for shifting, and a few keycodes for alternate chara

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ohrion (814105)
        You probably WOULD have been modded up, except you posted as Anonymous Coward. Mods don't seem to really mod the comment, they mod the user. Hence, Anonymous Coward comments rarely get modded up.
  • Why should we want to do that ? I know we can. But why playing poker with a guitar ? Perhaps I am getting old...

    • Five guitar buttons, five-card poker. At least the hardware fits the application.

      As for why to do it? Just do monkey around with hardware, of course. Myself, I added a foot-switch to my RB guitar, since the 5-way switch is too much of a pain to hit while playing. Totally superfluous, but I had fun doing it.

    • Why should we want to do that ? I know we can. But why playing poker with a guitar ? Perhaps I am getting old...

      What, you've never seen those World Series of (Online) Poker matches where one guy's holding a guitar, another guy isn't wearing pants, the third keeps screaming at his wife in the audience that he's busy and will take the garbage out later, the fourth is a teenage boy but says he's really a forty-year-old housewife, the fifth keeps jumping between two seats/hands and insisting he's really two people, and the rest are robots?

  • So does that mean a Power Chord in C-Major beats a Full House?

    • So does that mean a Power Chord in C-Major beats a Full House?

      How can it be major or minor without a third? Bah, maybe you're talking about that weird "key of C-Major" crap.

  • Now I have one decent reason to get that rock band guitar....

  • I wrote a synth in pure data that is controlled by my guitar hero controller!

    Seriously, this isn't a hardhack. All USB PS3 controllers can be plugged right into your computer (I also use an arcade stick like a sampler/drum machine). From there you use it like any HID. That means if your app supports HID you can use the controller for free. If not, you can use a program like joy2key or something.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by tepples (727027)

      All USB PS3 controllers can be plugged right into your computer (I also use an arcade stick like a sampler/drum machine). From there you use it like any HID.

      I seem to remember the USB PS3 SIXAXIS controller needing a special filter driver because it doesn't provide a "button descriptor" (or something like that), which tells the operating system's HID class driver how many buttons the controller has. But interestingly enough, a PS3 guitar controller made by Blockhead worked right away, both on Windows XP and on Ubuntu Hardy.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by geekoid (135745)

      But if you can do it and not ruin the pizza, it would be an interesting hack. I am assuming you mean pop-up toaster.

      • Turn the toaster on its side.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Spectre (1685)

            [paraphrased] Cook pizza in a pop-up toaster by bending the pizza like a taco and enclosing it in aluminum foil ... try it

            In the interests of safety, I'd like to point out that most pop-up toasters use non-insulated resistive wiring as their heating elements.

            Please do NOT put a conductive metal, especially something like aluminum foil that can have pieces easily bend and shred.

            Not only does this risk shorting across the heating elements, causing an overload, but if the aluminum foil only touches the

    • I used my wireless logitech gamepad to control my media player from the other side of the room over three years ago... I'm with you.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skine (1524819)

        And I've used my wireless Atari 2600 controller to play Sonic the Hedgehog.

        Basically they're all interesting "wow, you can do that!?" concepts, and it's important to remember that novelty frequently takes precedence over practicality.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by amicusNYCL (1538833)

      Because some guy used a game controller to play a different game. What, are you saying that doesn't just completely blow your mind?

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