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Hardware Hacking Input Devices Toys Build Games

How To Play Poker With Your Rock Band Guitar 121

Posted by timothy from the jumprope-can-be-hifi-if-it's-got-usb dept.
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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How To Play Poker With Your Rock Band Guitar More

How To Play Poker With Your Rock Band Guitar

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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.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by nozzo ( 851371 )
              Only Slashdotters put 'Seriously, look it up' in brackets (Seriously, look it up).

      • 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.

      • Exactly, nothing beats having them do something fun with you, before you something else that's also fun.

        • Exactly, nothing beats having them do something fun with you, before you something else that's also fun.

          Like playing Japanese dating sims?

      • 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

            • Wow, your shallowness amazes me. Seriously, grow up.

              • Whatever. It was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but with a large grain of truth as well. If you really want to avoid shallowness, I would skip this site all together.

                • You're right. Bad day. My bad. Carry on with the shallowness. :)

                  • Your only mistake was taking anything you saw on Slashdot seriously.
                    • As a female, I need to add a key point to this debate. There is a world of difference between a guy who plays guitar in a band (hot) and a guy who isn't but when you go to his place for the first time he picks up a guitar from beside the couch and begins to play Stairway to Heaven (seriously offputting).

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by ari_j ( 90255 )
                      Thank you. That's what I was getting at from the start that some people just didn't understand. Playing Guitar Hero is the "wanna come up for coffee?" of our generation, more so than a real guitar is. Another point that was missed is that there's a big difference between being Jimmy Page, Ted Nugent, or Keith Richards and being just some dude who plays guitar. They're unfair comparisons here. I'm glad that one of the three women on Slashdot at least understood where I was coming from. =)
            • usually the singer schmoozes with fans, the girls talk to the guitar player, the bass player puts away the amps with his girlfriend, and the drummer gets tp spend a half-hour packing up his kit while everyone else gets some drinks. i was the drummer!! by the time i was done, it was time to load out, and the guitar player had scored, the bass player had left with his girlfriend, the singer was drunk, and lucky me had help loading from those weird drummer wannabes. oh yeah, some real good times! damn, i wish
              • See, now I can tell you HAVE been in a band!

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by ari_j ( 90255 )
                Then you have my situation, where the rhythm guitarist's wife plays wingman for me but manages to convince this really hot girl to grind on the lead guitar player, but the girl is too dumb to know which one that is and ends up hitting on the bass player, who in turn doesn't know about any of this and ends up going home alone as well. That was last weekend. I have instructed the rhythm guy's wife to talk about shirt colors instead of instruments unless she knows that a girl has an IQ over 85 next time. :P

          • 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.

          • WHAT?!? Pianos are far from everywhere. Unless it's an electric keyboard, which puts it in the same size/cost/commonality range as a guitar (acoustic). Pianos are huge, expensive, and not extremely common.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ari_j ( 90255 )
              Hotel lobbies, wealthy people's houses where a house party is going on, many bars that have been in existence for more than two decades, etc. all have pianos. I didn't say they're ubiquitous, just a lot easier to find in a public place than a guitar is. As a person who plays both, but is much much better at guitar, I speak from experience on this. It's always been easier to find an opportunity to serenade a girl with a piano than with a guitar. Except when I'm on stage, which is completely apart from th

      • 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]

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You're a real cocker now, 'bad analogy guy'. Every day, your obsession with attention and 'karma' drives you to post on slashdot. And every time, in each post, I see your raw desires. You're obsessed with getting your 'karma' level higher and higher, you crave for attention, and you spend each day looking for articles to comment on. And now you're talking about picking up women. How many women have you picked up thanks to your high karma levels? Yeah, I'll fuckin pick up women. Why don't you come here and w

    • 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.

  • Why? Sure, i can cook pizza in my toaster but that doesnt make it a good idea.

    • 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.

  • Wow... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @01:55PM (#29583165)

    I bet that guy rocks at poker.

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

    by dunkelfalke ( 91624 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @02:00PM (#29583245)

    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, 2009 @02:01PM (#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 with two thumbs wouldn't want to strum a guitar and have code flow from his awesome chords?

        This guy. Right here.

        There, fixed that for ya.

    • How about i just smash my guitar into your poker table then take all the chips? There. I win!

    • Play with DDR Pad. Purpose: amusing workout/exercise.

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

      It's doable. The five "color" buttons can be interpreted as 5 bits, which give us 2^5=32 possible characters, probably enough for a simple case insensitive language... of course, nothing stop you from using another button (select?) to get to 64 and have more breathing room.

      Could be very cool, in a geeky, "that's what I did during my weekend" kind of way. I wonder how a=a+1 sounds...

      • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          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

    • 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!
  • 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?

  • I played mahjong with my force feed-back steering wheel but I didn't get a slashdot article!

    Request for *facepalm* mod category please.

    • 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.

  • Yeah, at first I thought this was lame since the guitar is just another type of USB wireless controller but then I watched the video. The ALL IN command is linked to the star power feature of the guitar which would might be amusing to those watching you play poker.

  • This is a terribly dull, and not all that great idea. The last thing I need is some goofball calling me with a 4-flush on the river because he can't hit the orange button easily enough. Now, if I can get some sort of KVM-like gonzo so i can switch between rocking out on my plastic guitar and folding J-3 offsuit in another 2 hour session, then I might be interested.

  • I play poker with my dog.

    He loves it so much he started gambling with his friends and wearing old-timey clothes.

    We have some pictures at our site http://www.dogsplayingpoker.org/gallery/coolidge/ [dogsplayingpoker.org] .

  • Kinda stupid. I rather remote into my laptop with my iPhone and play poker anywhere.
  • 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....

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by VisiX ( 765225 )
      How can this be considered a decent reason? I'll rephrase; is it possible to come up with a string of words that ends with "with your rock band guitar" that you do not consider to be a decent reason?
  • 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.

  • This article really inspired me, so I went and made some experiments myself. I don't have one of those guitar controller, but I do own a Fender Stratocaster made from something very heavy, so I reckoned I could modify it slightly and use it as a sledgehammer. It worked! I actualy managed to demolish a small garden in my neighbor's garden, but then it developed a HW related fault, and I had to stop, but it sure shows that the principle is sound.

  • ...To my dismay, I discovered that the guitar controller really isn't very good at poker. But on the bright side, I won enough money for a couple DLC tracks.

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