With today being Blog Action Day, and with the whole world blogging about how we can improve the world around us, I thought I’d write a few words about what steps you can take to green up your online poker.
Lets face it the biggest demon you are going to face with online sanghoki is power usage. Here are seven tips for 7 days to help reduce the power usage of your online gaming.
- Switch to a notebook
The average desktop power consumption cruises along at 120 watts, whilst their portable cousins the notebook squeaks by with a lesser 30 watts. With the added benefits of portability it’s a no brainer.
- Shut down your computer
Many people believe that the extra power used to start your computer means you should leave your computer on. In reality while it does take extra electricity to turn your computer on, this is not more than is used by leaving your computer on for more than 10 minutes. So if your taking a lunch break or stepping away for a while, turn your computer off.
- Check your settings
Your computers operating system will have built in energy saving settings. Check with your manufacturers guide as to how you can adjust these and further reduce your power usage.
- Monitor your monitor
Your monitor uses a large portion of your energy, so where possible turn your monitor off. Screen savers are not energy savers, they still use your monitor at its full capacity. So don’t turn on your screen saver, turn off your monitor. You can also turn down your monitors brightness level, the brighter your screen is the more power its using.
- Get a gadget
There are several gadgets that work at reducing your vampire power usage (standby power). Whilst many of these gadgets can be rather expensive, there is one absolute bargain on the market, the Mini Power Minder. Priced at $14.95 on Amazon, this great little gadget shuts off your computer’s peripherals when the computer itself shuts down. A USB cable lets the device know when the computer is powered down and shuts off power to a secondary outlet. Plugging all of your extras into a power board connected to this second outlet would mean all of your extras stop leaching power while you aren’t on your computer.
- Go green
Most utility companies now offer a green solution to power, so you can switch from non-renewable energy to renewable energy. If this isn’t enough for you, there is always the option of switching your household to self powered. If you produce more energy than your household uses you can even sell that extra power back to the power grid!
- Offsets
If you are like me, and you don’t quite have the budget to set up your home as fully solar powered, and your energy provider doesn’t have a green power solution for you, then you can look at carbon offsets. Carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere as a result our intensive use of fossil fuels like oil and coal. By paying to balance (or offset) the your usage, by funding projects that reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide, and therefor lower your environmental footprint.
These are just a few tips from me to you, be sure to do your own research and see what is best for your situation. I will leave you with a little video that was made to help promote Blog Action Day.
Dodging a bullet
All through Floptober I’ve been looking for big hands that get crushed by the monster that is a queen or higher set of quads. Everyone loves drama and what could be better than a full house kings over queens running into quad queens?
I almost found that exact story, but thanks to some tight play the kings were folded preflop. The player in question, toonces222, folded K-6 offsuit in early position, an easy call at that stage. With a K-Q-Q there probably weren’t too many regrets, but when the flop brought another king that probably changed. At that stage in the hand if your holding a king, your are pretty confident you have your guy beat. Anyone betting against you you would probably assume they hold a queen and you have them beat or they hold a king and its a split pot. You don’t expect to get crushed by quads there.
Luckily toonces222 had laid down his king preflop, so the only person losing their money to Gucharo and his quad queens was pargrande and his J-7 offsuit, I won’t comment on that.
Just in case you found this post by mistake and you really need to know how to dodge bullets, try here: How to Dodge Bullets.