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Viva
virtual Las Vegas
(2/7/03)
Superheroes
face risks every day. Their exploits often involve overcoming
adverse odds, counting on luck and skill to win the day. In
fact, many of the less prudish superheroes spend vacations in
Vegas, playing the game of chance that is their meat and
potatoes. Power Downloader's relentless quest for great
downloadable software doesn't give him much free time, so in
lieu of a trip to Nevada he plays cards and dice on his
computer, testing his luck even when he's not confronting
supervillains.
Practice your five-card
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A pair of aces in 5-Draw
Mania could be a winning
hand. | Texas Hold’em,
Seven-Card, Midnight Baseball, Hi-Lo: The variations of the
common poker game go on forever. But Power is a poker
purist--no wilds, no fancy rules, just five cards and nerves
of steel. That’s why he strengthens his poker prowess with 5-Draw
Mania. The basic poker game lets Power pretend he’s a high
roller without risking a dime. All he has to do is make a
pretend bet and belly up to the table for some no-holds barred
five-card. Power can study his playing performance with the
game’s statistics feature. Winning percentages, average bank,
average bet, best hand, longest winning streak, and an
exhaustive list of all winning hands are all tracked. Power
can even export his statistics to study later or to show off
to his friends. It’s not quite Vegas, but it’s as close as
Power wants to get to the real thing without losing his shirt
(or cape).
Luck be a lady
Luck settles
arbitrarily on one's endeavors. Power accepts this statement
as a truth, but he does believe that sometimes you can sniff
out the direction luck has decided to hang out. For example,
standing in the middle of a casino floor he asks himself if
the roulette table is calling or the slots. But as he tends
toward virtual games of chance, his casino of choice is USA
Casino, which offers more games than most brick-and-mortar
casinos have in one place. He gets to find out if luck is
waiting for him in the card games, table games, video poker,
or slots, with up to 20 games in each category. Though USA
Casino offers the option of playing for real money, you can
choose to play for free as long as you want.
Roll dem bones
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Roll poker hands on six
dice in NiceDice. | The
allure of dice goes back centuries. While Power Downloader
enjoys a good card game, sometimes he yearns for the weight of
six small cubes in his hand, the clattering and clicking as he
rolls them onto a table top, and the anticipation of seeing
the right combination of dots show up. Power gets his fix with
NiceDice,
a game that requires you to get dice rolls comparable to poker
hands, such as four of a kind, full house, and straight. Like
Yahtzee, click a button to roll your dice, save the ones you
want to keep, and roll again. Power likes NiceDice because it
looks good and runs well, providing a quick distraction when
he can't settle in for an all night poker game.
Build a winning combination
Power
Downloader dreams of financial bliss just like the rest of us.
He occasionally fantasizes about hanging up his cape once and
for all and moving to a tropical island to work on his novel.
Unfortunately, crime-fighting doesn’t offer much in the way of
bling-bling, so Power holds up hope by playing the lottery.
But being master of the Internet, Power doesn’t just choose
numbers out of thin air--he makes the numbers game downright
scientific by using Lotto
Logic 2002 Professional. To get odds-friendly
combinations, Power downloads past results of the lottery he
plays from the Lotto Logic Web site. The software then
generates numbers through hard-core probability analysis.
Depending on his philosophy for the day, Power can churn out
picks from numbers that were historically hit most often or
least often. On the days he’s feeling flush with luck, Power
fires up the Range Finder feature which sorts through lottery
statistics and churns out a large range of probable numbers
for Power to choose from.
Tune in next week for another exciting episode of...Power Downloader!
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