mobile broadband for poker

Originally posted by muel294
Hi All,

I am going to be moving house soon and I won't have internet setup until the 11/10/13. In the meantime I want to be able to play online poker. I was hoping to get a dongle on a short term basis.

I just wanted to know if anyone could tell me whether this will be suitable for online poker and what sort of GB data allowance I will need. Also would 3G be sufficient or will I need a 4G connection.

Cheers

Hiya

I have used dongles on and off since they only came in the PCI slot format about 10 years ago and only had a 70MB allowance so hopefully I can finally provide a helpful post.

You don't need a large data allowance at all as you are only using data for the most part to update individual hands as you already have the software downloaded. It's only when the poker room does a software update that any significant data is needed and even so it's not a great deal.

WHAT MATTERS

This is an absoloute must. Despite what the network is capable of. Area matters more than anything. 2G with a solid connection will be sufficient to play poker but a solid connection can be the difference of living in a valley which the last place I lived was in and not And no matter. When I work in a bookies at the weekend there is little to no chance of ever getting a worthwile signal because of all the tvs and electrical equipment. I have even tried placing the phone in the most obscure of places where there is a signal and then relaying the internet via bluetooth to my laptop but even then the connection can not be trusted.

If you or a friend have a phone on the same network that you are thinking of getting the dongle for, take it to where you are going to be using it (presumably) at home and see what sort of signal you get.

My last dongle was with Vodafone and worked so well, it was quicker then the home broadband when used at my parents house but was 'iffy' at my house,

On a side note. I'm from the UK but when I lived in Prague a few years ago, they had the exact same deal which was also with vodafone and I never had one problem whatsoever. Never a disconnection and never a problem playing poker and that was pre-3G.

Regarding allowance. If you were solely using it to play poker and NEVER to watch videos then even 1G would probably get you through the month no matter how much you used it. In fact it must be as when I was using it in Prague I doubt it was even possible to use more then a Gigabyte at 2G speeds and I use to use it to serve the net pretty much all day but it was never fast enough for video so I would never have tried it for that.

Hope that helps

thanks Bookie22

That's really helpful. The guy in the shop said that online poker would smash data limits so he's obviously got no idea then.

If I check what sort of reception / internet speeds I get off my phone in the location I'm planning on using the dongle, will that give me a good idea?

Cheers

Muel294

Thanks Bookie22 for helping out

that's pretty much it. but if you have a smartphone you should be able to use it as a hot spot and not require a dongle.

Originally posted by muel294
thanks Bookie22

That's really helpful. The guy in the shop said that online poker would smash data limits so he's obviously got no idea then.

If I check what sort of reception / internet speeds I get off my phone in the location I'm planning on using the dongle, will that give me a good idea?

Cheers

Muel294

No problem mate. The guy in the shop defintely doesn't know what he is talking about. Maybe he is thinking of online multiplayer video games or something where the graphics need to be streamed.

If your phone is setup to receive 3.5G or 4G or whatever speed your dongle is going to be then yes it will pretty much give you an exact answer. It's the same thing.

Originally posted by RasTweet
Thanks Bookie22 for helping out

My pleasure. This is about as close to poker advice I can give at the moment

Originally posted by thazar
that's pretty much it. but if you have a smartphone you should be able to use it as a hot spot and not require a dongle.

Yeah exactly. There are several ways you can get the internet from your phone to your laptop and it will work just like a dongle but with the benefit of being able to place your phone in certain areas where the reception is better which you can't do with a dongle and laptop.

If both phone and laptop have bluetooth you should be able to 'Tether' the two together in the same way as you would share a file. It's called 'pairing' Or you can plug via usb your phone directly into your laptop or as thazar said you can create a wifi hotspot with your phone and connect your laptop in the same way as you would connect it to any wifi network.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 and it works great.

You might want to turn off windows/other software updates. Just for the time being to save data.

Hi all,

I've moved this to the Computers and Technology Board.

Regards,

Mal.