Playing paid or free poker online is a game of skill, chance with a little luck thrown in for good measure.

As we all know, 52 cards make up a deck and whatever 5 cards are dealt out, one of those will always win. You could be looking at a completely awful hand of a pair of 2s, or even an A high, but whatever they are, one will always win. This is the wonderful world of poker, not knowing which hands are going to win the game.

When dealt cards you must first decide whether they are suitable to your style of play. Then the decision is whether to fold, call or raise the big blind.

Every individual player has their own style of playing. Some players will only play face cards, whereas others will play any card given to them. That is a style of play. I know of many players who will play nearly every hand pre-flop as long as the bet is within their comfort zone.

Once the flop is seen, it becomes more interesting and a bigger decision needing to be made. If you are holding 3 4 off suit and the flop shows AKJ, what is the likelihood that you will continue with the hand? I would imagine you would fold, unless it is a check through until the turn card is shown.

No poker player is the same, and its important to remember that you can never bee 100% sure how each player will play a hand. There could very well be someone holding 3 4 offsuit and try to bluff and bet big once the flop is shown. I, for one, would never attempt that with such low cards, but I have seen it happen, it’s a great mystery of how others play!

For this reason, it is essential that you study each of your opponents where possible before sitting down with them at a table. You should be able to grasp enough information about their game play to figure out their moves when playing them.

Does that always work to your advantage you may ask yourself. Well, the answer would be no. As I stated earlier, any given 5 cards will win a hand and they may very well be holding Q 10 and flopped a straight. But the odds are in your favor to predict certain scenarios after learning others’ style of play.

Always be observant, never just assume someone is bluffing, and most important, remember to play your game. Your style of play is ultimately what you must rely on to win in poker so be sure to practice and refine in free poker online freerolls before moving up to cash games.

Tokyo-based  gadget maker Solid Alliance has given us quite a few cool/whacky USB drives in the past, and their new sushi USB stick [JP] is a nice addition to the line-up. The so-called SushiDisk offers 2GB of storage, but that’s not really the important selling point here, is it?

You can use the PVC devices with your Windows computer or Mac (USB 1.1 and 2.0 are supported). There are six different versions, all of which are pictured above and weigh between 15g and 19g. The SushiDisk also doubles as a cell phone strap, which is pretty fascinating.

Fans of sushi and bizarre gadgets living outside Japan can get the SushiDisk, too: Head over to Geek Stuff 4 U, and with a little luck you might get the thing before Christmas (price: between $44.58 and $54.10 plus shipping, depending on the sushi “flavor” you choose).

Of course, I don’t expect our readers, as savvy (and sexy) they are, to instantly know what a MIMO sub-display is — so I direct you to our video review of the last version of this fun little doodad. Basically it’s a small display (7-8 inches) for putting your AIM list, media player, or torrent window. Handy if you like that kind of thing and could use a little extra space on your desktop.

Personally I was okay with not having one… until they announced that they’re coming out with a touchscreen version. The 720-S, one of two upcoming MIMO version from manufacturer Nanovision, will have itself a dandy little touchscreen (capacitive, I’d guess, you’d knock the thing over if you had to use a stylus).

This would be an amazing peripheral, especially in a system like Windows 7 that will be optimized for multi-touch and gesture control. Pricing isn’t announced yet, but its non-touchscreen relation, the 710-S, will cost $150. So at least $200 for the cool version, but don’t quote me. With a little luck we’ll get one to review and you guys will have the whole story then.

The iPhone 3GS during a talk time test. The "Watchmen" DVD is merely there to simulate a user holding the phone to their ear, thereby shutting off the screen. Music from the Zune is being played through both phone mics.

(Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET)

Last year I had a bone to pick with Apple for not including a call duration feature on the iPhone. Not a big deal to most people I’m sure; however, when it comes to testing talk time here in CNET Labs, I can’t think of a more useful feature.

With last year’s iPhone 3G, I was able to circumvent this inconvenience by tracking the phone’s “Time since last full charge” duration. This number, as you might have guessed, tells you the amount of time that’s passed since the phone was last fully charged. So, all I had to do was charge the phone fully, start the test, wait until the battery died, plug it back in, and check that number.

This worked fine last year, but with the current round of iPhone 3G and 3GS testing, I’m getting extremely varied results–so varied, in fact, that I can no longer trust this method.

No matter, though, since the latest iPhone OS 3.0 added a call duration feature. I figured I’d just set up the talk time test–which involves taping earbuds from a MP3 player to the mic of the iPhone and a landline phone, calling the landline phone, and waiting for the battery to die. Then I’d come back several hours later and have delicious results waiting for me (kind of like an iPhone-testing-results Crock-Pot).

Once again, I’m slapped back to reality as, unfortunately, the couple of times I’ve tried using the call duration feature on the 3G and 3GS I’ve had little luck. Apparently, if the phone’s battery dies in the middle of a call, the duration of that call isn’t saved on the phone.–yet another roadblock.

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