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The following is a compensated review for PokerStars for Mac.

If you’ve ever played online poker, you’re probably familiar with PokerStars.com, one of the most popular poker sites on the Web. The ‘Mac-friendly’ poker reference site PokeronaMac.com, is reporting that the Mac version of PokerStars’ downloadable PC client will be hitting the Web soon. If you want, there’s a place to voice your support of the new Mac version, and press PokerStars for its release.

Now, it’s pretty neat that PokerStars is choosing to support a Mac client, especially in light of the fact that most new Macs will run Windows just fine. It speaks to the volume of PokerStars’ subscriber base that they have seen a significant demand for a Mac client from their customers. However, what I don’t understand about PokerStars or many of the other popular poker sites is simply why a well-written Java client is not the standard. Java will run on Mac, Windows, and even Linux, and it’s this sort of thing that the sometimes cumbersome, always lethargic language was designed for. There’s no offline play in the downloadable clients of any of the companies, as far as I know, so it seems that there’s no reason to use the player’s computer as the source of the application, when a universal client-server language exists that is universally compatible with all desired target platforms.

In spite of this note (and perhaps someone from PokerStars will care to comment), I think it is pretty nifty that the Mac client will be coming out. I’m only a little hesitant because there doesn’t seem to be a release date on PokerStars.com or PokeronaMac.com for the Mac client, and this wouldn’t be the first time that such a project never appeared after a lot of advance publicity. I certainly hope this isn’t the case here, but only time will tell. Until then, hope springs eternal!

mac, poker, pokerstars, pokerstars.com, poker on a mac

The following is a sponsored review of BackgammonMasters.com, a site where you can play online backgammon for fun or, if you don’t live in the U.S., for actual money (and actual fun).

BackgammonMasters.com is a site that offers online backgammon with both real-money and fake-money games. As a die-hard online poker player who has been shut off by the new Prohibition against online gambling in these fair United States, I was immediately curious to see if, somehow, online backgammon was exempt from the foolish law. Nope. Right in the EULA, in bold print (kudos to the site for not hiding the sad reality of our backward nation’s politicians’ encroachment on our rights), is the bad news:

Residents of the United States are not permitted to participate in any promotions or real money games at our site. We are not accepting transactions from residents of the United States.

So there you have it. If you live in the States, and want to play for real money, it’s illegal. Well, with that out of the way, I decided to have a look at other aspects of the site, including the sister-site Gammonish.com, a site that teaches you about the rules and strategies of backgammon.

Gammonish.com labels itself the ‘official bible’ of backgammon, and, while it’s tough to prove or disprove the assertion that it’s the ‘official’ anything, the site is definitely a backgammon bible. The navigation is simple and light, although there are obviously a lot of choices, but the content is wide-ranging and extensive. For example, there are pages and pages of articles discussing everything from strategy to what backgammon software to buy. While I still can’t play for money on BackgammonMasters.com, I can make darn sure with Gammonish.com that I’m ready to go when the bloody embargo ends and I can gamble my frugal trappings away online once again.

online backgammon, real money, poker, online poker, backgammon, rules of backgammon, play backgammon, real money backgammon