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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!

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Wired.com has an article on the state of affairs of online gambling in the United States. As you may know, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was passed back in September of 2006, making it illegal for Americans to gamble online. Most online poker players thought this sucked, and apparently still do. Also, not surprisingly, they’re getting past the blockade with the same old tricks, such as foreign pre-paid debit cards and Canadian addresses. If it weren’t so sickenly disturbing that we’re going through Prohibition all over again, it might even be funny.

In the interesting side note department, it seems the player interviewed in the Wired article, identified only as ‘Boy Wonder,’ graduated with me from Haverford in 2005.

The novice used to pay the rent for Boy Wonder, who started playing poker full-time after graduating from Haverford College in 2005. He earned around $1,000 a week playing in $1/2 and $2/4 limit games, which specify the amount a player can bet during rounds of play. But now the game is more trouble to him than it’s worth. “It’s unstable,” he says.

Soooo, who could it be? I have theories…

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