Playing poker on a Mac – A Mac lovers conundrum

If you’re a Mac owner and happen to be a poker player, chances are you’ll decide one day (likely today) that you’d like to download an online poker room client to your beloved machine. The chances are even higher that you’re going to be disappointed to find that many of the largest online poker sites DO NOT have a dedicated Mac Poker Client. They may offer a flash version or if you’re lucky, offer a “beta” version of their legacy (PC) client. This can be a very frustrating exercise and for many Mac owners, a major annoyance.

Fortunately, there are a handful of poker sites that understand the Mac owners universe and now offer dedicated poker clients that are 100% Mac Compatible. The two top sites that offer a real Mac poker client are PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. The folks over at FTP were the first to build a dedicated Mac poker application and honestly, have done a great job of it. They hired some of the top talent in the Mac-centric development world to take a look at their existing PC client and build a rock-solid application that is sure to please even the most demanding Mac owner.

Not to be outdone, the team at PokerStars quickly followed suit. While they are currently the largest site in terms of number of players, their Mac specific poker client is still a little lagging in the features department when compared to the Full Tilt version. Regardless, it’s worth trying out both of them in play money mode to decide which is best for you.

In all, there are (at the time of this writing) approximately a half-dozen online poker rooms that offer a Mac compatible poker client. Not all of them are install clients (yet) but if the Mac community continues to demand quality products such as those offered by Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, perhaps they’ll soon follow suit.