Well, not really, but it's a pretty good song...
We're really here today to announce that the Good (But Slow) Folks over at PokerStars have finally trotted out a native Mac client for their dotcom site! (YAY!) Go here to download:
Free Mac Poker Download
What this means is that the billions (?) of MacUsers out there can finally play at PokerStars without having to run Windows via Virtual PC!! I did that for about a year, but the Windows/VPC environment came with its own quirks which made playing this way a real pain in the hinder. So much so that I just stopped playing at PokerStars and stuck to Full Tilt. Well now I can have my chips, and eat them too!
For a while, PS has had a Mac Beta running under their dotnet site, and while this worked very well, it did not offer access to cash games or freerolls offered here at 4king and other sites like RailBirds. (Can I plug them here? Censor me if ya gotta, but if the plug is cool, then by all means go be a RailBird and tell them I sent you!) There are some major differences in the two, namely the dotnet Beta doesn't have full features like avatar support, search for player feature, or the previously mentioned cash games, but those are now now moot points.
After a month or so of using the dotnet Beta and three days of using the dotcom Mac client, I can report some very good things:
1 They both work exceedingly well. As a matter of fact they seem to run much smoother than the PC clients, but that might simply be my Mac bias.
2 They run just dandy while running Full Tilt. I've had multiple tables running on both PS and FT simultaneously and since both sites offer a "Tile Tables" option it's pretty easy to arrange them on your screen for optimum viewing. As long as you have the bandwidth, you're good to go.
3 After being away from PS for over a year, I was amazed to find my account still waiting for me, six-figures and all! (Play money, so don't ask for a loan!) And when I started up the dotcom client my avatar was also right there where I left it! Coolness!
I have found one small bug in both PS clients which is that they sometimes lock up when I start up BitTorrent. I don't think this is a bandwidth issue because FT runs fine with BT running but for poker I can hold off on the downloads for a while. Otherwise they're just peachy!
So get on over to PS.com and click that download button kids! There's a whole new world full of donks waiting for you!
Polka On A Banjo!
