Mac Compatible Poker Sites Is Now The Norm

Long time Apple CEO Steve Jobs died yesterday, but not without leaving his legacy of being an innovative computer entrepreneur and inventor, who continue to advance the technology that we take for granted today.  This news has prompted me to write a post here about mac online poker rooms, which are now becoming the norm.  Just a few years ago a Mac user would have to search the web in order to find a room with software that was compatible with their Mac computer, but this is no longer the case.  This post will look at some of the top Mac compatible poker sites and how they implemented Mac computers into their business plan.

Titan Poker

Titan Poker offers a flash version of their free poker software that can run on any system, including Mac computers.  The even better thing is that the flash version does not require a download.  You simply visit the Titan Poker website, click on the flash button and get right to playing.  Titan Poker is one of the most popular online poker sites in Europe and should continue to be with these innovative ways to reach more players.

Carbon Poker

It was less than a year ago that Carbon Poker introduced their Mac compatible software.  It is downloadable at the Carbon Poker website and functions exactly like the downloadable PC version.  Carbon was one of the later poker rooms to jump on the Mac compatible band wagon, but it’s never too late.

PokerStars

PokerStars, which many people consider to be the biggest and best online poker site on the web has redone their entire software in order to enable Mac downloads.  I guess this only makes sense for the biggest poker room online, especially when it seems like more and more individuals are preferring Macs to PCs.

Mac computers don’t look like they are going anywhere and the major poker rooms seem to have realized this and almost all poker sites now offer some way for Mac users to play at their poker room.  What is going to be the next step?  I suspect some poker sites will be launching mobile phone compatible downloadable software very soon.  It seems like everything is going the way of the phone, and I expect a good portion of the poker players on mobile devices to be using iPhones.  Steve Jobs truly has left his mark.

Big Weekly Online Poker Tournaments

I really enjoy playing multi-table online poker tournaments.  The more entrants and the bigger the prize the better.  This post will look at some of the biggest weekly tournaments hosted at some of the best online poker sites.  I make some of these tournaments part of my weekly schedule and if you enjoy these type of tourneys I suggest you do the same.

Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt is my favourite poker room to play large multi-table poker tournaments.  Full Tilt offers great tournaments all week long, but there are a few each week that I thoroughly enjoy and hate to miss.

$200k Double Deuce

This tourney takes place every Sunday at 4:22pm EST.  There is $200,000 guaranteed and the buy-in is only $20 + $2!  First prize is at least $30,000 every week, which is quite the return on a little $20 investment (150000% return).  The $200k prize pool implies that around 10,000 players will enter.

$750K Sunday Guaranteed

$750,000 is up for grabs every Sunday at 5pm EST.  The buy-in for this event is $200 + $16 and there are many ways to enter this tourney without paying the buy-in (satellites, Full Tilt Points, etc.)  This week the prize pool is being doubled to $1.5M so Feb 6 is as good a time as any to win this tournament.

The Sunday Brawl

Here is another fun big money tournament at Full Tilt Poker.  Play begins at 2pm EST every Sunday.  The buy-in is $200 + $16 and $40 from every buy-in becomes a bounty on the players head.  The remaining amount goes to the prize pool, with $350k guaranteed every week.  If you happen to get the most knockouts you will also gain a free entry to next weeks Brawl.

Poker Stars

Sunday Million

This is the largest weekly tournament anywhere online.  $1M guaranteed every Sunday with the tourney starting at 4pm EST and the buy-in $215.  This is the biggest and baddest online poker tournament you can play.  To make matters even crazier this coming Sunday, PokerStars is making the prize pool $5,000,000 and guaranteeing $1,000,000 to the winner of the big event, plus the champion will bring home a Lamborghini Gallorado LP560-4!  Definitely check that out if you can.  Winning $1M from an online tournament sounds good to me.

Final Word

Full Tilt and PokerStars have some of the biggest and best weekly online poker tournaments available to players.  If you are looking for poker sites with the best mtt tournaments look no further than these two industry giants.  The PokerStars Sunday Million this coming week is going to be huge and I suggest everyone check it out!

Player Base for Various Poker Sites

This post will take a quick look at some of the more popular online poker betting sites and see just how many players are playing cash games or tournaments online at peak hours.  The more players playing at the poker room, the more options you as a player will have for game variety, stake and tournament size.  Poker Scout is a great tool to see how much traffic each online poker room had on any given day.

The biggest three online poker rooms are PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Party Poker, so we will take a look at these three first.

PokerStars

PokerStars averages around 30,400 cash game players online at any given time during the day.  At peak hours the cash game traffic can get up close to 50,000 people online.  On top of these cash game players there are usually around 180,000 tournament players playing in about 8000 PokerStars tournaments at any given time during the day.  PokerStars has continued to increase its player base over the past month and it looks to continue to grow into the future.

Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt Poker, on the other hand, usually has around 90,000 total players online, which includes an average of about 18,000 cash game players and 72,000 tourney players.  Over the last 6 months Full Tilt has grown by a greater percentage than PokerStars and looks to grab a larger marketshare from PokerStars in the future.  The development of rush poker by Full Tilt will likely grab more of PokerStars players over time.

Party Poker

The next biggest online poker room is Party Poker, but there is a huge drop off from the big two players.  Party Poker averages around 20,000 total players online at a given time and about 5,000 of these players enjoy cash games.  Party has seen a slight increase in players over the past six months, but this is levelling off.  Party Poker seems to be becoming just another one of the smaller poker rooms that can’t compete with the big two.

UB/Absolute Poker

UB, previously known as Ultimate Bet, shares players with Absolute Poker and even after cheating players and rebranding in order to try to gain a new identity these websites are quickly growing together and their merge has allowed for more games on the Cereus network that they are apart of.  This in turn will continue to bring in more players looking for an alternative to Full Tilt and PokerStars.  The network currently has about 11,000 players online at a time with 2,500 of these being cash game players.  Time will tell if these poker rooms can play fair and gain a larger market share from the top rooms.

Building your bankroll can be greatly helped by clearing online poker bonuses at various websites.  These big 5 sites are great options for those of you interested in building your bankroll through bonuses because there are lots of games to be played and the bonuses are actually very player friendly.

PokerStars 25 Billion Bash Promotion

Pokerstars is close to dealing it's 25 Billionth hand and to celebrate PokerStars is having a huge promotion called the 25 Billion Bash!  The poker promotion includes a variety of rewards and bonuses for PokerStars players including milestone hands, a reload bonus, the mega milestone hand and more!

Milestone Hands
Every millionth hand, starting from 24.5 billion, PokerStars is giving away cash prizes to the winners and the players dealt into the hands.  The higher the limit you are playing the bigger the prize will be.  At the micro limits the winner of a milestone hand wins $300, whereas if you play the high limits and win a milestone hand you receive $2500.

25% Reload Bonus
PokerStars is also offering at 25% reload bonus to all players.  It is very rare for PokerStars to offer reload bonuses and this would be a great opportunity to help build your poker bankroll if you are playing at Stars anyways.  The bonus is a 25% matching bonus up to $250.

Mega Milestone Hand
The 25 Billionth hand at PokerStars is going to be huge.  Over $250K will be won just on one hand of poker.  The winner receives a prize package of over $150K which includes $100,000 in cash as well as packages to the EPT Final, the WSOP, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and the World Championships of Online Poker main event.  All other players that are dealt into the hand will split $100K.

Those are the main parts of the 25 Billion Bash put on by PokerStars, but we shouldn't forget that Stars is also having $60,000 in new depositor freerolls for the days leading up to the 25 billionth hand.  The guarantees of the Sunday Million and Sunday Warm-Ups are also being increased for the occasion.