Best Poker Software Sites
Poker software is the key piece of the puzzle that determines how you interact with your poker site. If you play at a poker site with poor software, your experience will suffer regardless of how nice the rest of the poker site is. We firmly believe that poker software is more than just an aesthetic thing; it largely determines how strong your overall experience is with that poker site.
A list of the best poker software sites is open to a little bit of debate. What one poker player prefers in his software may not be what everyone else wants. But even so, there are a few poker sites that we can generally agree have better software than most. And on this page, that is exactly what you will find.
1. UB Poker
If you’ve browsed around here long enough, this number one pick will not be a surprise. UB Poker has had our favorite software for a long time. It’s not that their software is groundbreaking by any means, it’s just that the software functions so well. If the UB Poker software never changes again, we would be perfectly content with that.
The UB Poker software is so great because it is fast, simple and functional. This may sound boring at first, but go visit UB Poker right now and download the software to see for yourself. The software moves at a rapid pace so you can get in lots of hands per hour. The animations are fast and crisp while the graphics are designed to be simple and easy to keep up with.
Other poker sites try to add a bunch of features and complex graphics and end up cluttering the entire interface. These internet poker sites end up having slow animations, long waits in between hands and more bugs than sites like UB Poker. The fast, sleek software of UB Poker beats everything else by a mile.
2. Absolute Poker
Absolute Poker also has a solid software package. They used to have the worst software in the industry, but they completely rebuilt the software from the ground up and now have a rock solid poker interface. It looks like they actually listened to all the player complaints, made a list and fixed everything people did not like about the old software.
Today’s Absolute Poker software is lightweight and fast moving. It doesn’t stall or hang-up ever and the games move at a quick pace. The poker lobby is easy to navigate and the colors are all arranged to make it easy on the eyes. Overall, the Absolute Poker software reminds us of the UB software, so we like it!
You can visit Absolute Poker to download the software and give it a try. They also have a no-download option that works quite nicely. In either case, you’ll find that the software makes it easy for you to keep the focus on what’s important: playing poker.
3. Sportsbook Poker
Sportsbook Poker’s software looks completely different than any of the other sites on this list. The software was designed with a dark, almost futuristic look that is both clean and simple. They use vector graphics so that no matter how you resize and arrange the tables, the graphics remain crisp and clear.
If you like features, you will really like the Sportsbook Poker software. They have more features than just about anywhere else we’ve ever seen. The software provides unique features such as the ability to run it twice, to check which hole card would have come up had you not folded and more. It’s a unique take on internet poker that brings back some of the things you would expect to see in live card rooms.
What Makes Great Poker Software
The main thing to look for in poker software is functionality. Once you really get into the games, the graphics and sound effects don’t mean anything. What you really want is software that does what it’s supposed to do and stays out of the way. If the graphics or sound effects are especially bad, though, it can detract from the experience.
For graphics, we have found that simpler is better. All those big time 3D graphics may look like fun at first, but the novelty quickly wears off. Your eyes get used to seeing the same graphics every day, so what you want is something that is easy to see. Graphics that clearly display whose turn it is and clearly display the bet amounts are the best.
Extra features are nice and all, but the novelty for those quickly wears off as well. Being able to run it twice with your friends is fun, but in the end most people don’t use those features heavily. The most useful features are ones that make your life easier: auto-rebuys, four color decks and so on.