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Poker Room
Bonus
PC
Mobile
Poker Room Highlights
Review
1
100% up to
$500
- Receive a 100% to $500 bonus at PartyPoker
- This poker room accepts credit cards, ewallets & PayPal
- Fast cashouts and excellent software
2
- This poker room also offers bingo, sports & casino games
- Accepts PayPal deposits + great customer support
3
100% up to
$500
- Receive a 100% to $500 sign up bonus
- Bwin Poker accepts Paypal + credit card deposits
- Bwin software is Mac / Windows & mobile compatible
There was definitely a point in the evolution of the online poker industry where it seemed as if Java might be the future of poker room software. With portability, stability and tons of resources for programmers, Java simply made sense to developers of online poker rooms.
Unfortunately, those advantages were ultimately outweighed by overhead and the limitations involved in the Java platform, and rooms opted to primarily develop standalone clients supplemented by either Java or Flash-based versions of the software. For a time it seemed as if the mobile online poker market might provide Java with a path to dominance in the industry, but as it became clear that mobile would be a far more proprietary arena than most had originally imagined, the last real hope for Java to play a major role in online poker evaporated.
Java Poker Rooms Still Attract a Base of Poker Players
While Java-powered poker rooms may not play a major role in the industry, it's important to not understate the role they nonetheless play. Many of the most popular poker rooms still deliver their "no download" poker software version via Java, and such clients continue to be very popular among players - especially in markets with below-average internet penetration or in contexts where players aren't able to download software onto a machine. That's more of the poker-playing population than some might suspect; in fact, some estimates put the total share of no download clients at something approaching 15% of all players online.
Assuming that share isn't destined to shrink in the near future, it seems as if Java will continue to be relevant as a platform for online poker rooms. What level of relevance the programming language will enjoy is a separate question.
The Future of Java in the Online Poker Industry
One big edge for Java: Its main rival, Flash, is on the way out (and quickly) thanks to security, performance and compatibility issues. That means more and more rooms looking to develop a no download client will be turning to Java, although HTML 5 could easily emerge as a fierce rival for browser-based online poker development.
Ultimately, it makes sense to look to the past of Java to understand the likely track for the future. The platform has survived stiffer challenges in the past and continued to survive, if not thrive, so it seems reasonable to conclude that poker players will be able to play at any number of Java-based online rooms well into the near future.
While "Java" might not be the first word that pops into your head when you think about online poker software, the programming language has played a fairly significant role in the development of the industry as a whole. That role has certainly diminished over the last decade, but - for at least some players - rooms powered by Java still remain an important part of the online poker landscape.