Will You Be Able to Play Online Poker Using the New Apple iPad?

With the introduction this week of Apple's new iPad tablet, you may as a poker player have wondered about its capabilities for playing online poker. After some early analysis of the technical components of this otherwise fantastic new product, it really doesn't look that way, and even if you could, rounders would choose not to, given that multi-tabling would be even more unlikely.

The iPad screen itself coming in at a 9.7 inch diagonal LED backlit glossy widescreen, would've actually been great for a poker table in terms of dimensions, but that would only be for those players who like to play one table at a time. More and more players these days multi-table.

But that's not to say you might not want to relax on the couch with the family and have a little game going in the background while everyone's watching the movie or something along the lines. In that sense, another problem arises and that's the memory required to run a poker program. First of all you have to download the software from the poker site. Have you downloaded poker software from a poker site on your iPhone? No, it's really not meant for that, and the premise of the iPad is rather similar to the iPod in that the memory is based on a flash drive, and the storage is rather limited compared to a laptop or desktop.

There's also the problem with Wi-Fi and 3G being able to handle the transfer of data at a rapid rate reliably. So even if you could download poker software the transfer of information would be suspect, and the iPad team has come right out saying that it does not support flash technology on the web, and we know that some poker sites have a flash re-player or so you're already limited as to not being able to use all the features of the game.

Keep in mind as well that only Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars are Mac compatible as it is right now. To play on another site or to use third party poker software, Mac users have used software like Parallels which is a bridge program allowing PC software to work on Mac hardware. So even if the iPad had the power to run poker software, you'd also need to be running a bridge program, and that means multitasking which the iPad clearly says it cannot do.

So if you imagined taking your iPad out into the backyard this summer and squeeze in a sit and go tournament here and there, it's highly unlikely at this point. If you were waiting for this product for some portable poker playing, then you can safely go ahead now and spend the extra 500 bucks or so for a full featured laptop.

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