Of course, I hadn’t had enough yet (and I wanted to make up for my losses, like any deteriorating gambler), so I went looking for poker software online.

I kept playing poker for some time that night, until I had to cut my losses (fake money, if I need say). The next morning I went looking for other card games.

It seems that there are a lot of great card games available for download. The great majority of these games – and the one we’ll be eyeing today – are games that you can play against others online. We’ll also focus specifically on a piece of software that is supported by both Windows and Mac systems.

CAUTION

Note that most of these applications require you to be of legal age, even if you’re not playing with real money. Online gambling is a serious thing and most services will tempt you into playing with real money. Some of them even go as far as giving better cards to new players, and promise you special bonuses if you sign up with your credit card.

Be very wary of this, and keep in mind that a lot of these premium services (especially if you move on to the chance gambling) are specifically designed to take more money than they give!

In the end you’re most of the time better off playing with fake chips, saving the real money for the games with your friends, where you’re better aware of the set conditions.

Downloadable Poker Client

These are applications that you can download to play poker with. The advantages? Your games are always within reach.

PokerStars

PokerStars.net is the free counterpart of the premium PokerStars.com. It’s also the biggest online poker community in the world, with over 14 million members (yes, you heard that right!).

Available Games

Besides the popular Texas Hold’em, you can also play games of Omaha and Seven Card Stud (both High and Hi/Lo).

PokerStars hosts a very large number of very varying tournaments, the biggest free online tournament site in the world. The play limits differ widely as well, ranging from street-low to sky-high. Because of this, you can almost always find a fitting game right away, with the play limits you prefer.

The Client

The software of PokerStars is, compared to various other poker clients, remarkably swift and has a lot of advanced possibilities.

In poker you don’t just play with cards, you play with people as well. In PokerStars it’s possible to tag notes to other players that you encounter, which you’ll be able to view later on. This way, if you play with returning people, you can easily remember one’s behaviour; if he was an defensive or an aggressive player, tactical or careless.

Another feature is to change the client’s theme. Choose from one of the available styles, and adjust it to your liking. It won’t make you a better player, but it surely soothes the eye.

If you enjoyed this article, or gambling in global, you might also like to read our betting for fun article.

What poker clients do you use and why? Spout it out in the comments!

I talk a little about being hacked and about Simon‘s article on betting websites.

This podcast is available through iTunes so don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast if you have an iPod, or in another podcatcher if you have a different MP3 player.

[display_podcast]

Why is it? Is it the excitement? The unpredictability? Perhaps the most appealing thing about betting is to let things depend on chance, maybe fate. And we just love to be lucky. We love to win.

For some of us there’s a reason we want to win. The reason is made of paper and we pay our bills with it. It’s the thing we like to call money.

But we all know how uncontrollable people are as a race – when people feel lucky, they start to act like it. If you can win once, you can surely win twice, right?

Sadly, a lot of people don’t realise until it’s too late that it doesn’t work this way.

As MakeUseOf is all about the ‘free’ (we don’t even want you to pay for software, never mind taking a second mortgage on your house), we will focus on fun-betting today. Below is an in-depth review of dotblu, and if you scroll further down you’ll find two other great betting websites.

All F, no $

The concept behind free betting is pretty self-explanatory. You can bet, win or lose and in many cases even earn ‘points’ or a reputation. What you will not be doing is putting your hard-earned money into it.

Because you can’t harvest anything without any seeds, you won’t score the big bucks from this form of betting. Some sites do allow you to earn small amounts (which they can give because of partner projects with premium askers), but we will not be going into any detail about that. All featured websites will be for fun and no gain.

dotblu – An In Depth Review

Some of you might know this site under the name of BluBet, a fun betting site that has been around pretty long, also reviewed in MakeUseOf’s directory some time ago. If you don’t want to miss out on interesting sites like these that don’t reach the frontpage, you can subscribe on this page.

Recently, the name was changed to dotblu, along with a few interface changes.

After you’ve made an account, you’ll be able to rate the questions themselves and vote on them.
The two major bet types are majority wins and predictions.

These majority wins-questions are most of the time opinion-related questions, based purely on ‘why’, and ‘should’. The answer that wins with the most votes is then decided a winner. While betting, you’ll have to think past your own opinion and try to guess where the overall opinion lies.

Predictions are a whole other principle. Questions or statements about future conditions are made. You’ll have to guess what ‘will’ be. The results are therefore not based on the audience, but on (future) facts.

Other betting modes include ‘poll challenges’, in which you learn to guess the mainstream opinion and ‘speed betting’.

There’s also a possibility to embed bets on your webpage, as shown below.

But how does it roll?

Each user gets assigned a number of “BluBucks”.  This is virtual money that he or she can master. You spend these BluBucks by answering questions. When a question ends, the pot gets divided amongst the winners.

You can also spend BluBucks in various ways. One is to customize your dotblu world, some personal space on the site. You can buy cars, bikes, houses and backgrounds worlds!

Another way to spend your money is to buy presents (beers, chocolate, or perhaps a hug), to send to your friends on dotblu, and various tools. These tools allow you to interact with the other users in a different way, like giving the first 8 people who respond on your question a slice of pizza.

Other Great Betting Sites

Of course this isn’t the only good site. See the list below for other great fun betting sites.

Long Bets

A nice, simple site where you have to vote on statements to be true or false. These bets can extend very far into the future and each side is always supported by a very thorough argument.

This is for the more in-depth betting. Read the arguments and weigh them against each other. Which one will prevail?

Hubdub

Here you’ll have to predict all kinds of issues concerning world news. It also works with virtual money to bet, and allows you to bet in degrees, from ‘not really sure’ to ‘certainly’.

A very interesting website, certainly try-worthy.

Do you use these sites? If so, how do you like them? Do you know of any other fun betting sites?