\jeff{krimmel}

What a Total Crock

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how I recently set up an account for myself on Pacific Poker. I’ve been having fun playing some poker a few times per week, but I recently ran into a problem.

On Tuesday, I logged in using the “no download” Java client on my Linux machine at work. I had a half hour at lunch, and I figured why not play a few hands. Everything went fine. In fact, the client ran much more smoothly on my Linux machine than it does on my Apple iBook at home. I made a small amount of money. I was happy.

Then last night I wanted to play at home before I went to bed. I tried to log in, but I got a “Login failed” message box. I was prompted to download the new multi-player client available on their website. The problem is that the downloadable clients are Windows-only. I don’t use Windows.

And why would they direct me to the downloadable client? The Pacific Poker website is designed such that when you view it from a web browser in Mac OS X, you see a different front page than their default one. So, even though I’m playing on a Java client within my web browser, which makes it known to Pacific Poker than I am using Mac OS X, I am still asked to download a Windows-only client. Weird.

But it won’t even let me log in. I set up my account on my iBook, and I had used it exclusively for my online poker playing until Tuesday when I used my Linux box at lunch. My account name hasn’t changed; my password hasn’t changed. Everything is still on the level. But I am no longer allowed access to my account from my iBook. I logged on again today at lunch from my Linux machine at work, and everything again worked swimmingly.

I had emailed the Pacific Poker technical support team on Tuesday night about this issue, and they got back to me on Wednesday morning. They asked if I had used a PC to log in to my account. I explained that I had used a Linux box, and I of course had used the no download Java client that I had been using on OS X.

So tonight Pacific Poker got back to me, and at the beginning of their reply, I find this laughable assertion:

Unfortunately at this current time our software does not work on Linux computers, we are looking into this for the future but at present have no plans for releasing Linux friendly software.

What a total crock. That’s empirically false. I did use their software, in the form of their no download Java client, to play poker from my Linux machine at work. It turns out that Java and Flash work perfectly fine in Linux, and thus if you have a Java-only or Flash-only client, it works perfectly fine in Linux. Shocking, huh?

So, this tells me that Pacific Poker has a built in check that determines whether someone either uses an OS X machine or a non-OS X machine to log in via their no download client. If you use a non-OS X machine, they assume it’s a Windows box. If you then try to log in on your OS X machine, you’re refused access and asked to download the Windows-only client.

What the hell kind of policy is that? Why can’t I use the Java or Flash clients from any machine with an active Internet connection? What does Pacific Poker care what operating system I’m using? They only have a downloadable client for one operating system, and I don’t use that operating system. I have to use their no download clients to play on their site. Why are they giving me so much grief because I use a Linux computer some times and a Mac computer other times to access my account? I just don’t get it.