This week I finally got my hands onto Nokia N810. It is really proven to be the device that will replace my laptop for non-business travel.

One of the important tests for the N810 was how suitable is it to play poker on. I am currently mostly playing on PokerRoom, so this is what I used for the test.

I was secretly hoping that PokerRoom’s web client will work on the internet tablet, but unfortunately it does not – the browser does not support Java applets. So the approach I used is remote desktop to my home Vista box, where I ran the poker desktop client.

The PokerRoom client is fixed at 800×600 window size, while the Nokia N810 has a 800×480 display. I knew that I will not fit the entire window, and wanted to check if it was still usable. I was very pleased to find out that the lower 120 pixels of the client are not a problem at all for finding and joining games. The table view is a problem, since the betting buttons are lower than the 480th pixel. If you switch to mini-tables though (ugly!) is fits perfectly well, even leaves room for the table statistics in the background.

Here are some photos of the experience. I could have taken screen shots, but these photos illustrate better how the experience looks on the real device.

Remote desktop to Vista:

Tournaments screen – the big drawback here is that you don’t get to see you bank status – it is in the status bar at the bottom. You just need to know how much money you have :)

Tournament screen

Table view – notice that the part of the tournament window in the background shows the statistics and position. This is very cool for multi-table tournaments.

The conclusion so far is that the Nokia N810 is perfect for playing poker when on vacation somewhere where WiFi is available (and that is almost everywhere nowadays). No more binging a heavy laptop, just so that you can play a tourney or two some evening.

As soon as I make my Full Tilt Poker account I will report on how playable it is from the Nokia N810.