That graphic heavy PKR takes up some space on your hard drive is to be expected. The size of other poker sites may be more surprising.

Today, many online poker players have forceful broadband connections and huge hard drives, two pieces of equipment that make the size of a download poker software irrelevant.

However, if you're playing on a small computer or a slow connection, the size of the software may be a critical factor when choosing an online poker room.

Download software sizes

We investigated the size of the download poker games that you download from the most popular poker sites.

This is what we found:

Poker Site

Download size

PKR

939

Party Poker

363

William Hill

180

Bet365 Poker

151

Poker Stars

78

Full Tilt Poker

75

UB Poker

62

Absolute Poker

46

SportsBook Poker

42

PlayersOnly

42

Titan Poker

40

Bodog

34

Action Poker

31

Everest Poker

19

Betfair Poker

19

Bwin

17

Pacific Poker

15

 

It's interesting to note that a few sites are clearly bigger than the rest. Again, the size of PKR shouldn't surprise anyone, since they use tons of 3D graphics.

And I think the large size of the Party Poker download is due to them giving you not only online poker but online casino, online backgammon and online bingo, all in one go. Even if you don't ask for it, which is a bit too nice in my opinion.

But what about William Hill and Bet365? I have no explanation to the massive download packages of these sites.

PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker? Maybe those are just big sites.

I'm sure there are natural explanations or the varying sizes, but the point is, the biggest sites may not be a viable choice if your technical conditions are a limiting factor.

Managing your files

Of course, nothing prevents you from removing poker downloads that you don't use at the moment. Once you need them, it's easy enough to re-install them.

Just make sure you don't throw away your hand histories! And you'd better keep a record of your log in details. (But not in plain text on your hard drive!)

And, of course, it's always a good idea to remove the installation file once you've installed the download poker client. It takes up space on your hard drive and you'll never need it again.