PokerStars Review

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PokerStars launched in 2001 and since then it has become a huge site recently overtaking Party Poker to become the clear Market leader.

Through aggressive marketing of their sponsored players such as former World Champions Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer, who both qualified for the tournament on PokerStars, the site has become identified as the place to ‘satellite’ into the World Series of Poker main event. It cost Moneymaker just $40 to win his seat into the ‘Big One’ while Raymer won a $160 double-shootout – not bad when you consider they won $2.5 million and $5 million respectively.

Around 20% of the 8,773 players who played in the 2007 main event qualified through PokerStars.





Traffic/Players

Log on at peak hours and you’ll find over 15,000 people playing at thousands of different ring game tables. However, this number is dwarfed by the number of tournament players who flock to PokerStars (especially just before the WSOP) to try to get into big offline tournaments. During peak hours there are upwards of 50,000 of them.

Some of the best online players in the world play here, especially in the big Sunday night tourney which guarantees a cool $1 million prize pool, and where winners usually walk away with around $170,000. Winners of this tournament have included former WSOP Champ Carlos Mortensen and other big time winners like JC Tran.

The site is very professionally managed and it has an excellent loyalty scheme.

Game Variety

As you would expect you can play all the main games of poker here. You’ll find Texas holdem, Omaha, Omaha high-low, seven-card stud, seven-card stud high-low, Razz, and HORSE played in tournament and cash game format.

Stakes start from micro-limits of $0.02/$0.04 up to high stakes games of $100/$200. No limit tables, with games of $0.01/$0.02 blinds and $1.00 buy-ins up to $10/20 blinds, $400 buy-in games.

Sit ‘n’ Go tournaments run all the time and can consist of as many as 27 players at three tables, but most are either single-table tournaments with nine players or two-table tournaments with 18 players. The two-table tournaments pay out four places while the single-table tournaments pay out three places.

If you’re playing on ‘Stars’ you must have a crack at getting into the WSOP or it’s own major offline tournament – the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure which takes place in January. Satellites for these run all the time.

There is also a series of events called the World Championships of Online Poker (WCOOP) too that runs for a couple of weeks each year, usually in September. The main event of this series in 2006 was a $2,600 buy-in no limit holdem event, with a prize pool topping $6 million. The winner cashed out an incredible $670,000.

Graphics/Software

The PokerStars software is excellent in terms of functionality, layout and graphics. A great feature of PokerStars is the use of player images. Each player gets to have an image that is shown by their name in whatever game they’re playing. Some players choose some pretty ‘out-there’ images and I once found myself playing in a ring game with three babies and four dogs!

Another good feature is being able to change the size of the table for all games so if you’re playing on more than one table you can follow the action on each. There are three style of card graphics to choose from as well as 11 backgrounds for the overall appearance.

The software works admirably well and smoothly. There are often multi-table tournaments with over 2,000 people (can be 7,000 in a freeroll) and very rarely are there platform problems caused by the huge traffic.

The software ensures there are an even balance of tables for the duration of the tournament and each player is allotted an individual time bank, after which you must act in the normal allotted time or else the hand will be folded.

PokerStars set itself apart as an industry pioneer when it introduced player notes on other players, and even more so when it launched playing statistics functions. Now this is an industry standard but ‘Stars’ was the first to do it.

Support/Banking

Real money deposits into your poker account are accepted in several ways: NETeller, eChecks, FirePay, CentralCoin, VISA /VISA Delta/VISA Electron/Gift and Prepaid VISA, MasterCard/Gift and Prepaid MasterCard, Diners Club International, and Solo/Maestro/Switch (available to UK players only). You can deposit in US$, CAN$, Euros or GBP.

For UK players, the ability to withdraw money directly in GBP and to have it swiftly delivered by cheque care of Fedex (all at no extra cost) is an unrivalled and outstanding service.

Another unique benefit at PokerStars is that a tournament host is always present at the final table of any major tournament. The host will pause the game, if players agree on it, and will work out a deal with the players if they want to chop the remaining prizes.

PokerStars has good email support, which is very quick and with good poker knowledge. However, there is no live or telephone support which can be frustrating.

Rake

PokerStars' rake is slightly below the industry average, with better offers at micro-levels and a lot better at the highest stakes. All no limit games are raked at 5% with a maximum of between $1 and $3 per hand depending on the number of players dealt cards at the table.

Tournament rakes vary according to the size of the game but are in line with the rest of the industry eg $5 0.50c, $10 $1, $20 $2 etc all the way up to a competitive $100 rake for $5,000 heads up tournaments, which equates to just 2%.