PokerStars Review

PokerStars is the largest poker room on the internet today! This is due in part to their determination to remain available to US players. PokerStars is also compatible with both Macintosh and Windows. PokerStars offers higher guaranteed prize pools, more tournaments, and more cash game action than any other poker website on the market! The software is incredibly well developed offering a myriad of functions for its players. PokerStars also has managed to sponsor three out the last five World Series of Poker Champions including the original Chris Moneymaker, and also Greg Raymer, and Joe Hachem. PokerStars also has one of the most competitive rewards programs of any poker site, and if you signup using our link, you will also receive a 100% bonus up to $50 on your initial deposit!

PokerStars Room Review

PokerStars is one of the longest running veterans of the poker industry, and since Party Poker closed its doors to US players, PokerStars has since become by the far the biggest online poker room on the web. By virtue of its enormous playerbase PokerStars has managed to produce three of the last five World Series of Poker (WSOP) Champions including Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, and Joe Hachem. Chris Moneymaker, the name behind the poker boom, started with a super satellite entry of only $49 and managed to parlay that into a $10,000 WSOP seat, and then miraculously outlasted an enormous field of over 2,000 players to claim the Main Event Bracelet and a piece of poker history! Chris' spectacular run is an example of what anyone is capable of at PokerStars with more satellites and tournaments running than any other poker website!

PokerStars Ring Games:

PokerStars' cash games range in stakes from the super micro stakes of $0.01 and $0.02 cent blind no-limit holdem, all the way up to the super high stakes of $300 / $600 no-limit holdem. There is no rake charged at the super micro games! PokerStars also offers an incredibly wide game selection including Omaha, Omaha HiLo, Stud, Stud HiLo, H.O.R.S.E., and 5-card Draw! You can play any game that PokerStars offers at a variety of limits, and their lobby is easily searchable and customizable making it easy to find and join your favorite games!

PokerStars Tournaments and Sit-N-Gos:

PokerStars manages to offer more cash games than any other website, but where it really shines is its tournaments. PokerStars is the home of the biggest tournaments on the internet including a weekly Sunday $200+15 tournament that guarantees $1,500,000 to the winners. PokerStars also has a daily $150+12 tournament that is nearly always the biggest tournament played anywhere on the internet for that day. But, the PokerStars World Championship Of Online Poker (WCOOP) is where the really big games are. Each year the WCOOP has several tournaments with a prize pool exceeding $1,000,000, and the WCOOP main event guaranteed $2,500,000 last year and continues to grow every year! PokerStars also has the most variety of tournaments and Sit-N-Gos around, you can play 45 man turbos, 27 man non-turbos, headsup matches, 6 handed matches, and when you add in the different game types (holdem, omaha, stud etc) the possibilities really start to get crazy! If tournaments are where you get your fix, then PokerStars is the place for you!

PokerStars Traffic

PokerStars has MUCH more tournament and cash game traffic than any other poker website! Real money player statistics show that during peak hours PokerStars has as many as 22,500 cash-game players and 155,000 tournament players sitting in real money games simultaneously. These numbers are accurate as of November 2008 and continue to grow week to week.

PokerStars Software Review

PokerStars Graphics:

PokerStars has an excellent graphics engine and a super smooth client making it a breeze to play many tables without any lag. PokerStars is one of the few sites that allow you to upload your own picture or graphic to use as your player avatar (you can change it as many times as you want as long as you email support). PokerStars also has a number of "skins" you can use to customize the background and the look of your table and even your sounds. The software is available for both Macintosh and PC users.

PokerStars Software Functionality:

The PokerStars software is very versatile and easily customizable. PokerStars' lobby has excellent search options allowing you to sort through the games based on your preferred game-type and buyin. You can even save these options making it a snap to find your favorite games in the future. These sorting options are available for both cash games and tournaments. PokerStars also allows you to customize your layout choosing your graphics, table sizes, and table positions and then save your layout under a particular name. This allows you to have different saved layouts for different situations. For instance if you like to two table Cash games, and four table Sit-N-Go's you can have an "SNG" saved layout, in addition to your "Cash Game" saved layout. PokerStars also integrates fully with Poker Tracker allowing you to have more statistics on your play than the site offers (which pokerStars does offer a variety of stats). However, PokerStars does not allow you to data mine tables using Poker Tracker which sites like Full Tilt do allow. This is both a positive and a negative as it is a good thing for those who take advantage of their ability to data mine, but is a negative as it seems to draw tighter and more experienced players to sites like Full Tilt that allow it. PokerStars has resizable tables and is fantastic for multitabling allowing you to play 20 or more tables, really as many tables as you can physically open up.

PokerStars Bonus and Promotions

The only thing missing from PokerStars is a big signup bonus. PokerStars offers a $50 first time deposit bonus which is smaller than some of the other sites. PokerStars does make it up with their exceptional player loyalty program. There are several layers to the PokerStars loyalty program beginning with Bronze star and going all the way up to Supernova. At PokerStars you are always earning Frequent Player Points (FPPs) when you play in ring games, tournaments, or SNGs. You can cash these points in for bonus dollars (which you can quickly turn into cash!), poker books and DVDs, a private SNG with your favorite PokerStars Pro, or even a brand new big-screen TV or Car!

If you signup through our link you will also qualify for special freerolls that you will receive as a special bonus for signing up through PokerTrikz.com!

Games Offered

PokerStars has an incredibly wide game selection, and unlike other sites they will often have action at the exotic games due to the massive traffic at PokerStars. PokerStars features the following games in a variety of formats including, No-Limit, Limit, Pot-Limit, Full Table, Shorthanded, and Headsup, Tournament, and Sit-N-Go.

Texas Hold'em, Mixed Holdem (new!)
Omaha, Mixed Omaha (new!)
Omaha Hi-Lo,
Seven-Card Stud,
Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo,
Five-Card Draw,
Razz,
H.O.R.S.E.,
H.O.S.E.,
Triple Draw,
2 to 7 Single Draw,
8-Game,
Badugi

No-Limit,
Pot-Limit,
Fixed-Limit,

PokerStars Level of Competition

PokerStars has often had a reputation for having stiff competition, but with Party Poker and other websites pulling out of the US market, PokerStars has benefited from an influx of those players (most of whom are awful). PokerStars has since become the largest website, and therefore has the most donkeys. At the lower limits it is almost impossible to find tables with good players at them, but as you move up in the limits (200nl and up) you will find more and more good players. But it is still very easy to find soft tables if you practice good game selection. The tournament and Sit-N-Go competition is soft all the way up through the $25 buyin games.

PokerStars Banking - Deposit and Withdrawal Options

Deposit options: Instant eChecks, Visa / Mastercard, Click2Pay, Diners Club International, Western Union, Neteller (not USA or Canada), Moneybookers

Withdrawal options: Instant eChecks, Visa (not to USA), Click2Pay, Diners Club International, Western Union, Moneybookers, Neteller (Neteller doesn’t allow withdrawals in USA and Mastercard does not allow withdrawals)

Conclusion

PokerStars is far and away the biggest poker website on the internet! You can find more action at more games on PokerStars, and no other website comes close. It isn’t a problem to find players in the most exotic games and in unusual formats like a 7-Card Stud Hi/Lo SNG or a HORSE ring game. PokerStars has the biggest tournaments and the largest guaranteed prizepools of any other website around. If you’re looking for action, then PokerStars is your best bet. PokerStars is compatible with Poker Tracker, it has buddy lists, a player search feature, lobby sorting, resizeable tables, unlimited multitabling, fully customizeable table view, and many more features. If you sign up using our PokerStars Marketing Code, you'll receive a $50 bonus.