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Poker Stars Review
Reasons to Join |
No other room has more traffic so you never have to wait long for a game.
The largest range and the biggest prizes when it comes to tournament play.
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 | Signing Up |
At just under 8 megabytes in size, a broadband connection is advised for downloading the Pokerstars installer. It took a few minutes to create an account and another few minutes to validate the account via my email address.
To my mind this is the most secure registration process I've encountered for an online cardroom.
The setup is exactly the same on an Apple computer over Mac OS X, infact I'd say the graphics look even better on my G4 than they do my PC.
The software allows for multilingual support with particular focus on European languages; if your first language is'nt English, Pokerstars have got you covered.
To help you get the most out of their software, Pokerstars have comissioned Daniel Negreanu to make a virtual tour of the site using a series of videos to be found on the Pokerstars website.
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7/10 | Software |
Pokerstars own their own network and their own software, this not only ensures an ultra stable connection for all users but also a very secure poker experience.
Both the Mac and PC client software are feature laden with everything I need in order to customise it to how I like aswell as find a juicy table; for cash games the standard statistics of average pot size, percentage of players seeing the flop and number of hands per hour are available. I found a wide range of poker variants on offer, most of the traffic is to be found in the Texas Hold'em sections, but the site also has Omaha, Seven Card Stud, Razz, HORSE, Five Card Draw and even Deuce to Seven Triple Draw.
The hand history facility allows for storage of millions of hands on your hard drive, there is an unlimited player note taking facility, you can play at 24 ring game tables simultaneously and an unlimited number of Sit & Go tables which is very attractive to those with a high volume style of play.
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10/10 | Ring Games |
At the time of writing, Pokerstars is the highest ranked cardroom for cash player traffic with a 7 day average of over 17,000 players which happens to be over double as much as the second highest ranked site, so traffic definitely won't be a problem.
The standard is reasonably high at the lower stake levels in my experience, with tables playing slightly tighter than one would imagine; nevertheless, so long as you can adapt your playing style to take advantage of your opponents weaknesses, there is still serious money to be made.
With so many players competing, table selection is a must. |
10/10 | | Tournaments |
Pokerstars is the number one site for tournament play, so it's not surprising there are a wide choice of MTT's to get stuck into, plus some seriously big prize pools on offer every week. On Sundays there are two big money guaranteed tournaments, the first being the Sunday Warm-up and the latter the Sunday million; the Sunday Warm-up features a $750,000 prize pool and the Sunday million boasts a whopping $1,500,000 in prize money.
Qualify for as little as $3 or even use your FPP points by going through the satellite route.
Offline tournaments are a big part of the MTT scene, at the time of writing there are qualifiers leading to the Asia Poker Tour in Auckland and Manila, European Poker Tour in London and Monte Carlo, Latin American Poker Tour in San Jose, World Cup of Poker in Barcelona; there are also qualifiers to the prestigeous World Series of Poker, World Poker Tour and Aussie Millions events.
Whichever part of the world you want to visit, there's an all expenses paid poker tournament nearby that can take you there, courtesy of Pokerstars. |
10/10 | Sit & Gos |
If you're looking for some tournament action but don't have hours to spare, there are many different Sit & Go formats to choose from.
There are the standard single table tournaments which make up most of the traffic, a lot of them being turbo format, there are double or nothing tournaments where 10 players start and the final 5 all double their money, there are even multitable Sit & Go's aswell as heads up formats too.
I noticed a couple of neat promotions during my weeks play. The Turbo Takedown happens on the last Sunday of every month and pays out to 1 in 3 players, there's $1,000,000 up for grabs with the winner taking home a cool $100,000; normally large tournaments only pay the top 10% of the field but with the Turbo Takedown structure, even mediocre players stand a decent chance of turning a profit.
The Battle of The Planets is another interesting promotion where players fight to try and get to the top of the weekly Sit & Go leaderboards and the top players share the cash prizes using a sliding scale; every year Pokerstars give away more than $3,000,000 in prizes to followers of this promotion, having carefully read the terms and conditions I can safely say this offer caters to both high volume and low volume players, so you have a realistic chance of winning big even if you only play a small amount of poker every week.
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10/10 | Support |
It took under 15 minutes to get a reply using their email support, they answered my questions accurately and helpfully.
I believe answers to most questions can be found in their excellent FAQ section on their website, which covers many issues such as integrity, rake, disconnection protection, chat abuse, to name but a few.
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8/10 | | Banking |
I'll wager there are'nt many sites who accept more payment methods than Pokerstars.
All major debit and credit cards, such as Solo, Maestro, Delta, Visa, Diners Club and Mastercard are accepted. If you don't have one of those, you can use eChecks, Click2Pay, Click&Buy, Moneybookers, Neteller, local bank transfer, online bank transfer, Paysafecard and Webmoney.
Nearly all of these methods are instant, except for the bank transfer which may take up to 4 days to process. |
9/10 | Standard of Players |
I believe the lower stake ring games are reasonably tight and the higher stake ring games are said to be even tighter, that aside, I found the site to have average competition, nothing special at all.
The site is well populated at all times and accepts players from the US; these 2 factors guarantee there's plenty of fish to be found in this aquarium and lots of aggressive play. The big Sunday tournaments are the centrpiece of their MTT scene.
In my opinion the real value lies in their smaller money daily tournaments such as the $32k / $40k / $50k guaranteed events where a reasonably big win is possible for a small initial investment.
I also feel that the infamous 20x20 Sit & Go's represent a good way to increase your bankroll in a tournament environment without too much risk. |
8/10 | Loyalty Promotions |
As expected, there are no shortages of promotions on Pokerstars and many look to have real substance to them.
When I carried out this review there was a 100% first time deposit bonus up to $50, you claim the bonus by earning frequent player points and get a 6 month window to achieve that goal; the overwhelming majority of players should have no problems clearing this bonus, assuming you play a small amount of poker per week.
Their frequent player program offers many ways to spend your FPP's (Frequent Player Points), you can use them to win a seat to a live event such as the World Series of Poker or European Poker Tour, you can buy directly into cash tournaments, take a chance to win a seat into the weekly Sunday million online event.
Pokerstars even have a VIP Store where FPP's can be traded for gift certificates, books, DVD's, clothing, poker accessories and even electronic items like DVD players, digital cameras, big screen TV's, iPods, laptops and game consoles.
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8/10 | Summary |
At the time of writing, Pokerstars is the highest ranked cardroom for cash player traffic, so if you dont want to wait around for your favourite game then Pokerstars is your best bet.
Pokerstars is the number one site for tournament play, so it's not surprising there are a wide choice of MTT's to get stuck into, plus some seriously big prize pools on offer every week. |
8.9/10 | |
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