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Updated
Wed, 2008-02-20 06:31
PokerStars
Review
Poker room score
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Deposit Bonus:
100% up to $50
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About PokerStars
PokerStars is another massive online poker room, which is regarded by many as the biggest in the world, player traffic-wise. It is certainly host to some of the most popular high stakes STTs and MTTs and its cash tables aren’t short of players either. PokerStars first went online in 2001, but it truly made a huge impact with the public when Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer scored back-to-back main event victories in the WSOP. What was so special about that? Both these guys had earned a spot in the WSOP main event via an online qualifier hosted by PokerStars. The online poker popularity explosion that followed was only surpassed by the scores of players rushing to PokerStars to possibly become the next in line for a WSOP championship. Because it’s such an immensely popular poker room, you’ll find competition at any stakes and any poker variant you desire to play, and you’ll be faced with players running a wide spectrum ability-wise. That means – if you’re a reasonable player – you’ll probably be able to squeeze some juice out of PokerStars’ tables.
PokerStars Software
PokerStars is an independent poker room and as such, it features its own online poker client. It is indeed one of the best pieces of poker software on the internet, and it’s updated regularly to keep up with the requirements of the public. These updates seldom result in any downtimes though and they only take a few seconds to install. The program runs smooth and fast despite the fact that it has to cope with over 120,000 players at peak hours. The PokerStars client has recently been launched for Mac as well, so users of that platform no longer need to fumble with windows emulators. The featured statistics are intricate enough to keep even the most die hard poker maniac satisfied, and at the same time they provide a wealth of useful data. Multi-tabling is the accepted way to play at smaller stakes these days, and PokerStars is apparently fully aware of the trend. While the number of simultaneously open cash game windows is a “mere” 8, there are no such limitations for tournament tables. This attracts some of the world’s craziest tourney players who play at more tables simultaneously than anyone would believe possible.
PokerStars Promotions and Best Bonus
The bonuses featured on PokerStars are the industry standard ones. The 100% match on your first deposit up to $50 doesn’t sound like an awful big deal, especially considering the fact that it isn’t exactly easy to unlock. In order to have the money transferred from your bonus account into your real-money one, you need to generate FPPs ( Frequent Player Points). The bonus is unlocked in two chunks of $25 each with the first one hitting your account after 100 FPPs and the second one landing there after 500 FPPs. They both take quite a long time to be transferred, so brace yourself for a long and rather frustrating wait.
The nice thing about the PokerStars bonus system is that there are reload bonuses offered on subsequent deposits. Players can earn as much as a 25% match on their re-deposits up to a whooping $600.
Special promotions also make sure depositing players stay loyal: VIP levels are also considered when reload bonuses are given and special tournaments keep players entertained. Such are the four $2,500 freerolls that take place every week and the satellites that offer the winner an all-expenses paid package for the EPT’s German Open.
PokerStars Tournaments
PokerStars is the undisputed tournament heaven of the online poker world. Just one fact to back that claim up: there are now over 135,000 players at its tournament tables in peak hours. That much traffic means several things: on one hand, you’ll probably never have to wait too long for an STT table to fill up no matter what poker variant you play, on the other hand it means there are probably a whole bunch of fish in the game (especially at lower limits). Most of the tourneys are low to medium buy-in ones but high-rollers are sure to find their own games too without too much fuss.
There are plenty of MTTs in the $500 buy-in range and that has to be rich enough even for the most money hungry players as the prize pools on these tournaments often exceed 1 million dollars.
Quite naturally though, higher buy-in games feature more skilled opposition, while the fish tend to congregate at lower stakes. The PokerStars Sunday Million is quite probably the biggest online poker tournament in the world, with a guaranteed prize pool that was initially set to $1 million, but lately – because of its immense popularity – it has exceeded 2,4 million.
PokerStars Special Offers
Being the largest poker room in the world, everything is quite unique at PokerStars. There are some outstanding features however, which you have to know about. First off: their rake structure is one of the more advantageous ones in the online poker industry.
Sure it is the usual 5% up to a $3 maximum at medium stakes, but even there the rake cap is set to $1 if there are few people in the hand.
At micro limits the rake is much milder and at very high limits likewise.
While at higher limit Texas Holdem tables ($1/$2 and up) the competition tends to be pretty tight (flops seen are in the 20-30% range) the same is not true for Omaha where there are much looser games. Make no mistake, while tournaments are widely recognized as PokerStars’ specialty, the ring game traffic is also extremely good (about 16,000 players at peak hours). Finding value in lower limit games is not likely to be a problem.
PokerStars Accept US Players
The fact that PokerStars accepts US players is a huge asset not only to the room itself and the American players who had to leave their former poker rooms behind, but also to the general poker public. This turn of events has set up a poker destination offering some pretty unique features in several respects.
While many believe that the fish pool at Party Poker pretty much dried up as a result of the UIGEA, new ones at sites like PokerStars may just have been formed.
PokerStars Support
Support-wise, Pokerstars is praised by all players who ever had any business with their support system. Their email support is said to be very fast, their answers are knowledgeable and they are very friendly. Email confirmation is available and mails are usually answered within 24 hours. The lack of a live chat or telephone option hangs heavily in the balance though. Live chat is by far the best way to provide instant support because it’s free, and available to everyone regardless of where they live. In my book, a site like PokerStars should’ve set up some sort of live support feature long ago. Therefore, no matter how good, fast and knowledgeable their email support is, I cannot give it the maximum grade.