PokerStars is a favorite poker site for many people thanks in large part to understanding what poker players want. Below you can find the most important features in our overview of the PokerStars poker room.
PokerStars VIP Program
PokerStars has created a fantastic VIP club for their loyal players. Using a Frequent Player Points (FPP) system – it’s set up to reward players for playing on their site. Players accumulate FPPs by playing in any raked real money games at the poker room. All real money players can climb the VIP ladder to earn better rewards and accumulate points faster. These can be redeemed for special tournament buy-ins, exchanging the points for cash, as well as to purchase items from the VIP store. To check how many FPPs you have, simply click on the cashier button in the lobby.
Poker School
Their Poker School Online (PSO) has tons of interactive learning tools and hundreds of strategy articles available to players of all skills levels, including strategy tips and advice from Team PokerStars Pros that can help you learn the fundamentals for any poker game you can play at PokerStars
Software
PokerStars makes it possible to differentiate yourself at the online poker table by offering custom player avatars, which are available to change after creating a new account. Simply upload your own image from your computer to be displayed to the other players at the table.
The graphics and interface for the PokerStars client is simple and easy to use. Their in-game software options leave no stone unturned, enhancing the online poker experience and providing everything any recreational or professional online poker player could want in a site. This includes a great number of table and customization options.
Online poker sites aren’t just about graphics and animation though, and PokerStars does a great job of guiding their players through the process of finding suitable games with an easy-to-navigate games lobby.
Games
PokerStars offers ring games, multi table tournaments and sit and go tournaments at all buy in levels to suit all players. There is a wide variety of ring game stakes and poker formats to choose from, ranging from the micro limit $0.01/$0.02 tables all the way up to mid and high stakes.
You can find pretty much every poker game you can imagine at this site: Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 5 Card Omaha, 5 Card Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo, Razz, 5 Card Draw, 2-7 Triple Draw, and many other poker games. A poker site that contains such a high volume of traffic as PokerStars makes it easy for the site to generate enough action to make it worthwhile to register an account and play even at the lowest stakes tables.
Zoom Poker is one of the latest innovations from PokerStars and is available for both cash games and for tournaments (MTTs and SNGs). The basic premise of this game is that once you fold you are immediately sent to a new table to play another hand. So, as you can imagine, you can play a lot more hands than normal against a much wider range of opponents.
If you are not ready just yet to make a deposit and start playing in the real money games, then make sure to check out the freerolls at PokerStars. They cost nothing to enter and offer real cash prizes to the winners, which is handy for new players who are looking to build up a bankroll.
When it comes to tournaments, PokerStars is without a doubt the world leader in terms of always having tournaments with attractive prize pools to play in any poker variant. You will always find a suitable tournament of your liking. The PokerStars Sunday Major tournaments provide fantastic value for tournament players. A lot of the tournaments you can play will also have a steps or satellite format. which provides an inexpensive way for players to gain entry into the larger buy-in tournaments on Stars.
The SNGs at PokerStars are also hugely popular. Players can register for single-table, multi table, and heads up sit & go’s in addition to the turbo games which have a faster blind structure. PokerStars single table sit and go tournaments are great for time poor players that don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to playing a longer tournament. They come In both 6 or 10-player SNGs and the buy-ins start from as little as $1.50 all the way up to $2000. They always fill up very quickly, so you can get involved in the action without having to wait around for the tourneys to attract enough entrants.
Overall Summary
All in all, PokerStars is the premier real money online poker site you should call home if you don’t already play there. The one real downside of PokerStars is that being such a popular site it attracts sharks, and as a result the competition is a little tougher. But if you are a new player this just means you will improve your game because you will be playing against better players.
Also, even though their software is very responsive even when multi tabling, it isn’t the most visually appealing poker room in the industry, but this can be justified by the awesome selection of games, high volume of player traffic, super software features, and great VIP program for their players.
Unfortunately, after Black Friday, PokerStars is no longer available to U.S. players, but other players get the fantastic opportunity of playing against the likes of Barry Greenstein, Chris Moneymaker, Daniel Negreanu, Joe Hachem, and Ike Haxton. This online poker site offers players the chance to hone their poker skills and is constantly evolving to meet the demands of even the most hardcore of poker players.