US Friendly

PokerStars is one of the top online poker sites still taking customers from the United States. It offers both free play on the site as well as the real-money play for U.S. residents.

Game Selection, Limits and Rakes

PokerStars offers a wide variety of poker games on its site including Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, Seven-Card Stud, Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo, Razz, Five-Card Draw, Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw and Badugi. You can also find mixed games such as H.O.R.S.E. and H.O.S.E.

PokerStars offers its games at various stakes from as low as 1¢/2¢ with no rake in the cash games or 10¢ buy-in tournaments that offer players a great way to get into the game with little start-up money. For those of you looking for some bigger action, PokerStars has that too with games spread with $200/$400 levels.

PokerStars tends to offer some of the best value when it comes to rake as well. The site is below the industry average, sometimes not even taking rake from the microstakes games and in the high stakes games all no-limit games have a 5% rake with a maximum of $1 or $3 per hand depending on the number of players in the hand. In fixed-limit games, the rake depends on the limits and the number of players in the hand as well.

Tournaments

PokerStars is perhaps best known for its tournaments. It offers some of the best value around with its weekly $215 buy-in Sunday Million event that offers a guaranteed $1.5 million prize pool. There are also several satellites and qualifier tournaments to win your way into the biggest events they offer each week like the Sunday Million, Sunday Warmup and more. For those looking for something a little smaller, the site runs sit&go tournaments for as little as 10¢ each as fast as they can fill the seats, and you won't be sitting and waiting long for one to start once you buy in.

What really makes PokerStars shine in the tournament department is its offering of satellites to major live tournaments all over the world. It's how Chris Moneymaker got into the World Series of Poker Main Event and became a champion and how you can end up in major events for a fraction of the cost as well. PokerStars has sent players to events in the WSOP, European Poker tour, World Poker Tour, Aussie Millions, World Cup of Poker and more.

Rewards

PokerStars offers a VIP club to reward its players. The more you play, the more Frequent Player Points you can earn to move up through the tiers of membership in the VIP club. Those points can be used for freerolls or to use in the PokerStars store.

What you can use them for just depends on what tier you're at in the VIP club - bronze, silver, gold, platinum star, supernova or supernova elite. PokerStars offers everything from stress balls to cars that you can purchase with your Frequent Player Points. Just as Dario Minieri who used his points to purchase a Porche off the site when he reached supernova elite status.

Traffic

PokerStars has some of the best traffic you'll find at an online poker site. You can sit down to a game or a tournament just about any time of the day and find plenty of other people ready to play as well. This is mostly due to the fact that PokerStars has customers from all around the world who are looking for a game at various times of the day. At peak hours, PokerStars has seen as many as 22,500 ring-game players at the talbes or 155,000 tournament players.

Software

While many other online poker sites are networked on shared platforms, PokerStars is a stand-alone poker room. They use their own poker software without sharing software or platforms with other online poker sites - if you're playing on PokerStars, you're only playing with other people on PokerStars.

The software is user friendly with features such as table themes, player avatars, player notes, hand histories, table layouts, resizable tables and more. PokerStars focuses on playability and usability with its software. The PokerStars software is known as the most stable and scalable online poker platform and the site offers a wide variety of games and options with its software.

PokerStars also offers a Mac version of its software.

Support

PokerStars offers e-mail support around the clock at support@pokerstars.com. They do not yet offer phone support or live chat, but they have several support offices around the world offering quick response via their e-mail support.

Pros:

• Great game variety at all stakes
• Tournament action is the best in the business
• Qualifiers for live events like the WSOP, EPT and WPT
• Well known pro team that includes Daniel Negreanu and Greg Raymer

Cons:

• No phone or live-chat customer support
• High stakes games are tough

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