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POKERSTARS REVIEW
PokerStars are the world’s largest poker site, with millions of members worldwide. On December 30th 2007, they entered the Guinness World Record books for having the most players simultaneously playing online at PokerStars - 151,758! PokerStars is a registered legal business located in the Isle of Man, in the British Isles and abide by the laws and regulations where they do business. This tells us their hardware can handle heavy loads, hundreds of thousands of people infact, also that their software ensures the games are fair and that players receive their true winnings as a result of being licensed with the Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission. Their software uses the industry standard SSLv3 protocol and their certificate keys are 1024 bits in length, as a former network engineer I can confirm this is an extremely high level of security.
PokerStars offer the widest choice of games around, choose from Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, Stud, Stud Hi-Lo, Draw, 2-7 Triple Draw, 2-7 Single Draw, HORSE, Razz, 8-Game Mix and Badugi; you can find these games at various stake levels, you need never be forced into playing a game that's too big or small for your current bankroll. The software allows you to play on a maximum of 24 real money ring game tables and an unlimited number of real money tournament tables. In terms of hand histories, you can request all of your hand histories from support at any time. There is virtually no limit on the number of characters for the player note taking facility as they are saved in text file format.
Pokerstars has been the largest poker site for a number of years since Party Poker closed their US faCing operations, they still hold the world record for most players simultaneously playing online, their traffic is the best around, nobody comes close to matching them in this department. We found games filled up very quickly, a typical low stakes 10 player Sit & Go is ready to go within a couple of minutes off peak and much more quickly during busy periods, the cash tables section is vast and well populated at all times of the day, if you like multi table action with large field sizes you will be pleased to know PokerStars hosts some of the biggest tournaments on the internet.
When you open a PokerStars account via a TakesAllSports link and make your first-ever real money deposit, PokerStars will give you a 100% bonus up to $50. When you make your first deposit use the code ‘Stars50’. To earn this bonus, you will simply need to play on PokerStars and collect the number of VPPs equal to 10 times the bonus amount. You have six months after your first deposit to earn all the VPPs you need to cash out your bonus.
Every time you earn a Frequent Player Point (FPP) by playing in a cash game or tournament, you earn a VPP. Once you attain the required number of VIP Player Points (VPPs) in a month or a year for a particular VIP level, you immediately begin to receive the benefits that level offers. Your status lasts until the end of the following calendar month or until you qualify for a higher level. At the end of the month, the VPP counter in the Cashier will reset to zero and you begin to qualify again. PokerStars VIP Store has a huge variety of goodies on offer, you can redeem VPPs in exchange for clothing, poker accessories, gadgets, books, DVDs, electronics, tournament buyins, gift certificates, special items such as a giant basket of cookies, a Porsche Cayman S or a single table tournament with a member of Team PokerStars, you can even turn your VPPs into cold hard cash.
As you would expect with the largest poker site on the Internet, there are an overwhelming number of ways to fund your account, depending on which country you reside in. For the UK, they accept Maestro and Solo debit cards, Mastercard, Visa and Diners Club credit cards, Click2Pay, Click&Buy, Moneybookers, Neteller, Entropay, PaySafeCard, WebMoney, bank draft, direct bank transfer and cheque. We can recommend using credit cards or debit cards.
For general enquiries, your first stop should be their FAQ section which is chocked full of useful tidbits that will help you get the most out of the site aswell as answering many of the most commonly asked questions; it's so large they had to break it down into sections. We fired across an email to support@pokerstars.com and got a reply in less than 10 minutes, the quality of the reply was even more impressive than the delivery time, to say we were impressed is an understatement. We could'nt find a telephone number for their customer service agents, but quite frankly, you don't need one with such a first rate FAQ section and lightning quick email support.
In our experience, PokerStars has a number of half decent players in their ranks, even at the lower stakes, but with millions of members, the ratio of good to bad players is really no different than any other site. With proper table selection, you stand a much better chance of finding a table of fish than at rival sites, in our opinion. PokerStars accept US players which we believe makes for a more aggressive game that is ultimately higher in variance, so you should adjust your bankroll requirements accordingly in order to ensure you're able to handle the bigger losing sessions that come with larger profitable ones.
| SOFTWARE: |
5/5 |
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| TRAFFIC: |
5/5 |
| PROMOTIONS: |
4/5 |
| BANKING: |
5/5 |
| SERVICE: |
5/5 |
| COMPETITION: |
4/5 |
TAS RATING:
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| RAKE: |
5/5 |
| TOTAL: |
33/35 |
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