PokerStars

PokerStars is the largest online poker website. As a general rule, "biggest" usually means customer service problems and arrogance, but PokerStars.com is a pleasant exception to this rule. They are literally a company which has become the biggest in their business by providing a better product and service than any of their competitors. They also dance to the beat of a different poker drummer than most other online cardrooms.

PokerStars Software

The PokerStars.com software strikes the perfect balance between simplicity, functionality, and attractiveness. The graphics are just pretty enough to get the job done, but they're not so fancy that they would slow down any but the most archaic computers. (As opposed to Full Tilt Poker, which is a memory hog.) They offer a nice click and view statistics functionality, and the action is intuitive and easy to figure out. The games move fast.

PokerStars offers no other products besides their poker site. This is not a casino and it's not related to a casino. This is a poker room, run by poker players for poker players.

PokerStars Support and Customer Service

Like most poker rooms on the Internet, PokerStars offers 24/7 support via email. The customer support team at PokerStars is exceptionally professional, and they seem to actually understand poker conceptually. (At least from the perspective of what a poker player wants and needs as a customer, compared to some other poker sites where the customer support is needlessly brusque.)

PokerStars VIP Program

Another way that PokerStars has distinguished itself from the other poker sites is by offering one of the best loyalty and rewards clubs on the Internet. The PokerStars VIP program offers frequent player points, freerolls, and the ability to buy cool poker and non-poker stuff in their store using your frequent player points. Once you make your way up into the higher levels of the PokerStars VIP club, you can even get direct buy-ins to major poker events like the European Poker Tour, the Caribbean Poker Adventure, and the World Series of Poker using your FPP's.

>>Click here to visit PokerStars.com now<<

PokerStars Bonus Codes, Promotions, and Deposit Bonuses

At the time of this writing, PokerStars offers a signup bonus of $50. No bonus code is required in order to get this signup bonus. This bonus is a 100% matching bonus, so if you deposit $50, you get a $100 bankroll to play with total. This is another way that PokerStars remains distinct from other poker rooms. They don't offer huge signup bonuses to bring in new players. They apparently think that the rest of their operation is such a high quality offering that a big signup bonus just isn't necessary. They're probably right, since they have more players than anyone else online does.

PokerStars offers occasional reload bonuses too, but I don't remember the last time a reload bonus was offered.

Other promotions from PokerStars include frequent large tournaments like the Oceans 13 charity tournament, which benefits Darfur relief efforts. The Sunday night tournament at PokerStars is now the largest single weekly Texas holdem tournament in the world, with over $1 million in prize money guaranteed every week. 1st place in this tournament always pays over $100,000 in prize money. Direct buy-ins to this even are normally $215, but occasionally they have a larger buy-in tournament on Sunday. The best way to play in this particular tournament is to win a satellite.

PokerStars also offers qualifiers for WSOP events on a regular basis, and many of the recent champions of the World Series of Poker play at PokerStars.

Team PokerStars

Team PokerStars is the group of celebrity endorsers who play on and represent PokerStars. The group that PokerStars has chosen is indicative of what kind of business PokerStars operates. Not only is it an international group, it's a classy group. Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, and Joe Hachem are 3 of the most recent WSOP winners, and they play for PokerStars. 2 of them actually won their entry in the World Series of Poker by playing in a qualifier on PokerStars.com.

More famous poker players on the PokerStars team include Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Lee Nelson and Isabelle Mercier. Some of the best looking women in poker play at PokerStars too, including Mercier, but also Katja Thater and Vanessa Rousso. John Duthie, the man who founded the European Poker Tour, is also a Team PokerStars member, and so is William Chen. Their roster continues to change, but it's representative of the players on the site: international and varied.

PokerStars Games and Limits

PokerStars offers limits ranging from $0.01/$0.02 up to $100/$200. They offer a wide variety of poker games, including the standards like Omaha, Holdem, and Stud, but also some more unusual games like:

• Razz
• HORSE
• Five card draw
• 2-7 Triple draw

PokerStars has a huge player base. Action is always available on this site at almost any level of player.

PokerStars.net Free Poker

The PokerStars.net site offers a free version of the PokerStars client where players can play for play money. It's a download, just like the PokerStars.com software, only without the ability to play for real cash.

PokerStars Conclusion

PokerStars is amazingly popular among poker players in the USA and abroad, and there are multiple reasons for that. The software, the customer support, the tournaments, and the frequent player points rewards are all reasons that everyone who plays poker online plays at PokerStars. You should too, if you don't already.

PokerStars is just that good a cardroom.

>>Click here to visit PokerStars.com now<<

You can find a PokerStars marketing code at our sister site about poker signup bonus offers. They're offering a 100% signup bonus of up to $50 throughout 2008.