Summary – This is by far the biggest of the US sites.  There are more games, and more levels here than at any other site. This makes PokerStars the best place to play for beginners since there is so much play at lower levels.  But for all players it is a great site because you will find lots of play at whatever level you want to play.  I find myself at PokerStars more than at any other site, not because it’s my favorite, but because I so easily find the play that I’m looking for.  I’m trying to think of negatives to tell you about PokerStars, but there really aren’t any.  It’s just a well done site, and has more play options than any other site.  Not much in the way of frills or sizzle here, but no negatives either.  It's just a good place to play.

Competition – Since there are so many players here the competition can vary quite a bit.  At times you could be at table that is seems pretty easy, and a another table that’s tougher.  But if you don’t like the style of play at a particular table, you can leave and go to another. You can get on to another table in seconds because there are so many.  There are also so many different levels of play.  Ring games start as low as $.01-$.02 for the blinds, on up to $25-$50 that are frequently played.  There are higher but not with much traffic.

Tournaments are abundant also.  Sit-n-Go's start at $1 and go up from there and are starting constantly up to about $20.  Higher than that and you may have to wait a little while before the tourney fills up.  There are Sit-n-Gos of 9, 18, 45 and 180 players.  There are many larger tournaments also, I’ve played in tournaments with over 2000 players many times.

Software – Many consider the software to be the best in the industry. It may not be the prettiest interface, but it is very usable, and has very few problems.  When your in a tournament you can keep track of where you are in rank of chips, how many players are left, and so on.  One of my favorite features is that the windows for each table are resizable so it is very easy to play at multiple tables at once and have them all completely visible, so you don’t have to switch between windows to play.  It depends on your screen size of course, but I can get nine tables on my screen with no overlap (though I usually play only 4-6).  Some sites if you even have two open they are overlapping.  There are also several shortcut options that you can select while at a table that make playing multiple tables easier.

Promotions – As you play you earn Frequent Player Points (FPP) that you can use to purchase merchandise or enter into tournaments.  As most sites do, they have qualifiers for many live tournaments.

Bonuses – PokerStars generally has the weakest bonuses.  Since they have so many players I guess they don’t feel the need to have a lot of bonuses.  They rarely have reload bonuses, and their sign up bonus is usually the weakest of the US sites.