The reasons
behind PokerStars meteoric rise to the top have been
well documented… PokerStars offers the largest selection of tournaments, a wide variety of cash games, they have a great VIP program and industry best customer service. Another way that PokerStars has distanced themselves from the competition is through constant improvement of their poker client software.
PokerStars is a true
grinder's site. Their software is very friendly to the multi-tabler. Twenty-plus tables are no problem for their software. Since they allow trackers such as Hold'em Manager and PokerTracker, keeping track of your sessions is simple. Even if you don't use a program like these, the client has built in tools to see how you are playing.
On each table you are playing there are several tabs in the
chat box. Besides "Chat", there is "Notes", "Stats", and "Info". Notes allows you to simply take a note on any player. These notes are saved on your computer so that any other time you see that player, your notes are there. Stats will show you your basic statistics on how you are playing during the session. You'll see your number of hands and some basic stats like how often you saw the
flop and how many hands you've won.
While playing at the tables, you can also instantly see your hand histories in multiple formats. If you like you can just select the hand from the
top left of the table and view a text readout of the hand from start to finish. They also have a graphical option to replay the hand. You can start from the beginning and control the
action to see how it played out.
Another great thing about PokerStars is that when you
buy-in on a table there are several options to make your life a little easier. You can choose to remember your buy-in amount. That way, anytime you sit in on the same type of table your buy-in amount will be the same as before. You can also enable auto-rebuy. When you do that, PokerStars will automatically top-up your stack whenever it gets below your
buy-in amount.
Speaking of buy-ins, PokerStars gives players a couple of options when selecting a game. They have
standard buy-in tables, where the minimum is 20 big blinds, or, they have 50BB tables. On these tables, players must sit in with a minimum of 50 big blinds. You can also choose standard speed or fast tables, which give less time for making decisions. Either table also offers a "time"
button, which adds additional time for those tough calls.
As for the tables themselves, they are very customizable as
well. Not only does PokerStars have several very nice options built-in, but they make installing custom themes easy as well. You can change virtually everything, from the background, to the table felt, the cards, and even the chips. Their collection of possible options is too long to list, but it includes auto muck, show cards at
all-in, 4-color deck, player images, etc.
All of the great features are not isolated to the tables either. The
Lobby is where it all starts. They have a tabbed layout that makes finding your game very simple. On
top of that, they have one of the best filters available anywhere. You can filter by stakes, game, speed, number of players, among other things.
With all of this said, one of the greatest and most unique features of PokerStars is often overlooked, but helps make PokerStars the most secure site on the Internet. PokerStars offers there players an RSA Security Token, available for purchase from their VIP Store. This token is the utmost security measure you can take to protect your PokerStars account. It is a digital "token", which will constantly change your log-in password, ensuring that you and only you will be
able to access your account.
All of these features combine to create a virtual poker interface that no other site can match. What's more is that PokerStars truly listens to the players that make up the site. So if enough players are looking for a particular feature, you can rest assured that PokerStars will try to implement the change whenever feasible. If you don't play on PokerStars,
well… why not? After all they have virtually everything an online poker player could ask for!
