| Type | Private company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Online poker |
| Headquarters | Isle of Man |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Owner(s) | Isai Scheinberg |
| Website | [1] |
PokerStars is the largest online poker cardroom in the world.[1] PokerStars' satellite tournaments produced the 2003 World Series of Poker champion, Chris Moneymaker. 1983 champion Tom McEvoy, 2005 champion Joe Hachem, 2009 champion Joe Cada and 2010 champion Jonathan Duhamel and others also represent the site and are also regular players. PokerStars is the headline sponsor of the European Poker Tour (EPT), Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT), Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT), Australia & New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT), United Kingdom & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT), Italian Poker Tour (IPT), Czech-Slovak Poker Tour (CSPT), and North American Poker Tour (NAPT). PokerStars also sponsors the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), a stop on the European, Latin American and North American Poker Tours. In 2005, eGaming Review named PokerStars.com the "Best Poker Operator of the Year". PokerStars offers a downloadable poker client for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, offering the same features to users of each client. The Windows client has been reported to work on Linux operating systems using the Wine software.[2]
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PokerStars launched its beta play money only site on September 11, 2001, and later began real money wagering on December 12, 2001. PokerStars was originally a Costa Rican company, Rational Enterprises, majority owned by the Scheinberg family of Israel.[3][4] The company was subsequently moved to the Isle of Man, a British Crown dependency. The move was driven by the establishment of a 0% corporate tax rate and the removal of rules barring companies from accepting casino and poker bets from America.[3] PokerStars holds its license with the Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission, and is also licensed in Italy by the Amministrazione Autonoma dei Monopoli di Stato (AAMS).[5]
Since relocating, PokerStars has been the subject of financial media speculation regarding a possible initial public offering or merger with a publicly listed company. Analysts estimated its market value would have been approximately $2 billion (US) in 2004, which would have made the company one of the world's largest privately held gambling companies.[4] Now, in 2009 and into 2010 PokerStars earns approximately $1.4 billion per year, and nets $1.34 million per day.[6] PokerStars overtook PartyPoker as the world's largest online poker room at around the time the U.S. Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. Many sites, including PartyPoker, immediately suspended business with U.S. gamblers, while others, including PokerStars, did not.[7]
On December 27, 2009, PokerStars set the world record for the biggest online tournament. The tournament entry fee was $1, and the record number of people reached was 149,196. They then set the bar even higher on December 4, 2011. With a $50,000 top prize to be won for just a $1 buy-in, they set a record of 200,000 people playing in 1 tournament. PokerStars was so busy during the early stages of the tournament, all tounaments had to be stopped for 20 minutes because the heavy traffic crashed their server.
The site dealt its 60 billionth hand on March 31, 2011. Pogo650 won the milestone hand winning $102,090.[8]
PokerStars offers ten varieties of poker games: Texas hold 'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo (8 or Better), Stud, Stud Hi/Lo (8 or Better), Razz, Five-card draw, Deuce to Seven Triple Draw, Deuce to Seven Single Draw and Badugi. HORSE, HOSE, Mixed Hold'em, Mixed Omaha Hi/Lo, Triple Stud and 8-Game, "mixed games" that rotate through several of the above, are also offered.[9] Players can participate in real money games ranging from $.01/$.02 up to $1,000/$2,000. The home of the World Championship of Online Poker, the largest online poker tournament series in the world, PokerStars has over 20,000 players playing real money ring games daily, plus thousands more playing real money tournaments or free-play games.[10] During peak operating times, this often adds up to over 300,000 players online simultaneously. PokerStars.com's play money players mix with those logging in from PokerStars.net, a free play-only site without real money games. In October 2008, PokerStars launched PokerStars.it, exclusively for Italian players, which will offer real money tournaments in Euro currency in addition to the usual play money games. PokerStars now offers some ring games and tournaments on its main PokerStars.com site in euro. In March 2010, the site began allowing users to keep their real-money accounts in British pounds and Canadian dollars as well as U.S. dollars and euro.
The site's flagship weekly event is the Sunday Million, a weekly tournament with a guaranteed $1 million prize pool with a buy-in of $215 and is the biggest weekly online poker tournament in the world. On March 7, 2011, The 5th Anniversary Sunday Million broke records, with 59,128 players creating a total prize pool of $11,825,600.[11]
PokerStars sponsors many professional poker players under the designation, Team PokerStars Pro
"Team PokerStars Pro" members include Bertrand 'Elky' Grospellier, Barry Greenstein, Lee Nelson, Luca Pagano, Liv Boeree, Vanessa Rousso, Victor Ramdin, Noah Boeken, Andre Akkari, Humberto Brenes, Chad Brown, Angel Guillen, Victoria Coren, Marcin Horecki, Dennis Phillips, Johnny Lodden, Leo Fernandez, Ivan Demidov, Juan Maceiras, Marcel Luske, Arnaud Mattern, Dario Minieri, Daniel Negreanu, Alex Kravchenko, Alexandre Gomes, Katja Thater, Jason Mercier, Angel Guillen, Jude Ainsworth, Luca Pagano as well as WSOP Main Event champions Chris Moneymaker, 2009 WSOP champion Joe Cada, 2010 WSOP champion Jonathan Duhamel and 1983 WSOP champion Tom McEvoy.[12]
PokerStars also have a Celebrity team and a Sports team, called respectively "Friends of PokerStars" and "SportStars". These count Actor Jason Alexander; quantitative analyst and author of the 'Chen Formula' for Texas Hold'em Bill Chen as [13] and Brazilian auto racer and race team owner Gualter Salles, French rugby union international Sébastien Chabal and former tennis champion Boris Becker as SportStars.
On April 15, 2011, along with similar competitors' sites, Pokerstars.com was seized and shut down by U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which alleged it was in violation of federal bank fraud and money laundering laws.[14] The company subsequently stopped allowing players from the United States to play real money games and temporarily moved the main company website to Pokerstars.eu.
On April 20, 2011, control of the Pokerstars.com domain name was returned to the company from the US Attorney's office, "to facilitate the withdrawal of U.S. players’ funds held in account with the companies."[15]