Stars has recently claimed the title of most popular online poker room, with nearly double its closest competators at any one time. PokerStars is also home of the 2003-2005 World Series of Poker champions: Greg Raymer, Chris Moneymaker, and most recently Joe Hachem.

Why is Stars growing faster than the average?

Well, they've got almost everything right.

Stars have a sizeable player base, including a lot of fish who are still being attracted by Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer (they both played a PokerStars super-satellite, then won the online qualifier, then went to the big show and won it all).

Poker Stars have one of the better software packages of all internet poker sites. The tables look good, and the action buttons are huge. The software has proven more stable for me than any of the other sites and allowing personal avatars is a nice touch.

Poker Stars is rightly famous for its tournaments. They have the best selection of events, the most generous starting chips, and slowest blinds increase of all the sites. This means that the events are more about skill, and less about luck.

Poker Stars cashouts are very quick - I have never had one take longer than a day, and most are between 6-12 hours. Support is also quick (I've had emails answered as quickly as 15 minutes before) and knows what they are doing - responses actually answer your questions and are written in English (this isn't surprising, since support is based in London).

Finally, Poker Stars offer much smaller-limit ring games than most other sites, which makes it a great place to start - you can deposit $50 and play in the small games until you've built up a bit of experience and bankroll.

In short, Pokerstars is kind of like Avis - they try harder because they are number two. Definately worth playing at.