Detailed History of PokerStars

Updated: 15.08.2025

PokerStars can be traced back to the early 2000s and has since grown into one of the most highly rated online poker sites in the world. Today, PokerStars has over 50 million registered customers, with an average of over 25,000 new players joining the site every day.

PokerStars.com didn't become famous overnight; in fact, if you take a closer look at its history, you'll see that a lot of hard work and innovative development went into making PokerStars the true success it is today.

Isai Scheinberg

Before we delve into the history of the poker star, we need to learn a bit about the man who made it all possible: Isai Scheinberg. A man of education, he earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in mathematics from Moscow State University.

Fresh out of college, Scheinberg went to work for IBM, where he saw a huge opportunity in the hot Internet market - especially online gambling. In 1996, he finished 25th in the World Series of Poker's Texas Hold'em event. He has a passion for playing poker - and embodies the odds calculation that characterizes both poker playing and poker card design.

So he gathered some of his colleagues and worked with them on what would become known as PokerStars.com. Scheinberg also enlisted the help of his son, Mark, who is now the CEO of PokerStars. By 2000, Scheinberg had founded a software development company that became the software provider for PokerStars.com. This company, PYR Software, provided PokerStars.com with the kind of platform it needed to run.

The Very Beginning

On September 11, 2001, the site launched in beta form, accepting play money only, and operated out of Costa Rica. The first account holder was Oskar Hornell, who played under the screen name "pokermaniac". PokerStars was the first site to allow players to provide their own image to be used as their avatar at the table, making it a uniquely personal experience.

By the end of the year, the real money version of PokerStars.com was up and running. Since the company's inception, every real money hand at PokerStars has been recorded and made available to any player upon request - a stunningly unique feature that has set PokerStars apart since day one.

In April of 2002, PokerStars ran two separate tournaments that rewarded the winners with a free trip for two to Las Vegas and a free seat at the WSOP Main Event. This was a completely unprecedented situation.

In 2005, PokerStars was all set to move to the Isle of Man, where they could avoid paying corporation tax and save a substantial amount of money. A few months earlier in 2005, the site had also been granted an eGaming license by the Isle of Man's Department of Home Affairs.

2005 was also the year that the PokerStars Blog went live, marking the first time a poker site had added a blog to its site. That year, PokerStars sent over 1,000 players to the Main Event of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, representing over 18% of all entrants. Joe Hachem won the Main Event that year and went on to become a spokesman for PokerStars.com.

One Man’s Impact

Chris Moneymaker's win in the 2003 World Series of Poker The average person started paying attention to online gambling when the big win happened. Before he hit it big, Moneymaker was just a guy like you and me - an accountant with a penchant for playing online poker from time to time. Moneymaker played in a $39 satellite poker tournament on PokerStars and won a seat in a larger satellite tournament. After winning that, he earned a seat at this year's World Series of Poker.

At first, Moneymaker was not sure he wanted to go to the WSOP. But at the last minute, he changed his mind, went, and surprisingly, at least to him, won a WSOP gold bracelet and $2.5 million. Then, in a crazy poker wave, people all over the world flocked to online casinos hoping to do something similar.

From that point on, ESPN began showing the WSOP Main Event on its television network, introducing even more people to the poker universe and its remarkable opportunities. This was extraordinary publicity for all online poker rooms, but especially for PokerStars, as it was the room where Moneymaker played and qualified for the WSOP in the first place. By the turn of the year, PokerStars had more than 250,000 registered players and the rate of growth was astounding.

UIGEA and Black Friday

Drastic changes began for PokerStars in 2006 when the United States passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The passage of this law made it illegal for financial institutions to process online gambling transactions from anyone in the United States.

Some of the leading online casinos made the decision to cut off all their customers in the United States in order to avoid any conflicts that might arise in the future. PokerStars, on the other hand, made a decision that turned out to be quite popular and, in hindsight, profitable, as it did not actually cut off many of its customers. On the contrary, it began to serve even more of them.

For about five years, everything seemed fine until April 15, 2011, when the U.S. Attorney's Office seized the domain name of Pokerstars and all existing online gaming sites serving customers in the United States. Pokerstars had to comply with the wishes of the U.S. government and, even though it would result in a serious financial loss to the company, agree to prohibit customers in the United States from using their site and having any type of account with Pokerstars.

Unfortunately, not every site was able to return the necessary funds owed to their customers due to difficulties related to money laundering and bank fraud. Full Tilt Poker was one of those sites, and had PokerStars not come to the rescue, many of its customers would have lost thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

PokerStars has agreed to return $500,000 to Full Tilt Poker's US customers in exchange for some of Full Tilt Poker's assets. The poker site, which owes a lot of money to a lot of people, was relaunched in the U.S. in November 2012 under the management of PokerStars. Meanwhile, PokerStars is still trying to become a legally regulated US online poker site and is still thriving.

Continuing to Expand & Breaking Records Along the Way

Online poker's first major tournament took place in 2002 when PokerStars created the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). Much like the site it called home, the tournament has become so popular that it can no longer be called just an online poker tournament in terms of sheer size and scope. The 2017 WCOOP offered no less than $67 million in guaranteed money, with individual tournament guarantees at times larger than the entire field of the first WCOOP in 2002.

In 2007, PokerStars created a VIP tier called Supernova Elite that few can reach. To get there, a player must accumulate 1 million VIP Player Points. The first to reach this mountaintop was Team PokerStars pro Bertrand Grospellier, who accomplished the feat shortly after winning the EPT Monte Carlo event. Berpart took to the Byzantine PokerStars interface where he opened up to 62 tables. Playing between those tables was an arc of dizzying concentration that kept 62 voices humming in his head. Grospellier's performance at Supernova Elite is better seen than told.

On September 6, 2009, PokerStars broke the world record for the most players in an online poker room. On that day, 307,016 players were playing on PokerStars.com at the same time. (As a side note, PokerStars also became the single online poker room with the most concurrent players when we had over 100,000 concurrent players earlier this year). In addition, PokerStars became the online poker room with the most viewers of any poker show on television in history when its Million Dollar Challenge became the most watched poker show on television ever.

The company also expanded its horizons by launching its own channel: PokerStars.tv, featuring live tournament coverage of its own events, including the Million Dollar Challenge, the PokerStars Big Game, and the European Poker Tour. All coverage is free and can be streamed or downloaded to watch at your convenience.

Now you can access PokerStars on the go, whether you have an iPhone, Android phone, or any other type of smartphone. You can either download the software directly to your phone or access the site from your phone's browser. This latest development makes it even more convenient to play your favorite version of poker, which is always a plus.

What the PokerStars Website Now Has to Offer

PokerStars now offers the widest variety of poker available on the Internet: Texas Hold 'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, Five-Card Draw, Mixed Hold 'em, Mixed Omaha Hi/Lo, and a host of games to suit every player's taste.

In 2012, PokerStars launched Zoom Poker. It was aptly titled because after each hand you play, you face a new opponent - you play against different people - making it a lightning fast game. But Zoom Poker is about more than just speed. In fact, that may be why it has become so popular, so popular that PokerStars has taken Zoom Poker on the road: in 2014, it began hosting live tournaments where players could Zoom against each other.

You can also access their 24/7 helpline through their website, and there is sure to be someone there to help you with any problems you may have, whether they are technical, payment related, or concerns about the actual gameplay of the game.

They also have a number of special offers that they have listed on their website and you should definitely check them out as they make frequent updates to their offers. Some of the offers are time limited but a lot of them are in perpetuity such as their 100% First Deposit Match where they promise to match your first deposit dollar for dollar from $1 to $600. You can also sign up for their VIP Rewards program for even more chances to receive gifts, special invitations to tournaments, and access to their limited VIP Store.

PokerStars has what they call their online poker school. They offer courses for interested players to learn more about how to play poker. Four classes cover the basic rules and structure of the game. They cover how to make the right bets in the right situations. They cover how to manage your bankroll. They cover different playing styles: aggressive, tight, loose.

Impacting Lives

In 2007, PokerStars donated $1 million to Not on Our Watch, a Darfur charity. Founded by the stars of Ocean's 13, Not on Our Watch brings worldwide attention to human rights abuses in Darfur and helps find solutions to these problems.

Coming out on top at PokerStars.com can be financially rewarding, even for the average Joe. In 2013, Isidora Panagiotopoulou became the not-so-typical everyday player to take home a big win when she took home $100,000 for playing the online poker room's 100 billionth hand.

Panagiotopoulou was very grateful for the money stating this during the press conference,

"The way things are with the financial crisis, the money is extremely important. This money came out of nowhere and it will help us achieve a lot of our goals. We have a lot of financial obligations to meet and this money will help a lot.

In addition to writing billions of checks, PokerStars sponsors a number of live poker tours, including the European Poker Tour, Asia Pacific Poker Tour, Latin American Poker Tour, Italian Poker Tour, New Zealand Poker Tour, France Poker Series and Belgian Poker Series, bringing poker to a wider audience around the world.

PokerStars Teams

PokerStars also maintains a roster of paid professional poker players known as Team PokerStars Pro. The various members of this team include some of the biggest names in the game, such as Chris Moneymaker and Daniel Negreanu. Team PokerStars Pro is primarily an online entity, with its members playing and representing PokerStars in tournaments in front of live audiences, as well as in front of cameras in their homes, playing in online poker tournaments. Players on Team PokerStars Pro come from all over the world, including the United States, Canada, Belgium, Spain, and Argentina.

PokerStars also has a sports team they call "SportStars". Among the star athletes they represent are tennis pro Rafael Nadal, World Cup-winning Italian soccer goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, French international rugby star Sébastien Chabal, and many other famous athletes from around the world.