Initial reactions from PokerStars players in New Jersey seem to indicate that its soft launch has been successful. Players who accessed the site after its soft launch on March 16 have said that they faced no problems playing on the new software.
PokerStars was scheduled to make its much-awaited entry into United States on March 21 after its license was approved by New Jersey regulators last year. But it made a surprise announcement of having a soft launch five days before that to test its site and get feedback on its performance.
The soft launch limited both the hours of play and number of players on the site. The hours of play was set at 8 hours during the initial days moving up to 24-hours only in the last two days. The number of players was restricted to 500 players throughout this period.
Players who had the chance to test the site during the soft launch have revealed that the site is performing as per expectations with players gaining full access to PokerStars entire suite of offerings. Players also reported that during their limited time on the site they experienced no downtime or major software failures. Players also reported that the geo-tagging feature which is mandatory to ensure that only residents of New Jersey access the site, worked as expected with no glitches.
Players were able to view the calendar of events that the site is planning to roll out in the near future which will include PokerStar’s popular Sunday tournaments. The new schedule will have the entire range of Sunday events such as Sunday Storm, Sunday Supersonic and Sunday High Roller will be held but with lower guarantees due to the lower number of players on the New Jersey site.
Poker pros have said that the general reaction to the launch has been of excitement and that the site hasn’t disappointed the players. In fact, it has revitalized interest in poker.
In a statement, Michael Gagliano, a BorgataPoker.com pro said
Everyone seems pretty excited that PokerStars is here, and that’s translating to other sites and just poker as a whole. Since the PokerStars announcement, I’ve been seeing players on BorgataPoker and WSOP that I haven’t’ seen in quite a while. So it seems the PokerStars return to NJ has rejuvenated everyone’s interest in poker and it should be interesting to see what’s to come.
Other players like Michael Haberman Jr, New Jersey’s best online poker player at one time said that he was pleased with the software and the fact that the site has been running Spin & Go tournaments continuously with no issues.
