The PokerStars PA soft launch is over and the site’s first full day of play is here. Following what was an exciting, but limited, Monday and Tuesday this week, Pennsylvania poker players are now welcome to fully enjoy all that the site has to offer. There is a wide variety of game types and stakes available, so let’s take a look at what PokerStars PA has to offer.

Checking out the PokerStars PA lobby, players can find games sectioned off across three tabs. Those tabs are ‘Cash,’ ‘Sit & Go,’ and ‘Tourney,’ with each offering different options for players.

Plenty of Cash Games On Offer

Checking out the Cash section first, we can find stakes ranging from as low as $0.01/$0.02 all the way up to $100/200. The PokerStars PA No Limit Hold’em offering is predominantly made up of six-handed tables, although there are a few nine-handed tables available. These No Limit Hold’em games range in stakes from $0.01/$0.02 up to $25/$50. If you’re looking for Limit Hold’em, PokerStars PA has that available as well, albeit in a smaller serving. Limit Hold’em games available in the client started at stakes of $0.10/$0.20 and went up to $50/$100.

Other cash games available are a few different Omaha variants, the main Stud variants, and some Triple Draw. For Omaha, we found PokerStars PA offering Pot Limit Omaha, Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Low, Limit Omaha Hi-Low, and Pot Limit 5-Card Omaha. For Stud, there is regular Seven Card Stud, Razz, and Stud Hi-Low. There is also a handful of 8-Game tables available to play, with stakes as low as $0.50/$1.00 up to $100/$200.

As one could expect, the most populated cash game tables to start the first fully live day of PokerStars PA were the No Limit Hold’em tables.

SNGs Are All Turbo and Hyper Formats

Checking out the Sit & Go section, it’s dominated by Turbo and Hyper SNGs and we don’t find anything other than heads-up or six-handed formats available.

The lowest SNG buy-in available was for $1. On the higher end, bigger players could challenge others at the $500 buy-in level. Both No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha SNGs are available in the lobby.

Tourney Schedule Beefs Up

After a successful two days of the soft launch, which included quality attendance in PokerStars PA’s multi-table tournaments, Wednesday brought a fuller offering of MTTs, with buy-ins ranging from $2 to $100 and plenty of guaranteed prize pools.

The first tournament of the day was scheduled as a nine-handed, $3 buy-in ‘Time Tourney: 45 Minutes.’ Things quickly ramped up at 12:30 p.m. ET with ‘The Lunchtime Hot $20, $750 Gtd’ tournament, though.

The real juicy prize pools were slated for later in the day, specifically at 7 p.m. ET. That’s when ‘The Big $20, $1,500 Gtd’ and ‘Nightly Stars, $7,500 Gtd’ tournaments were scheduled for. The Big $20 has a $20 buy-in and $1,500 guarantee on the prize pool, and then the Nightly Stars comes with a $100 buy-in and $7,500 prize pool. There is also a $50 buy-in ‘Wednesday 6-Max, $5,000 Gtd’ scheduled for 8 p.m. ET.

Below is a screenshot of the MTT lobby about 20 minutes before the first tournament kicked off at 12 p.m. ET.

The biggest prize pool guaranteed during the two soft launch days was $5,000, so the Nightly Stars will serve as another test of the market. The tournament that had the $5,000 guaranteed prize pool was Tuesday’s ‘Bounty Builder $50, $5,000 Gtd’ and it crushed with a prize pool of $12,103.

What’s Missing?

One noticeable game that’s missing from the PokerStars PA lobby is the popular Spin & Go format. Spin & Gos are PokerStars’ three-handed Hyper SNG tournaments that feature a randomly drawn prize pool.

A second missing game type is PokerStars’ Zoom Poker, which groups players at the same game and stakes into a pool and constantly shuffles them around. Once you fold your hand, you’re immediately moved to a new table and dealt a new hand, which allows faster gameplay.

Spin & Gos and Zoom Poker may be available to PokerStars PA players in the future, but both formats were not available when the site went fully live on Wednesday.

There is no ‘Events’ tab in the lobby, which could be made available in the future should PokerStars PA come out with a Pennsylvania Championship of Online Poker (PACOOP).

Lastly, Pennsylvania players will have to wait for the Sunday MTT schedule. It’s not out yet but will be available soon. Once it’s live, we’ll let you know what’s on offer for online poker’s biggest day of the week.