PokerStars Marketing Code

As poker players, we are always looking for ways to be more profitable. Everyone wants to maximize their valuable time to make the most money in the shortest period of time, right? For some poker players, this can be as simple as playing at a different time of day. PokerStars is far and away the largest poker site on the Net. Yet, even PokerStars has certain times of the day or days of the week that are busier than others, or periods that might just be less profitable than others.

Now many of us do not have the luxury of picking and choosing when we play poker, we play when we have time. However, if you take poker seriously, and if accommodations can be made in your schedule, it may just be worth the trouble.

For instance, traffic on PokerStars seems to max out every day sometime around 3pm (EST) in the afternoon on the U.S. east coast. Traffic starts to really take off after 12 p.m. and then begins subsiding again after 5 p.m. Remember that when it’s 1 p.m. ET it’s 6 p.m. UK time. So much of the traffic may be coming from our friends across the pond, who would be getting home from work and logging on to play.

Generally speaking, whenever there are more players online, there are more bad players. More bad players equal more money flowing to the good players. Therefore, with that theory in mind, the best time to play at PokerStars is between 12 noon and about 8 p.m. ET.

As far as the best day to play, most people would say that Sunday is going to be the most profitable day of the week. There are a few reasons for that. For one, Sunday is of course the big day in the poker world for multi-table tournaments. PokerStars leads the way with their MTT’s, offering the Sunday Warm-Up ($750k guarantee for $200 + $15) and the Sunday Million ($1.5 million guarantee for $200 + $15). Not to mention the $215 Re-buy event, the Sunday 500 and the Sunday Second Chance, all with guarantees from $200k to $500k.

So maybe you’re thinking, “Great, I play cash games, what do I care about tournaments.” Well, trust me, Sundays are great for cash games. You would not believe how many tournament players play cash games on the side while they play their tournament. The case most of the time is that these players are not good cash game players at all. Probably not the best tournament players either, as the tourney pros are concentrating on their games and not worried about keeping busy.

Not coincidentally, Sunday is the generally the busiest day of the week at PokerStars. Often you can see nearly a quarter of a million people playing at PokerStars on a given Sunday afternoon! Below you can see a traffic count of a typical week on PokerStars.

As you can see, there is not really a bad day to play on PokerStars, as each day during this period topped out at over 200,000 players. There is not a particularly bad time either. Even the slowest times on PokerStars have more players than most other networks get at their peak times. However, as shown here, there are better times to play at PokerStars. So next time you are looking for a way to better your game, consider when you play as an option for improvement.

Use the PokerStars Bonus Code “STARS600″ and PokerStars Marketing Code “FLOPTURNRIVER” when registering your new account and making your first deposit to qualify for the $600 bonus!