Unless you’re just stumbling across PocketFives by happenstance, you know that PokerStarsis far and away the largest online poker room in the world. It’s not even close either. According to figures from the traffic watchdog site PokerScout, PokerStars has averaged 20,400 cash game players over the last seven days, dwarfing everyone else.



Full Tilt Poker, which is owned by PokerStars, is second with a seven-day average of just 2,600 players, followed by the iPoker Network with 2,400, 888 Pokerwith 2,050, and PartyPoker with 2,000. And that’s just cash games. PokerStars made its name on tournaments and is still the go-to site for most players in that regard.

In its report, PokerScout displayed a graph to illustrate PokerStars’ meteoric rise to the top of the industry. Believe it or not, Stars was not always the behemoth it is now. It was popular, sure, especially once people found out that Chris Moneymaker won his seat in the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event on the site, but back then PartyPoker was the cream of the crop. What helped PokerStars begin its ascent was, interestingly, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act(UIGEA) of 2006, despite the damage that the law eventually did to the poker market in the United States.

The UIGEA forced many operators, including PartyPoker, to exit the U.S. market, while others ended up closing shop altogether. PokerStars, along with a few others like Full Tilt, took advantage of PartyPoker’s absence and scooped up many of its loyal American players.

According to PokerScout’s chart that appeared in its latest Scouting Report (pictured below), PokerStars had about a 15% global market share in 2006. That ticked up very slightly in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2008 that things really took off. Its market share was about 25% that year, a bit over 30% in 2009, and over 35% in 2010. Black Friday hurt Stars’ traffic in 2011, but it regained ground and then some the following year, achieving 40% market share in 2012.

Now, when all of its sites are counted, including Full Tilt and the various country-specific PokerStars rooms, more than 55% of all online cash game traffic flows through PokerStars. PokerStars would still be dominating if only its dot-com site were counted, as PokerScout says that Full Tilt and the country sites account for just 25% of its traffic. And again, this is just for cash games.

In other PokerStars news, the company announced on Monday that is has launched SMS Validation as a new account security feature. According to PokerStars’ Head of Public Relations Michael Josem, players who have activated the service “will receive an SMS text message when potential irregularities with the operation of their account are detected by PokerStars’ systems.”

At that point, all financial transactions, including the ability to buy into games, will be suspended until the player unlocks them with a code supplied in the SMS message. Any tournaments for which a player was already registered will still be available.

The service is free to all players. In order to activate it, players must first register a mobile phone number in the PokerStars software.

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