PokerStars NJ Online Casino Review & Bonus Code

• Match bonus is valid up to $500 on your first 3 (three) deposits.
• Match bonus is only eligible within 28 days from the first deposit.
• Wager requirement is 80 (eighty) times the bonus amount.
• You can read the full PokerStars welcome bonus and promo terms and conditions here.

PokerStars uses a three-tiered approach to its welcome bonus offer — each requiring a promo code. To start, you must use the promo code WELCOME1 on your first deposit up to $500. You must then make your second deposit within 14 days using the promo code WELCOME2 and again within 14 days, you must make your third deposit with the promo code WELCOME3.

To determine which NJ online casino has the best welcome bonus, we needed to test them all. We used a $100 deposit baseline and developed our own metric for comparing bonus values (ABV).

Using this calculation, we could compare and rank every online casino based on the actual value of the welcome bonus they were offering new players. In New Jersey, this proved to show a large variance between good casino bonuses and bad ones. Unfortunately, PokerStars welcome bonus falls near the bottom of the list for welcome bonus value.

PokerStars NJ online casino finished our welcome bonus test with an ABV of $20.86 which was good for 20th place out of 24 casinos. This earned PokerStars a 2.5-star rating.

PokerStars welcome bonus was only better than four other casinos — including three that have no welcome bonus at all. Meaning, of New Jersey online casinos offering welcome bonuses, PokerStars has the 2nd worst.

PokerStars’ ABV of $20.86 is 61% below the state average of $52.26. It’s also almost 5x less than Harrah’s welcome bonus which had the highest-rated online casino welcome bonus in New Jersey.

Below shows the 3 online casinos that finished above PokerStars and the 3 online casinos that finished below them in our NJ online casino welcome bonus test.

17. Ocean ($43.28 ABV)
18. Stardust ($24.38 ABV)
19. William Hill ($24.33 ABV)
20. PokerStars ($20.86 ABV)
21. BetAmerica ($16.69 ABV)
22. DraftKings ($0.00 ABV)
23. Pala ($0.00 ABV)

The first step in maximizing the bonus is understanding it.

PokerStars boasts a three-tier 100% welcome bonus offer to new players at its New Jersey online casino. Each tier has a maximum match of $500 for a total match bonus up to $1,500.

With this in mind, the best way to maximize your return is to deposit $500 at each tier for a total deposit of $1,500 and total match of $1,500 for a $3,000 bankroll.

PokerStars has an 80x playthrough requirement on the bonus amount which means you need to bet 80 x $1,500 = $120,000 before you can withdraw any winnings. So, we need to get started.

First, take your entire bankroll and go to European Roulette and bet it all on black or red. This has an almost 50/50 odds of hitting and turning your $1,500 deposit into $6,000.

If you do hit, you now need to worth through the remaining $117,000 outstanding wagering requirements. To do this, go to the highest-RTP game you can find (Blood Suckers) and begin betting. This slot has 98% RTP which means you should expect to lose 2% on your bet total over the life of playing.

So, across $117,000 you would lose $2,340 leaving you with $3,660 remaining or $2,110 profit from your $1,500 deposit.

When it comes to measuring casino bonuses, there isn’t a good solution. Some offer welcome bonuses, some offer no deposit bonuses, and some offer match bonuses while others have rebate offers. In other words, there was no real uniform metric that could compare different casinos and different bonus types. So, we invented one.

Our Actual Bonus Value (ABV) metric takes all the variables from each casino bonus and plugs it into an equation that spits out the actual value if someone were to make a $100 deposit.

Below is a quick overview of how we used the ABV formula to measure PokerStars welcome bonus package.

• First Deposit amount: $100 (We used $100 as the baseline deposit amount for our test)
• Welcome Bonus Amount: $100
• First Deposit Bonus Wagering Requirement: 80 (eighty times playthrough requirement)
• First Deposit Bonus Wagering Requirement Dependency: 1 =  only the bonus amount
• Maximum RTP accepted: 98% or .98

We plugged this into our expected bonus value equation as follows:

• ABV100 = ( $100 * 100% ) * ( 98% ^ 80 ) = $20.86

If a new player deposits $100 into PokerStars NJ online casino, they would earn roughly $20.86 in profit from the welcome bonus offer. This isn’t exact and can change depending on how someone bets or the games they choose to wager on among other factors.

We measured the no deposit bonuses for all 24 legal online casinos in New Jersey. Our goal was to rank casinos by the value of free money they offered new players just for registering. This evaluation looked at the playthrough requirements of no deposit bonuses as well as game restrictions, expiry windows, and other important details outlined in the terms and conditions.

Our test uses a measurement we created called the Actual Bonus Value (ABV). This bonus metric computes the real value a player can expect to receive after completing all the wagering requirements. This value is what we used in our evaluation and no deposit bonus rankings.

Unfortunately, PokerStars was one of 17 casinos not to offer a no deposit bonus at all. This defaulted to an ABV of $0.00 and tied them for 8th place in our rankings with the other NJ online casinos without free play bonuses.

The average value of no deposit bonuses for all 24 casinos was $4.14 and $14.21 if we only consider the casinos with a no deposit bonus. In either case, PokerStars’ no deposit bonus is nonexistent — thus, unimpressive.

BetMGM’s NJ online casino won our no deposit bonus test with an ABV of $24.50.

Below shows the 7 New Jersey online casinos that currently offer a no deposit in order of their ABV. For the full results, visit our NJ online casino no deposit bonus test.

1. BetMGM ($24.50 ABV)
2. Borgata ($19.60 ABV)
3. Ocean ($13.53 ABV)
4. Scores Casino ($12.41 ABV)
5. Harrah’s ($9.80 ABV)
6. Caesars ($9.80 ABV)
7. Unibet ($9.80 ABV)

As of our test, PokerStars NJ online casino had 190 total games in its library. While not as many as other online casinos, they do have some different game types. When you play at PokerStars’ online casino, you can gamble on games like:

• Slots
• Blackjack
• Roulette
• Video Poker

If a casino didn’t have games, you wouldn’t gamble there. That’s the crux of why we decided to measure game libraries for every online casino in New Jersey. We manually counted the game libraries for all 24 NJ online casinos.

PokerStars ended up near the bottom of our rankings with only 190 total games. This was good for 20th place and a 2-star rating. The NJ state average was 550 games, so PokerStars was 65% below average. While better than casinos like Tropicana, Virgin, and Bet365, they still failed to impress when it comes to game selection.

If gaming options is important to you, then you might want to consider BetMGM (1,121 games) or Borgata (1,103 games) — the top 2 casinos in our test.

Below shows the 3 online casinos that finished above PokerStars  and the 3 online casinos that finished below them in our NJ online casino game selection test.

17. Stardust (371 games)
18. Ocean’s (354 games)
19. Parx (243 games)
20. PokerStars (190 games)
21. Tropicana (177 games)
22. Virgin (176 games)
23. Bet365 (107 games)

Our NJ online casino email support test looked at how reliable and fast casinos were when it came to answering emails from active or potential players. We sent the same 10 emails to every support email address from the online casinos and tracked how long it took to receive a response.

To our surprise, only 6 casinos responded to every email. Even worse, the time between when we sent our test emails and when we received responses were longer than you’d want if you needed actual help. The average response time for all casinos was over 17 hours long.

PokerStars was ineligible for our email support test because they did not offer email support at all. In fact, they were the only casino in New Jersey without an email support option.

While email has definitely become less of a priority thanks to Live Chat widgets, social media, and other communication channels — having it as an option still seems important. As a result, we gave PokerStars 1 star for this test.

PokerStars NJ Casinos has a help and support page for players to find articles and answers to frequent issues. For further support, players can contact PokerStars 24/7 through their support form or Live Chat.

For our page load speed test, we measured the load times of every NJ online casino using Pingdom software every 30 minutes for seven consecutive days. After our test, we had a sample of page loads for all 24 legal online casinos in New Jersey.

Our test looked at four specific pages at each casino.

• Slots Page: Often the page of the casino with the most resources.
• Promotions Page: The area of an online casino that is updated frequently.
• Responsible Gaming Page:  An important section for player health and safety.
• Support Page: The area of the casino with customer support and FAQ articles.

PokerStars finished our page load test with an average speed of 1.37 seconds. This was 0.51 seconds faster than the NJ state average of 1.88 seconds and over 3 seconds faster than the slowest casino in New Jersey, Golden Nugget, which had an average load time of 4.43 seconds.

While still one of the fastest casinos in New Jersey, PokerStars’ load time was over 1 second. We had five casinos finish our test with a sub-1-second loading time: Scores Casino (0.59 seconds), Bet365 (0.74 seconds), Virgin Casino (0.86 seconds), Unibet (0.92 seconds), and Pala Casino (0.95 seconds).

Below shows the 3 online casinos that finished above PokerStars and the 3 below it in our NJ online casino page load speed test.

5. Pala Casino (0.95 seconds)
6. Tropicana (1.02 seconds)
7. Harrah’s (1.17 seconds)
8. PokerStars (1.37 seconds)
9. Ocean (1.47 seconds)
10. 888casino (1.48 seconds)
11. Mohegan Sun (1.51 seconds)

Page load speed may not be the first thing to come to mind when you think about evaluating an online casino, but to us — it’s one of the more important considerations.

The page load speed for any website is an objective measurement that shows how long, on average, you have to wait to access a specific page. A fast-loading page may never even cross your mind because you don’t notice it, but a slow-loading page can be irritating and inconvenient. For an online casino, every second is money — so they are incentivized to make it as fast and seamless of an experience as possible.

Not only does the site speed directly affect your gaming experience, but it can reveal potentially serious issues behind the scenes. Much like a delayed shipment can indicate issues with the manufacturer or fulfillment provider, a slow-loading website can indicate potential security or technical issues at the casino.

Fortunately, PokerStars’ 1.37-second average load time is no cause for concern. It’s one of the fastest in New Jersey and well below the average load time for the state. Moreover, the average load time for sites on desktop across the internet is around 8 seconds, so PokerStars more than exceeds that bar.