Many players have requested that PokerStars alter the minimum and maximum buy-in amounts in many NL and PL cash games. After much consideration, we have therefore made the following changes to ring games as a direct result of player input:

• Many USD currency Hold’em and Omaha games with No-Limit or Pot-Limit betting will be offered with new and different minimum, maximum, and default buy-in amounts. The allowed buy-in amounts will be defined in terms of big blinds (bb) where 1 bb is equal to the big blind. Most stakes of NL Hold’em and PL Omaha will be offered as follows:
  • 20-50 bb, with default buy-in of 40bb
  • 40-100 bb, with default buy-in of 80bb
  • 100-250 bb, with default buy-in of 200bb and ante equal to 20% of the Big Blind
• All games in Euro currency will still offer a buy-in range of 35 to 100 bb, but the default buy-in will be lowered from 100 bb to 70 bb.
• Most NL and PL tables will be labelled with their minimum and maximum buy-in as above, for example ’20-50 bb’. All exceptions to this labelling are in cases where only one buy-in range is offered for that game type and the buy-in range is unchanged.
• All tables will have tooltips describing minimum and maximum buy-in amounts that appear when the mouse moves over the table name or description. These tooltips will include minimum and maximum buy-in information in terms of the currency of the game, such as USD or Euro, as well as in big blinds. As an example, for a $1/$2 NL hold’em game with buy-in range of ’20-50bb’, the tooltip will inform players that they may buy in for a minimum of $40 and a maximum of $100. The tooltips will be localized into languages the PokerStars lobby currently supports. The tooltips will default to ‘on’ but can be turned on and off by players.
• In order to inform players of changes, banners with information about these changes will be displayed above table listings in ring game lobbies for about ten days. These banners will briefly describe the changes and will inform players how to turn off tooltips if they so desire. These banners will be localized into languages the PokerStars lobby currently supports.
• Some tables will still continue run with old buy-in ranges until there are no players seated.
• The amount of time a player must wait before returning to the same table with less money has been increased from 30 minutes to 60 minutes for all cash games of all types.
• PokerStars reserves the right to amend the buy-in ranges, ante amounts, or any other structural parameters without a notice.