  String stars, or Horowitz-Polchinski solutions, are Euclidean string theory
saddles with a normalizable condensate of thermal winding strings. String stars
were suggested as a possible description of stringy (Euclidean) black holes
close to the Hagedorn temperature. In this work, we continue the study
initiated in arXiv:2202.06966 by investigating the thermodynamic properties of
string stars in asymptotically (thermal) anti-de Sitter backgrounds. First, we
discuss the case of AdS$_3$ with mixed RR and NS-NS fluxes (including the pure
NS-NS system) and comment on a possible BTZ/string transition unique to
AdS$_3$. Second, we present new ``winding-string gas'' saddles for confining
holographic backgrounds such as the Witten model, and determine the subleading
correction to their Hagedorn temperature. We speculate a black brane/string
transition in these models and argue for a possible relation to the deconfined
phase of 3+1 dimensional pure Yang-Mills.
