I'd like to bet the "over"

Moneymaker should have a lifetime ride from Stars. He is arguably the best advertising that they and i-poker generally have ever had.

Agree though that the likely trend will be to engage more celebs in sports and entertainment world over poker players outside of very talented players with top track records.

There you go Stars, just saved you mirrions.

They should cut a lot more and reduce rake. Good start if this is the intention.

It's also stupid to have a lot of "live pro's" who barely play on the internet. It's ******ed marketing if you ask me. Live / Online should be more separated I believe.

Live Pro's:
Chris Moneymaker - Can't be removed, ever.

Team Online:
Isaac Haxton
Remove talonchick aswell, find a pretty "gamer-chick" who is hot and grinds and videoblogs about it. Can it be that difficult?
Add some russian star like Forhayley and or someone who has grinded up from the very small stakes while the games has gotten thougher like: Johan5390.
Add some chinese people who can draw people to the site.




More mirrions saved.

Cut jorj95? I'd think that he should remain as a very visible presence online who people like to watch and attempt to emulate

I think your list of non-online pros needs work. They are obv never getting rid of DNegs or Mercier IMO. You can probably throw Elky into that mix as well. I think Duhamel needs to stay because he is fairly prominent in Canada.

He grinds satty's, he doesn't attribute dog****.

Mercier is one of the worst of the Stars Pro's if you ask me. I have not met him, but how he's antics is on the EPT ********** is beyond ridiculous. He refuse to talk strategy on a TV broadcast where he should, he doesn't have to say much about his own game and how he think's but he should not sit there and refuse to talk about strat on a very basic level for some of the listeners. Total asshat.

It's like watching a chess broadcast without being able to discuss what the players are doing.

I know it's popular to bash Moneymaker, nice to see some love for the guy. I think he has been an incredible ambassador for poker over the years. And please take DNegs smug face off the ps ads, he always looks like he is going to guess someone's hole cards.

I'm pretty sure Stars didn't "decide to cut" those guys.

It's either: "Your contract is ending and we won't renew it on the same basis, but we still can pay you X", to which the guy doesn't agree and leaves.

or

"My contract is ending, and to renew it I want X more" to which Stars doesn't agree and doesn't renew.

This (among other things) would explain why they "cut" Angel (instead of Christian Deleon) and Barbero (instead of Leo Fernandez), as they had two teampros in Mexico and Argentina.

Felix Schneiders is a good sponsor candidate, he tries to promote poker to the average consumer and all around good dude. Most of these people make no effort to cross promote poker to the masses.

Those people who think they can make a judgement about whether or not e.g. Marcin Horecki should stay or go are obviously consuming a lot more Polish language media than I am.

For the UK, I would keep Coren-Mitchell. She is a mainstream star who also plays poker, basically what they are paying Nadal and Ronaldo to pretend to be, she is the real thing.

Isn't Liv Boeree a team pro then?

Add to it all the Lock Pros that are gone, and this is just really sad news

lol at ppl itt making list for PS ... yeah, cut the asian pros b/c some nvg-folks don't know them

Jesus ****ing christ humberto was still being sponsored? That makes me seriously angry.

They should just drop another 20 and they might actually lose their excuse to offer fairly raked plo.

Everyone has their niche/target market. Negreanu and Selbst are both great representatives of the homosexual community. Guys like Ronaldo and Nadal represent the pro athlete community and also spanish/south american communities. Hanson and Blom represent the losing player community, which was an interesting strategy to keep them after FT was back but it seems like it's worked decently well to jumpstart the FT games a bit. Vicky Coren and Roussou represent the eye candy demographic, moreso Roussuo than Coren, but Coren has more cleavage and plus she's a Brit. Elky represents the online gamer turned poker player community. There are a lot of sicko starcraft/world of warcraft type people who dump lots of money into games like that who could just as easily dump lots of money into poker. Nanonoko and Millar represent the Stars online community. Moneymaker is kind of like a Legacy so he should stay forever. I think Greenstein will eventually be cut. He seems like he'll eventually be out of the game since he's not playing all that many tourneys anymore/not had many recent results and is probably closer to broke than millionaire. Getting your house foreclosed on and sold at sheriff's sale is not a good look for a "poker pro."

I always found Williams Reynolds to be annoying. Looks like the type of guy who did/does a lot of blow.

Laughing at that 1st sentence way more than I should...

He was dropped in 2007 when US laws changes, he mentioned it himself I posted it below. but I Have to agree they should scoop WW back up. Guy has been working in hollywood since he was seven years old. More importantly unlike many sponsored celebrities he legit loves poker. He spoke at barge for goodness sake LOL. Also in regards to his twitter 90% of his twitter follower don't play poker so you would think he would have more potential value then poker personalities that are followed exclusively by current poker players

From WWs wiki page

In 2003, Wheaton mentioned his love for the game of poker on his blog. The following year, he began writing more extensively about his poker-playing experiences, including stories about playing Texas hold 'em tournaments locally and in Las Vegas. Eventually, he worked up to regular play, including a run at the 2005 World Poker Tour Championships. On June 23, 2005, Wheaton accepted an invitation to join Team PokerStars.[32] He went on to play in that year's World Series of Poker and was the guest speaker for the 2005 BARGE Banquet. In June 2007, he announced he would no longer be on Team Pokerstars due to changes in the U.S. legal system that would cause poker sites to have to focus on European and Asian markets[33] and held a farewell Pokerstars tournament on June 5, 2007, which he titled So Long and Thanks for All the Chips.[34]

one of the best posts iv read this year. very funny.

Obv Stars should just cut their whole promotional budget and stop bringing in new rec players so you can grind vs. the same 5 PLO regs every day.

legit lol'd

Rousso out .Felix Schneiders does great vids/challenges in German and English.

I reckon all of Team Asia are safe for now, it's way to big of an emerging market. Shame that they're not all good at poker.

I'd say at least 75% of the pros add absolutely nothing to the company.

But LOL at the idea that if Stars drops sponsored pros, then the money saved will in any way go back to the community in the form of lowered rake, more bonuses/promos, etc.

On the contrary, they should give some money back to the community by sponsoring more pros.

LOLLLLL Every sentence in this post is true and POTY

+tree fiddy.

Flix is the definition of what Team Onliners should be, imo. He's truly inspirational to members of PSO and Intellipoker, and his annual 'Grind it Up' challenges prove that it IS still possible to go from 2NL to 100NL in if you have the right work ethic.
He also smiles a lot and reminds us that poker is supposed to be fun.

Mentioning no names, but some of the other Team Online people seem to treat the status as a "reward", and appear to me to do nothing to encourage newcomers or regs to stick around.