FAIL by stars.......pathetic

.

Not very, she runs a company that organizes live events and was hired by Stars but doesn't work for them directly (I only know this because I'm friends with her). However it's not like as a random player I shouldn't believe whatever she says, right?

I don't know, all the talk regarding the rules and the .net/.com thing aside, I just feel disappointed by the whole approach to it by Stars. Clearly they have failed in informing about the exact rules of the promotion and have possibly also broken their own rules giving the seat to William (and furthermore letting him transfer it to his brother), but what I think sucks way more is the fact that they even consider having a Stars pro a part of this promotion which is clearly aimed at satellite qualifiers/random people buying in who don't match the skill level of the pros. It feels like someone's intent was the exclude the pros from this by clearly stating it's people wearing the .com gear, it'd kind of make sense as every single person in the event was given .com gear and the ONLY ones wearing .net were the pros, who always have to wear .net due to legislation problems in some countries afaik.

The whole goal of the thing is to get people to wear Stars gear to give them publicity, and therefore the reason they are giving the free seat to the one who lasts longest is to make as many people as possible to make the choice to wear their gear. However, Stars pros do NOT have a choice to make here as they have to wear it anyway. And they already have a seat to the event secured anyway, so there isn't even anything for them to win here.

I've also discussed this with about 50 people from scandinavia who played in the event and not a single one of them though they'd be playing against the Stars pros as well.

^^
exactly

Grunching. I think it's crappy if William gave the seat to his brother, but we are not put in to every PokerStars tournament we enter. I have to pay my buyins for most of the tournaments I play as I'm sure William does, so of course he should be involved in the last longer.

except that he didn't wear a pokerstars.com patch and thus isn't eligible to participate in the competition (and that is ignoring how absurd it is for pros to be able to participate in the first place).

Yeah but William had a seat secured to this as it's his "home" tournament for marketing purposes. He doesn't have to pay a cent for his seat, which is the reason he transfered it to his brother. I heard this from William himself.

Apparently you missed the part where I said I was grunching? There is nothing mentioned about the .com/.net thing in the OP.

Why shouldn't Stars pros be able to participate in the first place? Some of the Stars pros don't get paid all that much(we all have different deals) and even if we're not put into the tournament we are playing by Stars, we have to wear the logo, so I don't really see the issue.

Ok, this is ****ty, but I still think it's ok for Stars Pros to be eligible for something like this. Especially since Stars is making him miss the WSOP to play in some very small relative tournament.

Pro's should be subject to the same restrictions as any player who enters the contest if it is going to be allowed for pros to play. The fact that they let him transfer the package when others wouldn't have been allowed looks really terrible.

I don't really see how this should be taken into consideration, the fact that he has a contractual obligation to play in this tourney and is then supposedly missing out on some ev of another tournament series shouldn't make him more or less entitled to participate in the competition than any other stars pro.

I think it's pretty clearly against the spirit of the competition for Stars pros to participate in this competition but I can see why other people wouldn't agree.

I posted it on page 3 long before their decision, I wasn't aware of it by the time I made the OP.

i think OP is right, but i think ur too nitty about the pokerstars.com/.net issue. i dont really see the difference between the two.
the whole idea behind the promo was that if u represent pokerstars u can win a seat. thorsen obv did that.

but yeah team pros should have been excluded from the promo.

Devils advocate argument, but you should have discussed the matter thoroughly with stars prior to playing because you were aware of the extremely significant icm considerations (package being such large value in relation to prizes). Stars usually comes through though afaik, despite what others are saying.

Like I said, it's not really my main issue here. If I lost this to a random guy who was for some reason wearing a .net shirt, it's not like I'd ever demand the seat to myself based on that.

However, the diffence between .net and .com is that .net is the one where you play for play money and .com is the real deal. In the legislation of a lot of european countries you're not allowed to advertise .com in your gear because it's gambling for real money, and Stars and other sites came up with .net to go around that problem. The reason William and other pros have .net in their shirts is that in half of the countries they play in they are only allowed to advertise .net, and to ensure no one accidentally plays in .com in a wrong country to avoid being sued etc they probably just decided it's safer to make the pros wear .net all the time.

What does that have to do with the Baltic Fest, where advertising .com is allowed too? Well I can't think of a single reason why they'd want to write "Pokerstars.com patch" instead of "Pokerstars patch" in their rules is the exact reason that they'd want to exclude their pros from the promotion, but then have somehow forgot about it and then this situation came up. All the satellite qualifiers and other people who chose to wear Stars gear to take part in the promo were given .com shirts, but the pros wore .net.

And of course it's also a very valid argument for me to use on top of all my other arguments towards this case from a legal point of view.

obviously i believe the situation should be resolved based on the technicals/papers signed. pokerstars.net has a completely different designation that pokerstars.com and the similarities between the two are irrelevant here. he could have just as well had a "pstars" beanie or just a pro patch on a leather jacket or something and nobody would deny your case in that situation. the deal was clearly for pokerstars.com ads. the advertising for pokerstars.com part is important imo.

It was kind of hard as they only had one manager there, and he was drunk playing cash games at the time the final table was started and seemed extremely annoyed when I tried to talk to him and argue this case.

Basically I only spoke to the TD about this before starting the FT as the manager was nowhere in sight, and it didn't cross my mind William could possibly be in this competition. You know, it's one of those situations where the answer just seems so clear I didn't feel like going to search him for a second opinion, especially as I already got the TD's word for it. There was 60min dinner break before the start of the FT, and I was gone for about 55 minutes of it meditating and eating dinner. When I got back there 5 minutes before the start, the manager wasn't there and therefore I didn't really even have a chance to ask him. Admittedly, had I decided to go for it, I would probably have found him just in time as he was still in the same room, but I had no idea of his whereabouts at the time. He sure as hell wasn't present in the final table ceremonies. He was in the exact opposite end of this very large room in a cash game table.

Then when I finally ran into the Stars manager with the ft being halfway through and after several "wrong" decisions given the actual ICM situation I was in, he was visibly drunk playing cash. I tried to argue this on a 10-minute break, but he didn't want to discuss any of my points (basically the one stated in this thread apart from the .net/.com issue which I didn't know at the time) and seemed like he wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible. His answer to all of my arguments was basically "yeah but William is eligible as he plays for Pokerstars" and he refused to comment more on it. That was also the reason I created this thread without trying to ask their support if there's someone else I could contact about it before making this public, as he was pretty rude towards me and gave me the idea there wasn't any room for arguments.

Hey TT,

It appears Stars are refusing to comment on anything at all. Since you know this stuff, do you think there's any chance this would end in my favour if I took legal action?

I assume it'd be pretty difficult since Stars are located in the Man islands and can probably afford a lot better lawyers than I do. I'd just like to know if it's a realistic shot or do I need to forget about the whole thing pretending it never happened?

edit: in other words: what would Todd Terry do?

Sorry to be really childish but that made me laugh >.<

Pretty darn awful on Stars part. I'm very surprised.

You would think with people having to choose whether or not to sign their contract before playing the WSOP (by buying in through them) very soon they would have made a different decision than this... esp given the publicity on 2p2.

LOL at taking legal action, the time, stress + money cost would easily outweigh the value of the package, plus do you really want to take the chance of being permabanned from Stars?

It really sucks for you & Stars totally went against the spirit of the promotion imo, but I think you're just gonna have to chalk it up as a bad beat.

I sent this to NeilJ on the 26th of June:


I got this back on the 29th:

I have not heard back since and it's now been over two weeks since the end of the tournament when this whole thing started.

NeilJ is of course doing an awesome job in general and surely deserves his vacation, but it's beyond me how Stars don't have anyone else who could comment on this issue while he's on a holiday? They still haven't answered any of the questions asked (the .com/net issue, the seat transfer, the misinformation etc), basically all I've got is the reply saying "we looked into it, William was in the promo".

If that's all I'm getting, I would suggest not to take Stars' word on ANYTHING. They will break their own rules to save money, then basically say "Sorry, we have looked into it and you're not going to get a dime, end of discussion" and refuse to comment on anything.

Sorry to bump this once again but this whole thing is seriously so ****ing unbelievably managed by Stars it needs to be brought into people's attention once more.

Ridiculous that they aren't giving you the seat, and I can only imagine how frustrating of a situation this is for you (esp. with a backer as well). The past would say that stars will do the right thing, don't stop bringing this up in forums, etc to keep attention on this.

PS.

Stars - I am in Vegas at the moment and will be until I bust from the ME. I assume you guys have a ton of employees here. If any of them would like to sit down with me and discuss this in detail until we find a solution, drop me a pm. That way we could finally put this to rest. I'm available basically 24/7 and I'll pay the bill if we go for lunch or whatever.

Please?

I don't think there's anything wrong with bumping the thread. I also kinda think you can give NeilJ the leeway to get back to you whenever he says his vacation is over--if for no other reason than to focus on the main event (there won't be an on-site employee who will help you rectify this better than Neil does whenever he gets to it imo).