Quote:
Originally Posted by houstonsaft
On January 16th Cardplayerlife.com published an hour long interview with Eric Hollreiser, the marketing director of Pokerstars, on their website and YouTube. The next day it was pulled. A few hours later the written transcript on their site was gone, too.
Here's the tweet with the preview:
https://twitter.com/erichollreiser/s...86831020826626
Does anybody have any idea why it was pulled? Something smells fishy here.
Hey houston - I saw you had commented on Twitter as well. Promised you a full response here, so here goes - and will also include replies to the other commenters:
I became aware of this thread a couple days ago already. I refrained from answering until things were resolved.
What happened was that unfortunately, a few hours after posting the article while I was asleep my site - which is
Cardplayerlifestyle.com by the way - received an automatic Wordpress update. It made the post disappear, but the URL "still existed" and had, indeed, been indexed by Google (as the cached link indicates).
I then made the video (hosted on YouTube) private until the issue could be resolved. I have been working together with my developer to that end to investigate what happened and how to fix it. While I could have in principle just re-posted the article, that would have caused major "duplicate content" issues, which would then likely have triggered a Google search penalty of my site.
Thankfully, all seems to finally be working again now without any issue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by delfins
wtf stars, probably one of best communication from anyone inside stars over many years and it pulled.
I agree with you wholeheartedly and I think it says a LOT about Eric and the higher ups in the company that they were willing to grant me this interview in the first place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DianeAbbott
Wouldn't exactly call them hard-hitting questions.
I had 24 hours notice on this opportunity. I also asked a number of unprepared questions (beyond the ones I had drafted) based on Eric's replies; challenging him on a few points. Moreover, the interview was conducted between 11pm and midnight after the end of the PSPC event; i.e., it had been a very busy day for us both.
I am always looking to improve though. What sort of questions would you have suggested I ask?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gzesh
Generally, a pretty good interview.
There was a cryptic comment at the end that may have foreshadowed the article being pulled:
Q: "Last question. I’ve been around comparatively a little while versus other members of the poker media, but you don’t really give that many interviews, at least like this, publicly. ...
A: Yeah, we’ll have to talk about that later.
Thank you for the kind words, David. They mean a lot coming from someone with your pedigree and experience in the industry. I sincerely appreciate that.
No need to read anything into that "cryptic comment" though. It was made laughingly... and again, the hour was late.
Re: the other language you pointed to in your more recent comment, as well as the comment from
OnMyBike... I'm not a PR professional, nor am I any sort of legal or corporate expert as far as public companies, but the facts of the matter are as follows:
- I didn't even request the interview; Eric OFFERED me the chance (as mentioned before; I had 24 hours notice).
- The Stars Group placed their trust in an 8-year veteran at the company with tremendous qualifications to do an "open" interview like this with me, on camera knowing full well that it would reach far and wide within the greater poker community.
- At no point did Eric waver, hedge, or redact in any way. He answered every single one of my questions head on, thoughtfully and openly. For an hour. Without any break.
To the best of my knowledge, corporate/PR at Stars have never been this open and transparent in years, ever since the company went public.
I was stunned to have been given the opportunity and even now - more than a week after conducting the interview - am impressed with the openness and honesty expressed.
I genuinely believe that this interview represents a very good, big step back "in the right direction" towards proper engagement with the greater poker community. Long may it continue...
For anyone who would be interested, the
article and full 7,500-word transcript can be found here, with the YouTube video embedded.