this

in before its revealed greg had a fling with amanda leatherman

The cost of maintaining PokerStars Pros in all of the continents must be serious cash, even for a successful site like PS. The conditions of being a PokerStars Pro are likely to change and frankly the expectations of certain poker pros are also subject to change, so there will always be good poker players moving from site A to site B for a broad variety of reasons.

No matter what reasons surface in the future for Greg Raymer's move from PokerStars, most people wish him well.

The current flotilla of arrogant poker-punks that theoretically make for good press might be cost effective, but I cannot shake the feeling that PokerStars is not valuing the importance of having all of the Main Event winners on permanent staff, and that is probably a mistake.

The best way to prove this is a mistake is for Greg Raymer to win the Main Event ... again Good luck for the future Mr. Raymer.

Wow he seemed to be the most legit main event champ, a stand up dude, and a great representative for poker. Gl Greg, you deserve better!

Did the Braves win?



Side note: Silly move PS..silly move. Raymer was morphed into the brand. Regardless of his current position/ status in the poker world, the man made PS that much more recognizable. Even a barely college educated Caddie knows that.

Most people on 2+2 and p5 probably think Raymer is some nit donk who luckboxed a tournament a few years back and doesn't know how to 10-table or use proper pushbotting formulae.

Stars probably had to pay a lot for isodur and so on. They keep signing more pros and can't pay that much to all the older big names.

I think one of the reasons this thread is so popular is not only that a lot of people respect Greg as an ambassador, but his Main Event win takes us back to a time when poker was on a definite roll. It's cooled off some but I do think there is a possibility of it going to even a higher plateau in the future.

to a time when people thought matusow was the nuts

FWIW, I still think Matusow is nuts.

Greg Raymer is a class act, and has been a huge positive influence on poker, even before he won the WSOP Main Event in 2004. I am sad to see that he and Pokerstars are parting ways.

Greg: GL to you in your future endeavors.

Possibly. But when it comes to poker...he knows poker

I'll just say kudos to Greg, he's been an absolutely sincere and nice person every single time I've run into him. He's never ever turned down anyone for an interview and in the media we deal with so many "divas" ... dealing with Greg has always been a pleasure. I'm sure the split from Stars wasn't easy but I'd be very surprised if another site didn't step up rather quickly to sign a great poker ambassador.

I wish he would just tell the reason he's leaving. It's not that he's leaving it's the mystery of why he is leaving that is the thing that matters here.

I think Greg is a great ambassador, but the in my opinion he doesn't do that many events on the circuit. He does the WSOP, a couple of EPT events and that's about it.

Additionally Greg probably got signed at a market high point and now that his contract is up the market place is different and Greg's value in that marketplace is different (lower). This is no different than a non steroid juiced baseball player in his early 40's not making as much as he did in his prime.

I think Greg is a good guy who put his heart and soul into his PPA/Poker work. He would always take time to answer my questions in chat during WCOOP events.

I don't believe I have ever personally run a contest. Perhaps start a new thread in the Pokercast forum with details rather than posting vague off-topic accusations. It better be damn valid too or we could be witnessing my very first OTBAC.

Aarons Kantar fault, if he hadnt made that braindead move in 2005 main event Raymer would have been such a legend that he would have been noway to led him go

The more I read this thread the more I continue to think Greg was my fav ME winner since I started playing poker (AINEC).

Gregs ****ing awesome! This is really disappointing news.

this has got to be the most outstanding thing about Greg the most, even more than being an ambassador to the game IMO

go get'em at this years WSOP Greg, Fossilman 2011 POTY!

if pokerstars is mainly concerned with publicity attraction of their pokerstars pros, why is there a huge list of players i've never seen on television, can't find on wiki, play low limits, etc etc? don't get it. i liked raymer and his back to back strong finishes at the wsop are at least somewhat indicative of good play.. w/e make way for viktor blom

Without more information from direct sources its hard to say what was really behind the split

I think it is likely that Raymer's contract with Stars used to be huge. They want to cut him way back, and he feels his value to Stars is greater than what they are offering.

Incidently, Raymer/fossilman was a big poster in 2+2's MTT forum until he won the ME.

It's obvious some bonehead in pokerstars marketing decided they no longer wanted to appeal to the roly poly american demographic.

That's way too large a market to ignore. Online poker is doomed!

So few of the Team Pro guys regularly play on the site and chat it up with us peasants. Fossilman was one that played a lot on stars and chatted with players which I always found cool and probably leads to player retention.

He doesn't have to quit playing on the site, what's stopping him playing on Stars still chatting with the 'peasants'? If he is the nice guy everyone claims he is (and not the card ripping, dealer abusing person others claim...) then he should do it. He doesn't NEED to be a Stars pro to do that, maybe they'll re-sign him too.