Next step needs to be to get rid of some more. Elky for starters. What is the point in him? He hasn't done anything in years.

Elky is very active in the .fr community. He also streams.

might need to go through the rest of your posts and see if they are as hilarious as this

Good move for stars, now they have the two most annoying people in poker on their team.

That's awesome. He's the reason I started trying NLH again.

Hopefully a guy like Somerville can also put a positive face on Pokerstars.

what kind of comment is this?? elky streams dailys and he is the biggets assest for the .fr community.

It wouldn't surprise me if Stars told him to stream, to try to justify his position.
His live game certainly doesn't seem to cut it any longer.

I assume this is based on that he hasn't FT'd an EPT in a year/18months?

... or any other meaningful event.

PS clearly value the potential of Twitch so I suppose that's why he's still around. I imagine they are hoping he will attract the gamers who used to idolize him years ago.
If that is the case, it strikes me as doing it the wrong way round - moving a pro to streaming to try to establish a following.
Signing a player, like Jason Somerville, who is already established as a streamer seems to be the right way round.

I'm probably wrong though.

I never really understood the whole concept of signing poker players anyway. How much value do they really give a brand? They're preaching to the converted.
Sports/movie stars I can understand.

I found that extremely funny for some reason.

I just think you are underestimating Elky quite a lot based on questioable assumptions based on a very small sample of mtt's ultimately. He's cashed some but just hasn't gone deep. That's pretty standard.

I took a quick scan of his Pocketfives results and last year he made some nice scores on .com (I have no idea about .fr.) in spite of generally playing around the COOPs or when travelling. It suggests to me he's not as out of toouch as you seem to assume.

Also, that he has a big fan base in France and is a known name to many means he's certainly contributing more than many as a Stars pro imo.

Anyway this is a derail. GL

Hope Stars has better luck than the last site that sponsored him.

well deserved!

Awesome stuff. Congrats Jason!

Congrats Jason, well deserved.

He chopped a Bellagio event for over a mil last summer.

Unfortunately, no

I was wondering 2 years ago why they hadn't signed him yet. It's great that they finally did. He'll put in more work than just about anyone on that roster.

This quote says it all:

Few sponsored pros really embrace that attitude. He takes the job very seriously.

I take the exact opposite direction. Signing Sommerville is a no brainer. His Home Game Club on Stars has over 6k players signed up. He did that in only a few months. That cost stars - ZERO marketing dollars. Cultivate players that bring more players to your site. Get people excited about the game. He's fun to watch.

Also team pros give players something to shoot for. Some kid in say Germany wants to become the next Nanonoko. He has a role model.

I was never a proponent of signing sports stars but recently I had a Brazilian friend play at the PCA. He got to play with Ronaldo and said he had an amazing experience. That's something he'll carry with him for the rest of his life. And that creates real brand loyalty.

We seem to be agreeing. I think JS is a superb signing as are sports stars. Ronaldo winning PCA would've had a huge boost for poker. A sponsored pro, none.

He sponsored by UB or some other site and just recently was let go.

Ultimate Gaming, not UB.
Stars weren't really signing new talent back then unless they had another string to their bow. Somerville now has that.

Awesome. Who was the last person they have signed before Somerville?

Well deserved

Never heard of him.