The only thing at this point that pisses me, and anybody who is trying to make money playing online poker (yeayeayea no one owes us anything dont bother making this comment), esp if its on pokerstars, or as former pokerstars player, is the fact that the whole SNE situation, introduction of high-rake unbeatable games, and removing supernova, introduction of chests w close to no rakeback is being called `a mistake down the line`, `good for ecosystem`, or any of that unnecessary ********.

Listen, there was no mistake. You say Eric Hollreiser said it was a mistake later on.

No it wasnt. No it wasnt. No it wasnt. From Amaya`s perspective.

If it was a mistake that was understood down the line, the previous system or something a bit worse would have been restored. But it wasnt. It was a money grab, and they have 100% right to do it.
Absolutely can, no one is denying it. How it works out in the long run we`ll see. So far in 2019 we see 20-80`ish k people online playing on PokerStars at low/peak on a daily basis.
What will be the numbers in 2021 who knows.

This is what bothers people at this point about DNegs and other puppies.

If u have to sell urself on the street, but you get good check, and ur ok with it - its totally fine. Me, personally (and i strongly believe anybody reading should think twice about themselves), probably/maybe would have done the same action facing such decision as you described, for themselves, families, wives, gf`s, kids. The thing is other people also have it (majority that is getting screwed).

But everyone around understands whats going on. You dont have to feed us from the spoon camouflaging a bag of crap into a pile of pretty sentencing.

Announce it, collect the check, and stay away from comments.
Check the numbers of profit made for company quarter/annual, and what online numbers looks volume wise.
Announce more great news. Repeat the process.

Been working great so far.

Thanks Lee, hugs all around and a few hearty slaps on the back.

good luck Lee

probably feel guilty of making the laser beam video and resign his position

If Pokerstars had never existed and joined the marketplace last week with its current rake model, rewards and tournament schedule, everyone would be signing up and saying how great they are.

Pokerstars aint **** without it's player liquidity. If it was in RIO's spot right now then no one would play there.

Pete is wrong.
Sir is right.
Very simple.

Your face says otherwise...




Haha JK, good luck to you. And now that you don't work for Stars, you can go after one of those Platinum Passes next year. After all, watching someone raise/fold AJ with a 12x stack at a final table had us both on life tilt, but should give everyone hope that there is still money to be made in poker.

As someone who played very actively on Pokerstars since almost the beginning all the way through Black Friday, I had a lot of visibility into Lee's work.

Back then, he was a mostly beloved figure in poker.

Later on, in the Amaya days, opinions started to change, especially after a series of player-unfriendly decisions by the company.

I don't know Lee personally. I know who he is, and he knows who I am (I'm Dan Druff, in case you weren't aware), but we had little direct contact with one another.

I will say that Lee was part of the poker community way before the Moneymaker boom, and in fact he predates the 2+2 forum. His beginners limit holdem book was actually what got me into poker, and I felt it was a great introductory text on the subject.

Some people I respect are friends with him, and have nothing but good things to say about his character and integrity.

I feel that Lee is a decent guy, loves the poker community, and at no time was doing anything he felt was seriously hurting the game.

That's not to say he didn't make some mistakes. By defending a lot of Pokerstars' unethical actions in the Amaya era, he did lose some of his personal credibility. While it was clear he was acting as a company spokesperson, the bottom line is that he is/was a known name in poker, and his statements end up defining him.

At times, I found some of his explanations evasive and/or infuriating, even though they didn't directly involve me.

I do understand his dilemma, though. He was one of their spokesmen, and his job was to attempt to make Pokerstars look good. He was being paid to show loyalty to them, and to project their message.

We can sit on our high horses and say, "He should have quit", but this was his long-running livelihood, and he had to make the decision whether to end that simply because he disagreed with some of his employer's business practices.

Now, if Stars was outright scamming and cheating people, and he stayed as their mouthpiece, I'd be all aboard the hate train with the rest of you.

However, I would classify some of the recent Stars decisions as "unethical", "unfair", and "pro-unfriendly", but not criminal. There's a huge distinction there.

In short, I don't think Lee deserves any hate. At worst, he was the mouthpiece for some unethical dealings by Stars, but he never had any meaningful input into these decisions, and everything would have occurred whether he was with the company or not.

I wish Lee luck in his future endeavors.

This whole point of view is so so wrong.

He never `helped` players back when Stars was run by Shoenbergs.

Neither did he `screw up` players when Stars became Amaya property.

This is how his job worked (from what i understand):

He receives news from upper managment, has NOTHING to do with XYZ decisions direction AT ALL.
He just has to go here (twitter), there (random podcast, or randomly hosted Stars live tourney), and there (any other media place, u name it) and announce the news made by the company to the public.

And collect decent monthly cheque. Thats it.

He is a guy who once wrote LHE book, got a job offer @stars as their media news distribution person, and thats it.

They have programmers that have to program, bugs errors etc (online poker you know), people who have to organize tournaments, people who are accountants dealing w banks/transactions, Upper managment who make longterm big/small decisions etc etc etc.. People who clean rooms in their offices. Many Many people doing different jobs.

His only job was to participate in public events, or any media, read the news from the text message he received on his phone or email to the media.

You know how u can sit in university at a given lecture, and there are two types of teachers:

First that just opens up power point about topic, and just reads it in front of everyone, word by word, as if students couldnt read that ****ing text by themselves.

And then there is second type - teachers who come up with great examples, find ways of allowing others understand the topic faster, more in depth etc, be fascinated by the subject. Its exciting to attend the lecture, because its amusing to listen to them talk.

Well, from countless hours ive spent listening to the sponsered by Pokerstars 2p2 PokerCast back in the days (whenever lee jones was invited which happened to be a lot), about any changes that Stars made - he was the first `teacher type`.

`- Hey Lee, Stars made this or that change, explain it`.
`- Well yea we made .... (repeats exactly what was said by Mike or Adam)`.

`Hey Lee - what do you think about these changes? (positive or negative, btw yea, imagine it, there were positive changes on Stars prior to 2014 sometimes, seems unethical to even think about such criminal things in 2019).

His response would be always approximately `well i think its good for players`, or `well i think its not so bad for players`. Nothing less, nothing more.

So the only thing he has to do is tell media/community the `news` about PokerStars Upper managment decision changes, preferably in the most slippery, and pleasant to hear form, just so it sounds as nice as possible for the reputation of Company.

Imagine you are a virgin, and someone stars ****ing you right in the ass without any lubricant. His job was to watch it, and simply comment in this something along the lines of `this isnt as bad for you longterm, its actually a reasonable good thing that's happening right now, you`ll see, however we are sincerely sorry if ur butt hurts later on`.

No matter how good or bad it is, you just need to find the right wording.

And no, i dont feel sorry to hear him leaving, or thankful for this kinda work. Doubt anybody who didnt directly were in touch with him in real life should. Any other person could have done the same amount of work for that cheque.

Its irrelevant news, and is not worthy of attention (yet here ive printed a wall of text on it, god knows for what reason, krappa).