I'm sure that Ari Fleischer, Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders are in full agreement with you on that point.

pawned

You're not the only one arguing on behalf of Lee Jones. Several other people made the same/similar arguments. There is no pitchfork mob thing going on in this thread, and nobody is required to agree with your point of view regarding his behavior as a Stars rep. That's all I was trying to point out.

Good chance his stock options/shares had a vesting period after the Amaya acquisition.

I worked with Lee on a few projects in the company including the Discord freerolls. I found him very enthusiastic and passionate about poker and the Discord community.

That post about the rake display is a poor look for him for sure, without a doubt. Pure guess without speaking to him about it but I'd imagine some of the things he had to speak for didn't sit well with him. Agree with PTLou that the mob can sometimes be unfair. I think when you reach a certain age and have a career/family/expenses it's very difficult to "take a stand" and punt the entire thing over business ethics or a moral code.

Several of the old school PokerStars people, the ones who helped build the company, have told me that Lee was instrumental in building the original culture of the company. I call it that old school aw shucks cowboy kindness with Lee and Tom McEvoy and faces in the client. I saw traces of this while working with him firsthand.

I'll always be thankful to him for this and I think we all should be. I think he made some questionable choices but you can have empathy for this situation. I actually see some parallels between Lee, Daniel N, and Anakin Skywalker. Sometimes you are a good man and you make a series of murky decisions and then eventually you can't walk back from the path. And then Palpatine might discard you for your son anyways.

Somebody tell PTLou that SageDonkey took over his account.

haha

ouch.

just changed my mind.

Lee Jones is the devil.

carry on.

You'd apparently rather shoot the messenger than the decision-maker.

We have two bullets.

Messenger probably had gun pointed at his head when he needed defend BS by decision-makers. Poor messenger.

I mean no one forced Lee to defend anything he did not want to, he just liked his job enough and got paid enough to do it. (imo most people would do same.)

Its very simple, PS went from poker operator to be include in a big corp.
Management was not focused on poker experience and catering to regulars anymore but on maximizing profit.
Lee chose to stay and did what was asked of him... and that what most people here dont understand.

I think Lee was in lot harder spot then some random poker pro leaving stars.

Poker pro like elky or whatever probably don't get paid by room enough to make living and what you get paid by room is just bonus for using your face to advertise while Lee it was income to provide for family ect. It lot harder to say to boss that you will not defend it decisions publicly when he can cut your income to 0 if you don't have another source of income.

^^^ This

Changed my mind again.

Lee Jones is in fact not the Devil.

Yeah ethical standards are for losers lol

Lee obviously rather just get his Cheque then have a job that was positive for his employees, and he was a snake about it too, good for him at least his family still got money

I mean his family is more important then the tens of thousands of ppl his company ****ed over

I guess in theory Lee was able to leave stars and hopefully get job somewhere else and not defend company.
We might say that Lee "sold" his reputation in poker community as person who cares for poker and players more then big corporation ideas about hiding rake because it just useless arithmetic exercise short before increasing low stakes mtt's rake by 25%.

I just think it easy to say "i would do different" or "he is such crook" not knowing situation where he was or not being in his shoes yourself. I personally cannot say i would not help stars in some way if my only income came from stars or similar.
But yeah for sure he deserve criticism from community for helping big corporation screw community over in many different ways.

Do you think he would of taken the job if In the interview they told him his job was to do damage control for a shady poker site, gonna need to do and say unethical things on a regular basis to maximize profits for shareholders and in some cases even steal money from employees/players?

Or you just think it’s fine bc he was already employed so he’s just doing his job ?

I guess I shouldn’t expect a different statement considering it’s coming from another past employee/shill

a) I don't think he would've taken such a job, and I don't think that he did such things.

b) Your way of ascribing personal blame to Lee is silly, wrong, and mis-guided. Lee should be held responsible for the decisions that he makes, not the decisions that PokerStars makes.


I think that when Lee Jones (or anyone) spoke on behalf of PokerStars, they were speaking on behalf of PokerStars. Thus, it makes no sense to my mind to hold individual message-carriers responsible for the message: when a customer service rep responds to you, they're speaking on behalf of PokerStars. The great - or terrible - service that they provide is service from PokerStars.

Your service agreement is with the company. It is the company which is providing you with online poker services which includes a bunch of stuff: payment processing, encryption, card shuffling, communication, etc. If you don't like those things, you should hold the organisation responsible for failing to provide those things to you. Similarly, if you love them, you should keep transacting with PokerStars. That's how the world works (and should work!)

Some other analogies:

a) If I go to a burger joint and get a ****ty burger, it's the fault of the organisation. It's the organisation which has insufficient training/equipment/skills/etc - not the poor kid in front of you.

b) If my password to an online service gets revealed to a hacker, it's the fault of the organisation. It's the organisation which has insufficient protection for personal data - not the guy who sends you the email telling you the password has been hacked.

c) If a car seller buys a copy of your favourite music CD and puts it in the car so you can drive away listening to your favourite music, it's not the salesman's fault - it's the credit of the company which has put it all together (which includes a lot of the skill of management: hiring the right people).


Holding the person who you happen to be able to easily identify - because you happen to be ignorant of the person who made the decision or decided upon the strategy - is a silly and low-end response. It's akin to some child living 400 years ago who can't comprehend why corporations exist.

The burger anology isn’t the same bc he wasn’t selling the products but he’s the spokesperson for it

How about this anology

He’s the Security of defense for a country (president asks him) to bomb civilians - he needs to explain why it’s ok even though he doesn’t believe it’s ok but it’s his job - if it was me I would say I can’t do this and resign personally

Yes I believe it’s extreme

I guess as long as you can sleep at night then do whatever u want as an individual

my negative feelings come because for a long time I felt lee was there for us backing the players but once ps was sold he just sold out and didn’t back us anyone , just did whatever they asked of him even if it was unethical or against his morals (maybe it wasn’t as he never seemed to sound sympathetic while doing all this bs damage control)

If I rem correctly around 50-100 SNE or SNE hopefuls got ****ed over .

Could describe the other ~19,900 who pokerstars ****ed over?

It was never your job playing online poker so I guess you wouldn’t know but sne wasn’t the only way ps ****ed over it’s players

Sne
Abolishing rakeback
Flattening payouts
Increasing rake and hiding it
Changing most Tournies to pko/bounty and increased variance formats
Add rake to rebuys

Those are just few off the top of my head but are many more

Basically just do anything they can to **** over regs bc they no longer cared or wanted them (as bazov said he viewed players as consumers not employees)

With all respect would you not think Lee was more like PokerStars Pro player (like Negreanu) who "sell" his face and community trust in him to company and intentionally long-term associate himself and his image with stars decisions past amaya by staying with company (when he goes to interviews/defend stars decisions publicly on social media or other place over years) lot lot more then being any anonymous support team member hidden behind emails?
It seem bit strange to compare him with random support member Adam from email.

I think that a lot of what we've been discussing up until now has been around having different perspective on things.

However, I think that the quoted part above is just completely false: I worked alongside Lee for some time after PokerStars became a publicly listed company, and I know that he was a strong advocate for the interests of players - because I saw it.

I thought I was making a very simple point:
-Lee Jones should be held accountable for the decisions that he makes.
-PokerStars should be held accountable for the decisions that PokerStars makes.


Of course, a decision to work for a corporation is in itself a decision. I've worked for various employers over the years where I've disagreed with various decisions. Sometimes, I've also disagreed with the processes to make those decisions. I doubt that there is any employee, of any company, anywhere in the world, who agrees with every decision that their employer makes.

But the thing about loyalty to working as part of a team is to sometimes keep those criticisms in house. I have disagreements with various family members all the time - but let me give you the hot tip that my loyalty to them outranks my loyalty to you. As a result, I'll happily and enthusiastically defend the decisions that my family makes.

It's entirely reasonable for any employee to show similar loyalty faced with similar issues. It's entirely unreasonable for people to question Lee's integrity to doing the right thing when people in this thread:
a) appear to be ignorant of how the decisions were made, and who made them
b) appear to be ignorant of Lee's strong personal advocacy of the interests of players
c) have no skin in the game for their obvious ignorance
d) have no ability to differentiate between "I'm unhappy" and "Lee is a bad person"


Questioning the integrity of Lee Jones for decisions that PokerStars makes is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the taste of a Big Mac. It's completely ****ing dumb, it's completely ****ing unfair, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for doing it.

I ignored this cheap-jack idiocy before - but it's a bit rich for some anonymous guy on a message board to try to make this point.

You don't have the integrity or decency to use your real name to criticise someone who does. That reflects your lack of skin in the game, not mine.

so you are still on the self-entitled, stars owed you an environment where you could make money ?

They are a for profit company. Not a social service , welfare agency.

SNEs were the only ones that got ****ed over. Everyone else got exactly what was advertised at any given time.