Daniel Negreanu Is Upset About PokerStars Broken Promises:

This shouldn’t be terribly surprising to anyone. Daniel is a guy that wears his heart on his sleeve, and to be the players representative for PokerStars while they are knifing players in the back isn’t very cool. Listening to him talk about the situation it is easy to sense his frustration may be starting to boil over. Now that Amaya has taken over, I can only imagine how many meetings he sits around in with PokerStars corporate types who don’t know the first thing about poker. Of course, he is being handsomely compensated to be the voice of PokerStars, which I am sure helps. However, Daniel is a talented guy, not likely to be a yes man forever, and may prefer to exit the stage before he gets the boot!

Will PokerStars Fire Daniel Negreanu?

We shall see…. If he doesn’t leave before his contract runs out with Stars it stands to reason that PokerStars will be relooking at Daniel’s compensation. I doubt they would just fire him outright, but after hacking all the elite players rakeback, VIP service, etc, etc it is easy to imagine them cutting back on money spent on pros like Daniel. Would Daniel stick around PokerStars when they want to cut his pay massively? Yeah, I doubt it….

I’m sure the decision about whether to maintain Daniel’s existing contract will be a cool and calculated business decision. These guys from Amaya are hard nosed businessmen, and are not messing around. There is no room for things like friendship and loyalty, Amaya acts in a very utilitarian manner and will not be swayed by emotion.

When Is Daniel Negreanu Leaving PokerStars?

It is always tough to say with these kinds of things. I talked at length about PokerStars Rake Increase in 2014 and the potential resulting death spiral. We have seen the rake increases, but have yet to see the death spiral. These things take time and it is difficult to set a timeline for them. However, I think it is fair to say Daniel is much closer to leaving PokerStars today than at any time since he joined the company. It may surprise some of you how quickly this happens….

PokerStars New Marketing Campaign

In recent chats Daniel has been hanging his hat on PokerStars apparent backroom promises to invest a significant amount of money back into the ecosystem. I for one, will believe it when I see it… Apparently, this is going to be done through some extensive marketing campaigns, which are not yet public information.

I am curious what exactly these new, brilliant, and classified marketing strategies are. I suspect PokerStars may squander a good deal of money that they used to give to Supernova Elites on ill advised marketing strategies that fail to address the core problem in poker today. New players lose money TOO quickly. That’s it! Of course, the solutions to this problem are not as easy to determine as the problem itself.

The ironic thing is I don’t disagree with PokerStars that giving less rakeback to high volume rakeback players is a bad idea. However, what I don’t see from them is a wholesale revamp toward what is truly required to kickstart the game again. For example, cutting the rake at microstakes games is apparently a non starter according to Daniel. Why? Because management doesn’t like the idea of making any moves that reduce revenue. This despite the fact that having an incredibly high rake at the lowest games is a terrible idea for the game. So, perhaps the death spiral may be in their future after all….

Where Can Daniel Make The Biggest Difference?

Daniel, if you are out there somewhere reading the little ol PokerCapitalist don’t fool yourself into thinking that you need to be on the inside at PokerStars to be helping out fellow players. In fact, you could be the face of a significant movement away from PokerStars. The poker industry has been in a giant depression now for nearly a decade. As a result of this there has been very little innovation in the industry and hardly any disruption. No entrepreneurs are interested in getting involved in this space anymore. The time may well be ripe for a new disruptive model, and somebody like Daniel would be a great leader for that.

That is all for now. As I always mention at the bottom of my posts don’t forget to pickup a copy of my book Exploitive No Limit Holdem please today! Best book ever, of course ;).

–ThePokerCapitailst (No nonsense, no ads, straight talk on poker)

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