Posts Tagged ‘Team PokerStars’

Joe Cada’s Split with PokerStars foreshadows Grim Future

Thursday, September 25th, 2014

The death of the sponsored poker pro is something that’s been discussed frequently over the past few years. But Joe Cada’s recent split with PokerStars has hammered the point home that sites are increasingly moving away from sponsored pros.

In Cada’s case, all he wanted was 100% rakeback from PokerStars to continue representing them. And this seems like a reasonable request from a former Main Event champion. Amazingly, Stars saw this as too high a price, as you can see from Cada’s tweets:

If everyone is wondering what happened with Poker Stars and myself it’s pretty simple. I asked for 100percent rake back, they said no.

I asked for zero money. I just wanted the rake back that I used to get.

Cada added that he’s never heard of a company asking somebody they sponsor to pay for their product. Seeing as how Stars wouldn’t keep the 2009 Main Event winner on their roster, it seems highly likely that they’ll continue dumping more pros over the coming years.

This trend already began weeks ago when Humberto Brenes, Jose “Nacho” Barbero and Angel Guillen didn’t get their contracts renewed. A PokerStars spokesman came out and said that these players were from countries where they don’t hold live tournaments. So Stars felt there was little reason to sponsor these players any longer.

But Cada is arguably more marketable than any of these guys because he has worldwide recognition as a Main Event champ. He is, however, from Michigan, yet another spot where PokerStars had no live presence.

The world’s largest poker site will always have some players representing their brand like Daniel Negreanu, Bertrand Grospellier and Liv Boeree. But it’s becoming obvious that they aren’t interested in having dozens of signed pros from every corner of the world.

Leo Margets signs with PokerStars

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

The world’s largest poker site has announced the addition of Leonor “Leo” Margets to Team PokerStars. Margets had previously been under contract with 888poker, but signed with Stars once that deal had expired.

The 29-year-old is best known for finishing 27th in the 2009 WSOP Main Event, which earned her $352,832. What’s more is that, by finishing 27th, Margets also attained the coveted title of “Last Woman Standing” in the 2009 Main Event. The Barcelona native’s name is etched in history with the likes of Barbara Enright, Maria Ho and Tiffany Michele, who also managed to be the Last Woman Standing at the WSOP Main Event.

Margets is definitely more than just a one-hit wonder because she’s also cashed in a number of other big poker tournaments. Besides the 2009 Main Event cash, Marget’s other very impressive performance came when she won the Full Tilt Masters Series in Spain. The Spaniard grabbed a €100,000 ($132,23) payout and captured her first major tournament title.

One more strong tourney finish that Margets had was in a 2010 Aussie Millions $2k No-Limit Hold’em event; she finished third place and earned $54,270. Thanks to this quality cash and others, Margets has managed to rack up $770,274 in live tournaments winnings, which ranks her 30th all-time among women.

What’s truly impressive about everything Margets has done is that she only started playing live poker in 2008. So in less than five years, she’s already managed to accumulate $770k in earnings and attract the attention of the world’s biggest poker room.

Margets will join several other Spaniards on Team PokerStars, including Ana Marquez, Poli Rincon, Juan Manuel Pastor and tennis champion Rafael Nadal. As for the latter, Nadal has not only helped PokerStars immensely, but also the online poker industry as a whole.

Unknown Ivan Freitez wins EPT Grand Final

Friday, May 13th, 2011

It seems like the last few EPT events that I’ve seen have featured little known winners. And this trend definitely kept up after Ivan Freitez defeated fellow unknown Torsten Brinkmann to win the 2011 EPT Grand Live Final.

Now this isn’t to say that Freitez was a total bum before he won the biggest EPT tournament of the year. In fact, he had 13  cashes prior to the EPT Madrid win; however, it’s not exactly like the poker world was talking about the Venezuelan before he graced poker news headlines everywhere.

The same goes for Freitez’s heads-up adversary Torsten Brinkmann, who was known by few people outside of his mom and dad before finishing runner-up in the 2011 EPT Madrid. Looking past their anonymity, I’m glad that both players were able to put themselves on the poker map with the big finishes

As far as those who poker fans might actually recognize, Alex Gomes was the big story going into the final day since he was chasing a triple crown (WPT title, EPT title, WSOP bracelet). The Team PokerStars member was hoping to become part of an elite class that only includes Gavin Griffin and Roland De Wolfe. However, those dreams ended when Eugene “FishosaurusREX” Yanayt busted him out.

Yanayt was another interesting story since he made headlines earlier in the year for losing over $2 million in one month at Full Tilt Poker’s cash tables. However, he was looking to get some of the money back, which he did manage to do to an extent. If you’d like to see how much Yanayt made, along with the rest of the results, here is a look at the final table:

1. Ivan Freitez – €1,500,000
2. Torsten Brinkmann – €900,000
3. Tamas Lendvai – €550,000
4. Andrey Danilyuk – €400,000
5. Juan Maceiras – €315,000
6. Eugene Yanayt – €250,000
7. Alex Gomes – €185,000
8. Andrew Li – €130,000