Originally Posted by
Sanlmar
Is it possible Somerville will be the only "poker pro" signed by Stars this year? Somerville is prolly making more income from the entertainment and sponsorship end than poker.
More fresh money will join Stars cause of StickyRice types or Somerville than Dan Cates or Barry Greenstein.
I can only speculate, but Stars has cut a lot of pros in the past several months. Clearly they had some new marketing strategy with that,
but it was unclear which direction they were going. At first it seemed they were just trimming it down, perhaps seeing it as a poor investment. When Joe Cada's contract expired, all he asked for was a rakeback deal to renew, and they still cut him loose. This from a company that used to pride itself on having all the latest ME champs on their roster. But then they signed some random unknowns in Asia and South America, presumably just to attract players from their respective countries.
So they obviously see value in bringing on new people, but I guess they have different ideas about which players actually have value. Name recognition seems to not be enough. Humberto Brenes, Marcel Luske, and several other TV guys from the boom era have been cut.