I always was skeptical of the "accumulate a lot of sponsored pros" model at online poker sites.

Full Tilt was best known for this -- having well over 100 red pros, many of which were virtual unknowns. Of course, at the time everyone figured Full Tilt had to know what it was doing, given its supposed huge profitability. Now we know better. Full Tilt was clueless and incompetent (and very corrupt) in many ways.

But Pokerstars, which is not incompetent at all, also seemed to follow this model. They were perhaps caught up in a "sponsored pro arms race" with Full Tilt (prior to Black Friday), and maybe didn't think it through.

It makes sense that a guy like Daniel Negreanu brings people to Pokerstars, and that Phil Ivey brought people to Full Tilt. But what about the much lesser known players? Former NWP user Aaron Bartley (GambleAB) was once a Full Tilt red pro. While I liked Aaron, his sponsorship never made sense. I doubt a single player signed up to Full Tilt because Aaron Bartley was a pro there. The same can be said for many other Full Tilt red pros at the time.

Pokerstars, in the new Amaya era since that company purchased them, has decided to reevaluate this situation on their own site.

They axed the relatively unknown Nacho Barbero and Angel Guillen, but also curiously dropped Humberto Brenes, who was fairly well known several years ago, but has been rapidly declining in relevance.

It is rumored that they will be dropping more players in the coming weeks and months.

Similarly, Ultimate Poker, struggling badly in the legalized online gaming market, dropped four of their pros: William Reynolds, Jeremy Ausmus, Bret Hanks, and Phil Collins. While some of these guys are very good players, I admit that they don't have a lot of marketing appeal, and UP probably realized that their sponsorship dollars weren't well spent.

I think that marketing appeal comes from any of the following:

- Fame outside of poker, such as well-known actors and athletes.

- Players repeatedly showing up with big tournament wins to where they are strongly associated with winning in poker. Vanessa Selbst is a good example.

- Hot girls who are also good at attracting media attention. (Simply being a hot girl by itself isn't enough.) Hot girls with other appearances in media or some pretty good poker skill are even more valuable.

- Big name players that everyone knows, such as Hellmuth, Ivey, Negreanu, etc.

- Guys with well-loved, quirky antics at the table, such as Phil Laak or Jean-Robert Bellande.


Players NOT good for sponsorships include:

- Big tournament winners who either don't regularly play or haven't hit a big score in a long time

- Players whose success is primarily online

- Solid tournament players who generally do well, but don't win enough big ones to attract much attention

- Cash players, with the exception of renowned nosebleed players like Tom Dwan

- Boring players who produce results but lack personality at the table


Anyway, I think Amaya is doing the right thing here.