Doug Polk Mocking PokerStars Marketing Machine

(Photo: Sciencenode.org)

For many years PokerStars was considered "the" place to play poker for serious regulars. Stars offered stability, reliability, amazing software and even though their VIP scheme wasn't very attractive for low stakes players the Supernova Elite status offered amazing value for the small percentage of poker players talented and disciplined enough to commit to a year of grinding.

However, the acquisition by Amaya gaming in 2014 marked a new direction in PokerStars management and marketing strategies. The biggest poker room in the world stopped caring about the serious grinders abruptly ending the life of legendary SuperNova Elite status, introducing casino games and new poker formats more akin to said casino games than actual poker into their offer. This, of course, made the vast majority of the poker world unhappy and the most recent example of PokerStars criticism can be found on Doug Polk's YouTube channel.

Beat the Clock or Beat the Rake?

In this short video Doug Polk makes a really good job of mocking the PokerStars promotional material for a new poker format called Beat the Clock. PokerStars seem to be more concerned with flashy animations, lions, and Cristiano Ronaldo than giving customers information about their product. It suffices to say that 90% of the commercial is showcasing Cristiano Ronaldo's face with the image of an actual poker table flashing on the screen for just a few moments.

Fortunately for Doug Polk fans he "has the technology" to freeze the video down to a single frame - which, as it turns out - still doesn't really help us understand what Beat the Clock actually is. From the article about the new poker format, we learn that it's another form of poker designed to maximize the amount of rake players are generating while minimizing the amount of edge possible to gain by the players. Beat the Clock is a 48 player zoom hyper turbo ante SNG with a 5-minute time limit and starting stacks of 12.5BB where surviving players are paid money based on a number of chips they are able to accumulate throughout the course of the tournament.

With 10% rake and 12.5BB starting stacks those games are as close to an all-in shootout as you can get while still giving the players the illusion of playing poker. Beat the Clock is also not revolutionary in any way shape or form, it's just a super short stack cash game disguised as a tournament. Just like Doug Polk said in his video...

"If you're familiar with the saying 'reinventing the wheel' - this is nothing like that."

Money Guaranteed = False Advertising?

At the end of the Beat the Clock game, your stack is converted into money based on a number of chips you were able to accumulate so it's possible to actually make less money than the tournament buy-in if you finish the game with the amount of chips that's lower than your starting stack. This is a big point of contention for Doug Polk.

In the Beat the Clock commercial announcer states that if you survive for 5 minutes "You win money guaranteed", which is borderline false advertising since while you're guaranteed to get some money you're not guaranteed to make a profit. "WCGRider" is no stranger to the subject of marketing and building one's brand, lately he's focused more on his social media and content creation than actually playing poker, so he understands why PokerStars would use some of the advertising tactics they opted to use.

However, Polk states that there's a clear line between ambiguous statements designed to generate attention and straight up lies.

"You don't have to mislead your customers to provide a good product that you can sell to people that provides them value and entertainment."

Minute Men - Dystopian Future of Poker

Polk's video ends with a parody commercial for a new poker format that focuses even more on nonsensical, non-poker related elements and contains even less information about the actual game than the Beat the Clock promotional materials. It might seem like an innocent joke but the sad truth of the matter is that current marketing strategy employed by PokerStars is dangerously similar to Polk's parody and far from the transparent system from the good old SuperNova Elite times.

While it can be argued that focusing the marketing efforts on grinders is not necessary (since they can see through the marketing mumbo jumbo and calculate the EV of playing a certain poker variant for themselves) and poker ecosystem needs new deposits from the recreational players, there's a fine line between trying to capture the interest of the vast population of potential players with ever decreasing attention span, and blatant lies.

Doug Polk recognizes said difference and it's nice to see a well respected and successful personality calling PokerStars on a bluff they shouldn't make in a witty and entertaining way.