Justin Bonomo Responds: Continues to Stand up to PokerStars
7 years ago
18 May
Last week’s tale of Justin Bonomo butting heads with PokerStars at the Monte Carlo EPT appears to have grown arms and legs as poker fans and writers debate the merits of his anti-Amaya stance.
As a brief recap, high stakes online supremo Bonomo decided to make very public his disgust with the PokerStars treatment of its SuperNovaElite players by firstly refusing to have his photo taken in Monte Carlo for PS promotional purposes, and then wearing a protest sign when he actually won a side event.
With talk of a ban from all PS Live events if he refused to pose, the poker world has been debating the issue all week – and now Bonomo has publicly responded to one prominent poker writer’s view of the whole affair.
Q;The following is my response to what is in my opinion, a very one-sided article that Lee Davy wrote,” says Bonomo. “I attempted to post this as a response directly on the page of the article, but was rejected approval to post.”;
Although the article was reasonably balanced in the main, Bonomo no doubt took issue with one or two of Davy’s criticisms.
Complaining about PokerStars and continuing to pay them rake is the path of least resistance,” wrote Davy, a view echoed by some of the online posters. “The myriad of excuses that come with financial responsibility conveniently clears the way. However, in the end, it’s an excuse to mask the fear of doing the right thing and leaving.”
In his response, Bonomo points out:
I believe I have done nothing hypocritical. It would be hypocrisy if I told others to boycott Stars and did not do the same (I participated in the public boycotts, and encouraged there to be more in private discussions).”
Bonomo gives a breakdown of why he feels his – and others – protests are not only justified but necessary.He opens his ‘rebuttal of Davy’s penmanship by stating:
This article does not mention why I believe PokerStars is unworthy of good-faith promotional work. Over the course of 15 years, Isai Scheinberg turned it into a multi billion dollar company by taking care of the customers and marketing the dream of being a professional poker player. When Amaya and David Baazov purchased the company, they flushed this vision down the toilet.”
This is not the main crux of Bonomo’s argument though. As he says:
It would be one thing if I was just mad at them for poor business decisions… But it's more than that.”
“What they have done is extremely unethical”, claims the Nevadan pro who has almost $10million to his name in tournament earnings, and countless more from his on line exploits.
I was one of approximately 400 Super Nova Elite players that paid them $181,000 in rake. We did this to earn the ~$120,000 in rewards. None of us would have done it without that promise. It was essentially a monetary exchange.”
This monetary exchange is at the heart of the protests against Amaya, the biggest player in the online market who today added Full Tilt to their PokerStars client, and who sponsor and therefore control many of the biggest tours in the world – the EPT and WPT included.
After they took our money,” explains Bonomo, “PokerStars decided they were going to pay us $50,000 less than promised. In some cases (high stakes cash game players), they cut the payments by a full 100%.”
Although PokerTube certainly doesn’t come under this banner, Bonomo states that:
Writers in the media (which is largely bankrolled by Amaya) constantly write about how it's unfortunate that we worked so hard and didn't get properly rewarded. I'm not going to use that soft language. We had a financial transaction. I paid them $180k, and they did not give me what I paid for. This is fraud and this is theft.”
Strong words indeed, and it’s true that Davy doesn’t cover these details in his article – comparing instead the scenario with:
When the online poker industry collapsed in the United States, there were people who lost their income overnight. Thousands of players had to do something and quickly otherwise bills were not going to get paid, the food was not going to end up on tables, and life was about to get a lot more complicated. And what happened to those thousands of players?” continued Davy. “Obviously, I don’t know, but at a guess, I imagine the vast majority of them survived. Most of them found different games to play in, and some would have changed careers altogether.”
Reaching the current situation, he states:
PokerStars might have a near-monopoly but had Bonomo received a lifetime ban, both online and live
And this is where he misses or mis-states the point, as many others have done. Firstly, you can’t compare Black Friday to PokerStars recent decisions at all.
Secondly, PokerStars under Baazov’s Amaya, control far too much and give back far too little – and it is nigh on impossible for a player as good as Bonomo to further his career by ignoring them or avoiding them completely.
As Bonomo states:
Nowadays, PokerStars isn't doing shit for the professional poker players. They are actively defrauding us and cutting back every single benefit from the past they could find.”
This is why he believes “it's in the players' best interests to make a stand and say, "In the past we used our images, our voices, and our social media presences to help you out. This was a you-pat-our-backs, we-pat-yours situation. If you're no longer willing to give us anything in return, then we are no longer going to give you that publicity for free."
In Davy’s defence, his argument is error of omission in small parts rather than a wholesale mockery of Bonomo’s recent protest. He makes many valid points, and finds in favour of Bonomo in many respects.
Leafing through 2+2 and social media, once you have thrown the ‘I don’t like Justin Bonomo crap’ over the rail, you are left with a viewpoint that seems to fall somewhere in the middle,” writes Davy. “There are those that support his decision not to do ‘unpaid promotional work’ (despite every player contractually obliged to), and there are those that feel he is taking the wrong type of action, and doesn’t go far enough. Most of these people believe Bonomo is slightly hypocritical.”
However, if he is unable or unwilling to either put forward, or allow Bonomo himself to put forward, his detailed anti-PokerStars/Amaya arguments, then it’s difficult to support the Calvinayre article – and this comes from a fellow writer and big fan of Davy’s work.
He may have been a bit worried by some of Bonomo’s words, such as his demonisation of Amaya CEO David Baazov:
Baazov is now under investigation for insider trading, and in my admittedly biased opinion he deserves to go to prison for many years.”
“It's not just the customers he has defrauded, but the investors and the industry as well.” – but Calvinayre and Davy might well have offered to allow at least a redacted version of his statement to appear. This appears not to have been on offer though.
On the specific point of PokerStars enforcing the contractual obligations of players in their events, it’s perfectly correct on the face of it to say that Bonomo has agreed to the conditions and therefore must deal with whatever consequences arise.
But that is not something Bonomo disputes – and it doesn’t, of course, mean that he can’t complain about Stars or raise awareness of the fact that things are in an unhealthy place right now. He explains:
As visible professional poker players, we have the ability to sway the opinions of others. I have 30,000 Twitter followers for example, and some of my colleagues have far more than that. For over a decade I was happy to give Stars free promotional work. When people asked me the best/most trustworthy site to play on, without hesitation I would say PokerStars. Now my answer is 888 when I speak of most trustworthy. I do not condemn anyone for playing on Stars, though I do think long term we need to think about supporting their competitors more. The current state of affairs with the monopoly is simply too ominous.”
Bonomo concludes his well-thought out but likely contentious statement on the affair by saying:
…this is not just about money, it's about ethics too… with the predatory nature of Stars, I can no longer in good conscious say that the success of the industry leader is a good thing. I sincerely hope that I will have reason to change my mind about this in the future, but for now, I can only hope for change. Our best chance seems to be if David Baazov goes to prison and Amaya is forced to sell PokerStars, possibly to 888. When that day comes, I want the new owners to be in a position to say, "Let's get the pros back on our side and work together with them to rebuild PokerStars' forsaken trusted image."
Doubtless Lee Davy, Calvinayre and the other sites and forums will be well on their way to responding to Bonomo’s latest views, and here at PokerTube we’ll endeavour to bring you as balanced a report as we can when it happens.
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