PokerStars Affiliate Care Package Fail

Life imitates Art is a well-hackneyed phrase, but Life Imitates Poker? I wouldn’t have thought so until this week, when a chance conversation with my brother and the wonderful Christmas present PokerStars sent out to its affiliates happened to appear on the same day.

‘Thanks, you shouldn’t have, really!’ is the phrase which hit me immediately in both cases – the PokerStars ‘goodie bag’ resembling the less-than-generous ‘Secret Santa’ pressie which landed on my brother’s desk at work.

One was a collection of fairly useless tat rolled up in a plastic supermarket bag – the other? Well, pretty much the same! My brother’s gift? A small collection of unwrapped rubber items, shaped like a man but used as a catapult!

The PokerStars affiliate package? A few marker pens, a notepad, a whiteboard in the shape of the PS logo, Berocca (wat dat? Vitamins? Wtf??), a plastic ‘thing’ and – probably the most useful of all – a $10 Starbucks card.

At least the coffee will prove useful once PokerStars have put all the pros and everyone involved in the game out on the streets – plenty of nice promises being made but the reality being a much less welcome assortment of rake increases, VIP changes, games being pulledand random acts of kindness being swapped for ‘random acts of something which only resembles poker’.

Just like my brother stood there speechless at the office party, desperate to find the ‘Secret Santa’ in order to catapult things in their direction (if his present even worked that is) so the many PokerStars fans and associates of old are wondering how best to launch their new gifts back in the direction of Amaya.

The ‘Stars whiteboard could easily be used to bat vitamin pills in the direction of David Baazov of course, and scrawling rude words on Eric Hollreiser’s somewhat smug face would account for the pens, but what of the ‘plastic thing’? I guess there are a few places we could put it!

The notebook? Aah, well, if it was big enough we could note down all the negative changes that PokerStars have made over the past two years, but I’m fairly sure we’d run out of pages long before the list was complete!

Anyway, they say that we give not to receive, and as my brother found out when his beautifully wrapped offering of a nice Bordeaux and glasses set was being hungrily drained that’s probably just as well!

Thank you PokerStars - and here’s to a wonderful 2017 full of positive thoughts and ideas to make the poker world a better place for those who love the game.

We know that you’re struggling to balance the books, we know that money is tight and we really are grateful for each and every little thing you can offer by way of thanks to those who fund your lifestyle… but really (and I mean this most sincerely) you shouldn’t have, you really shouldn’t have!