#235: “Comprehensive Plans”

November 2015  (After Yeats)

Unveiling your “comprehensive plans”,
Changes that you insist make sense,
You deal us all unplayable hands,
So you can add the dollars to the cents.
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For players can only play cards they’re dealt;
The online pro is dead and gone,
Buried beneath the virtual felt.

Yesterday, Pokerstars unveiled their “Comprehensive Plan For An Enhanced Poker Experience”. It’s a detailed document, contemptuously presented as the blueprint for a re-emphasis on the fun and social aspects of the game. What’s more, Eric Hollreiser’s (the VP of Corporate Communications for Amaya and Pokerstars) inclusion of the company’s plans for upcoming product innovation and marketing investments is laughable; like these things should be presented together, like conflating the money being lost by the most loyal customers on the network and the money being spent for the purpose of expanding their growing gaming empire is appropriate.

Don’t get me wrong. Poker players do not have a God-given right to make a living from the game. History teaches us that plenty of industries involving vast numbers of people sometimes become less viable or go under altogether. But it is fair to say that poker players have had their fair share of turmoil. The attrition rate for players is huge in a game that gets tougher with each passing year. We have had our deposits stolen by Ultimate Bet, Absolute Poker and Lock Poker. We have had our unsegregated deposits misappropriated for Full Tilt marketing campaigns and payouts to owners. We have had our funds seized by a foreign Department of Justice, held for months and, in some cases, years. The Americans among us have had their rights infringed upon by a bogus and unconstitutional law passed hastily, having been tacked onto the SAFE Port Act without discussion the last day before Congress adjourned for the 2006 elections.

Through all that, some of us survived, riding the variance roller-coaster, grateful that rakeback and bonuses offered a modicum of stability to a volatile existence. So, with this document, Pokerstars is not just picking our pockets. They are slapping us in the face and taking us for complete fools. It all feels reminiscent to that cynical campaign from a few years ago when the National Lottery added two more balls, claiming it would make playing more fun. Then again, these days, that’s not where the similarity between those two entities ends.