Joined: Aug '12
Location: Romania
Age: 30 (M)
Posts: 269
I just want to know,how they become apart of Team online on Pokerstars or anyother platforms? How are they choosen? By popularity,money spent on their platform,frequency they are playing there?
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
Obviously its a business, which means that all criteria they are looking is to have a return to their investment and of course a profit if possible. Some times its only positive advertising and nothing more.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 4827
When i first started playing online poker i decided to send an email to one of those rooms that was like a start up, still few people had heard about it and i thought "i don't lose anything in giving it a try" but i never got an answer. I think the room closed a year later (it was one of the first ones with the animations in 3D) but they do chose them by their records, they have acces to all that info, so it's easy to go and invite the best to be with them.
Joined: Mar '11
Location: Croatia
Age: 43 (M)
Posts: 1738
I read something about that in the comments of one of acoimbra's videos on youtube ( you know the pokerstars pro trying to hit $100 k before the end of the year). Anyway, he said that there's this form you could fill to apply for a position with them only available to players that are supernova +. He said that he sent that form and that luckily they chose him and that was that.
Joined: Nov '12
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 4675
Posted by AlexandrosLM: I just want to know,how they become apart of Team online on Pokerstars or anyother platforms? How are they choosen? By popularity,money spent on their platform,frequency they are playing there?
G'day mate
Well they look at all of the things you just listed but you can not even apply via the applications form until you reach SuperNova stas on PStars. Personally I would raither be a total unknown then listed as a PStars pro player.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Australia
Age: 40 (M)
Posts: 6483
More than anything else, they're picking people based on their 'exposure'. So a celebrity who doesn't even play poker (Nadal for example) is a much more likely candidate than an online grinder who never gets out of the house.
For poker players, it's not so much a matter of being successful, but you need to be 'known', in particular - you need to have a presence in the "iive scene" - for most platforms, this means you need to have won some major Live events, or at least to have final tabled some.. If you're representing a major poker platform, it's pointless if you only play online, since the only people exposed to you will be people already playing on the platform. They need people who' regularly playing and doing well at Live events, so they can wear all the branded apparel, giving the platform some good exposure to TV and people who're maybe not committed to an online platform already.
Beyond that - you need charisma and good looks certainly don't hurt. Even if you're a good live and online player, if you're an anti-social autistic spazz (no offence), you're not much good either.
Being an attractive female doesn't hurt either.
------------ If you want to get sponsored and you ONLY play online, you have to be a seriously well known online player, something like Victor Blom - basically somebody who not only plays NOSEBLEED stakes, but also draws a crowd and gets a lot of coverage. Realistically, you are 50 million times more likely to get sponsored for your live results, than your online.
------------ Poker Stars is probably one of the few exceptions to some of this criterion, as they do have quite a few Team Poker Stars members who're basically just online-grinders, the thing with Stars is that they're a huge site and can afford to sponsor quite a lot of big name poker players.
Most smaller platforms (PKR for example) only have a handful of sponsored players and they'll generally pick players who have a good Live circuit history, since they need to get people who're heard of outside of their own site.
Edited by jessthehuman (28 April 2013 @ 08:42 GMT)
Joined: Dec '08
Location: Netherlands
Age: 43 (M)
Posts: 579
[QUOTE]Posted by jessthehuman:
Beyond that - you need charisma and good looks certainly don't hurt. Even if you're a good live and online player, if you're an anti-social autistic spazz (no offence), you're not much good either.
Being an attractive female doesn't hurt either.
Yeah look at Fatima Morera de Melo..she was a hockey pro and then quit hockey to play poker full time.She almost had no real results when she got hired by pokerstars. But as Jess said she is a attractive female and a sport star so thats one way to get hired by Pokerstars.,.
Tend to see most players joining a site as a sponsored Pro by an offer and/or invitation from the site. Recently received an offer from one site, that was very kool, it popped up when signing in to the site. Unfortunately, cud not accept the offer becoz there was one item on the list of criteria that was lacking. In my case it is a tech issue and can't afford an upgrade atm....maybe next time.
