ought by ARJEL and applied by the .fr poker rooms, I had a chance, as a self-proclamed representative (sorry, it was in a rush) of this movement, to speak on the phone for 15 minutes with Isai Scheinberg, who was a little bit paniked by the proportions of the sitting out which take place today.
I went with my correct but approximative english and most of all with no plan at all, but here are the main points of the conversation we had :
First of all, he seemed really catastrophed by this growing mobilisation during the past few days, et particularly with this virtual manifestation.
He seemed weakened, and was whining about pokerstars.fr being the only targeted platform, given that other rooms (winamax.fr for example) are applying even more rake (5% preflop for winamax.fr).
I can't blame him, it's true... blabla...
But I explained him that as leader of the market, we expected much from them and when we saw the rake at the opening of the site, we intituitively aimed our anger on them. plus we think that if pokerstars make an effort, the other rooms might follow.
He responded that pokerstars was always listening to its players, and that the already reacted by decreasing the rake significantly in tournaments.
Of course I told him that it was an important first step, thanked him for this, but told him that the main issue was somewhere else, with the death of the cash-game if the rake stayed this way.
Still showing weakness, he asked what he could do about this, adding that he too considerates the taxes excessive and that those taxes already made him lose money, he didnt want to lose players too.
When I asked him to pay a portion of the taxes until the law is revised, he told me that this was absolutely not possible, and that this would force him to close the french market for pokerstars.
He argumented by adding that he was already losing money, and promised me a detailed document showing that fact very soon.
Finally, when he blamed me for directing the movement against the rooms instead of the government (which is THE responsibled for all this crap), I told him that this was what we were doing indirectly, counting on his reaction to this events to bring back to reason ARJEL. I added that we were, on our side, currently creating a player delegation destined to represent the interests of the poker community with the ARJEL.
He told me he already tried to reason them by the past (he is a commercial ) but that he was ready to help us, and to stay in touch with us as with the ARJEL
He asked me if I was ready to take the role of spokesman, at least temporarly, and recapitulated his promises :
- speak with the french manager about the current situation to find some short-term solutions
- give us a detailed report explaining why pokerstars is currently losing money on the french market and can't absorb part of total of the rake.
- establish a constructive dialog with the french community with the goal of reasoning ARJEL, which is our commun interest as it makes both pokerrooms and players lose money.
Satisfied to see that we were able to make the boss of a monster like Pokerstars react with our action, I tried to reassure him by promising that, even if the mobilisation was going to continue, the other rooms would also be touched as long as he was still in contact with us in order to make thinks move
)
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