Top themes of 2019: professionals leaving Team PokerStars

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The year 2019 was very bad for PokerStars. This year, revenues of the most popular poker room have decreased a lot. And a number of famous poker players left the team of red spade.

Most recently, Team PokerStars Pro was the ideal and many dreamed of getting into this star team, but 2019 deprived it of its former glory.

The leaving of Jeff Gross and Jamie Staples

At first, the streamers began to leave en masse.

On February 2, 2019, two professionals left the ranks of the poker room at once: Jeff Gross and Jamie Staples. The first became a member of Team PokerStars in the summer of 2017. In the team, he made Twitch streams and performed at live competitions with the patches of the room.

Jamie Staples joined Team PokerStars in 2015. During his being in the team of the room, he turned into a well-known professional. He has won several tournaments. Also, Staples in the team was engaged in commentary and actively streamed.

Gross called the reason for his leaving from PokerStars disagreement with the company. There are a number of versions on the net why Jeff and Jamie left PokerStars. The launch of RIO poker, the presence of a permanent streamer Lex with a large number of viewers and others. But, over time, it turned out that Jeff and Jamie decided to change the red-spade patches to orange-diamonds and switched to the PartyPoker team.

Leaving of Randy “nanonoko” Lew

Two months after Gross and Staples left, Randy “nanonoko” Lew also decided not to be a part of the Stars team. According to the poker player, the reason for his decision is that he wants to develop independently and "take everything under control". “Nanonoko” became a member of the room team in 2016. On Stars, Randy Lew focused on his game streaming.

The leaving of Daniel Negreanu and Liv Boeree

A huge surprise for the community was leaving of the PokerStars team in 2019 of the top players who wore poker room patches for many years and symbolized the PokerStars brand – Liv Boeree and Daniel Negreanu.

In May, Canadian poker player Daniel Negreanu left the ranks of red-spade ambassadors. He argued his decision by making a choice in favor of the family. However, in November Negreanu became the ambassador of GGPoker.

The poker player became a member of the PokerStars team in 2007. Over a twelve-year period, he won many tournaments and received a large number of awards. He always proudly wore Stars patches and defended the brand's honor.

In November, Liv Boeree and Igor Kurganov left PokerStars. Boeree has been a member of the room team for nine years. Her boyfriend, the famous highroller Kurganov, received the status of Ambassador of the room in 2017.

Following them, Konnikova left the PokerStars team. She joined the ranks of the Stars team in 2018. Konnikova gained popularity after winning the PCA. The main achievement of the girl is her book called Psychology of Distrusting.

Now the PokerStars Team looks very modest, there are few well-known professionals, and only Chris Moneymaker and Mikhail Shalamov stayed from the "good old" pros.

This is what the PokerStars team looks like in 2020:

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