Rake Back Deal Causes Joe Cada And PokerStars Split
September 29, 2014 12:58 pmJoe Cada won the 2009 WSOP Main Event for $8.5 million and soon after was signed up by PokerStars as one of its more high-profile sponsored pros. Since then, the 26 year-old has continued to win consistently and now boasts $10,296,221 in live tournament earnings, his most recent score coming just a few months ago at the 2014 WSOP where he took down the $10k NL Six Handed (Event #32) for $670,041.
Despite Cada’s success, however, the WSOP Main Event Champ has now parted ways with the world’s biggest poker site, and has announced he was no longer a member of Team PokerStars. Cada’s departure subsequently came as quite a surprise to many poker enthusiasts, and helping to clear up the confusion, he then posted a message on Twitter stating the following:
“If everyone is wondering what happened with Poker Stars and myself it’s pretty simple. I asked for 100 percent rake back, they said no. I asked for zero money. I just wanted the rake back that I used to get.”
Naturally, many of his fellow pros, as well as enthusiasts in the poker community, weighed in on the debate, especially after Cada indicated he would have been happy to have continued being a part of PokerStars. Jonathan Aguiar, for instance, tweeted:
“Giving a winning high volume player 100% rakeback has a huge cost to operator. Better to pass along as player rewards.”
On the other side of the debate, Ryan Laplante tweeted:
“That’s absurd that they wouldn’t give you it. Makes me worried about Amaya and @PokerStars going forward tbh. Not good.”
Nevertheless, times have changed in the poker world with many poker sites now intent on cutting back their sponsorships deals with players, therefore Cada’s release is no different to that of a number of other high-profile pros who have also found themselves on the sideline in recent months. Cada’s departure from PokerStars, for instance, coincides with that of Marcel “The Flying Dutchman” Luske and Russian pro Alex Kravchenko, while a few months earlier the site’s top Latin American sponsored pros Humberto Brenes, Jose “Nacho” Barbero and Angel Guillen also left PokerStars after their contracts were not renewed.