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It has been seven years since the Scheinberg family sold PokerStars for a massive $4.9billion, but with founder Isai Scheinberg on the 2021 shortlist for the Poker Hall of Fame, the father of one of the biggest sites in poker history felt it was time to revisit some of the burning questions that still remain...
In an exclusive interview with Poker.org, Isai reveals how he “never based decisions on just money calculation,” a factor that might have avoided the biggest controversy in the site’s history.
In 2015, one year after the site was sold to Amaya Inc., the long-standing VIP programme that rewarded high-volume players was suddenly halted.
Coming midway through a rakeback qualifying period, this cost thousands of players huge amounts of money and led to boycotts and bucketloads of bad press for the site.
“I think that eliminating Supernova Elite was wrong, and it would not have happened if Mark and myself were still in charge,'' says Isai, whose legal wrangles over Black Friday were finally settled last year.
“I never based decisions on just money calculations,” states Isai, and many poker players still yearn for the days when Isai and son Mark were in charge and putting customers first, or at least very high up the list.
“Poker players are the company customers – and customers should always come first,” he told Simon Young this week in only his second-ever interview.
Media shy he may be, but Isai Scheinberg isn’t slow to share the reason for PokerStars huge success, succeeding and surviving when others, such as Full Tilt disappeared under the waves (with Scheinberg, it should be noted, offering customers a financial lifeline.)
“I am incredibly proud of the team we had at Stars, with very smart and hardworking people who made the company what it became,” Isai reveals.
He adds: “I think people respected the culture where the only criteria for the decisions were to do the right thing – for customers, employees, and partners, and to be 100% transparent no matter how hard it could be,” and singles out his son Mark for “creating and nurturing this culture.”
Now 75-years-old, Isai has many other interests beyond just poker, but he still has a keen interest in what happens with the game and how it can grow.
“For the new poker boom, the US needs to open and join worldwide player liquidity,” he states, and on a personal level he hopes that players will get a chance to see and play him in person.
“Indeed, I would love and plan to play at the WSOP next year,” he says, and by that time he may well have taken his rightful place in the Poker Hall of Fame.
