Isai Scheinberg and his son Mark are winners, hands down, when it comes to online poker. In 2000, Isai, who worked for IBM in Canada and Israel, founded PYR, a software development company. In 2001, Isai and his son started PokerStars, the one and only one client of PYR. PYR’s primary job is to develop and maintain all of PokerStars online gaming software.

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• Pokerstars Story

PokerStars has grown into the world’s largest online poker site. It has 35% of the world market share, and to date, is home to more than 26 million players across the globe. PS has the biggest tournaments and some of the softest competition on the Internet. Over the years, PokerStars.com has made the poker dream of winning big or playing in a live tournament, such as the annual World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), a reality for so many players. They have sent the most players to WSOP, WPT, and EPT events combined and continue to payout some of the largest jackpots every weekend via their Sunday Millions tournament. Based in the Isle of Man, UK, the company has built a reputation that other online sites envy.

It is generally accepted that Isai and Mark own the vast majority of shares in Rational Entertainment Enterprises Limited. PokerStars, owned by REEL, is in not a publicly traded company; therefore, details about the firm’s structure are not known to the public, as privately held companies aren’t required to disclose information.

You don’t get as far as the Scheinberg’s do in gambling industry by not taking risks. Isai and his son Mark are shrewd and gutsy businessmen. Back in 2006 when federal lawmakers passed the US’s first anti-online gambling law, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), some online sites cut and ran. PokerStars, however, hung in there and quickly became the biggest site in the world’s gaming market, and as of today, has an estimated annual revenue of $1.4 billion and some $500 million in profits. Although the US Justice Department has taken the position that online poker violates US law, PS says they have received legal opinions from several US law firms stating that they are in fact not violating US law.

The story of PokerStars, Amaya, the Stars Group and, ultimately, Flutter Entertainment can be told through its entrants in The Gaming Intelligence Hot 50. It is a story of pioneering entrepreneurialism and global conquest. It is a story of legal battles and PR wars. It is a story of jealousy and greed. PokerStars, however, hung in there and quickly became the biggest site in the world’s gaming market, and as of today, has an estimated annual revenue of $1.4 billion and some $500 million in profits.

In 2008, the US Attorney General in Manhattan froze some $34 million owed to poker players from companies that processed payments for poker games hosted by PokerStars and Full Tilt. Even though PokerStars maintains that it was under no legal obligation to do so, they did refund their customers.

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PokerStars was founded by an Israeli senior programmer for IBM Canada, Isai Scheinberg. He began to write the software that would form the basis for PokerStars in the late 1990s and formed Rational Enterprises, originally based in Costa Rica, to operate his new poker site.

THE VALUE OF THE PLAYER

PokerStars has a strict “no rakeback”policy. Even though they don’t offer rakeback, they still attract some of the biggest names in poker because they have one of the best VIP policies. They reward loyal players with a program which earns them gifts including electronics like a 60″ Plasma HDTV and a PlayStation 3 Slim.

The VIP program is based on the number of Frequent Player Points (FPPs) a player accumulates each month. The highest level you can reach is Supernova Elite, and to get there you must earn at least 1,000,000 FPPs per year which is not easy, but the rewards are pretty awesome. They include special access to the Supernova Elite VIP store where you can buy a Porsche Cayman S with your player points or any two packages from the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, the World Series of Poker Main Event, the European Poker Tour Monte Carlo, or the Asia Pacific Poker Tour Sydney. A third Supernova Elite option privilege is free entry into the online main event for the World Cup of Online Poker.

One thing PokerStars knows how to do well is listen to feed back from their customers. Over the years they have taken constant feedback from the players to help build the best and safest online poker software. The following are a few of its features:

• Re-sizeable Windows. Are you a multi-tasker? You can re-size the poker interface to make it a small screen that you can place at the bottom of your monitor.
• Speed. Because PokerStars doesn’t use fancy graphics, their software is the fastest of all the online sites. This means less lag time and a faster game.
• Custom Avatar. Upload a picture from your computer and use this as your avatar. Use your imagination.
• Show Folded Hands. Folded your hand but want to know how it would have played out if you stayed in? PS software enables you to see your folded hand by simply scrolling your mouse over your avatar.

THE FUTURE CHALLENGE

Security breaches are hands down the biggest concern for customers. At PokerStars all software updates are reviewed by several people before being deployed. All sensitive changes are also personally reviewed by the chief software architect to help ensure they are stable and secure. They are aware that there are some programs that claim to make it possible to see other players’ cards, and they have investigated many of these programs and have not found any of these programs actually do what they claim to do. Some of them are actually malware programs that compromise the security of whoever installs the software. But mostly they are simply scams, attempting to con players out of their money who incorrectly believe that these programs will give them a competitive edge. They do not, however, compromise PS security.

PokerStars states, “We have a large team of Poker Specialists in our Support Team who review all suspicious situations and escalate to the Game Security team if they find anything, which in turn will escalate to the senior management team if any serious problems are found. The security and integrity of our games is of paramount importance to PokerStars.”

According to eGaming Review, PokerStars has chosen a new CEO, Gabi Campos, to take over some of the duties of founder Isai Scheinberg. Campos will come on board in October and Isai will remain as Chief Technical Officer, while his son, Mark will move into the Chairman’s seat. In an internal memo received by eGaming Review, Mark Scheinberg stated: “Both Isai and myself will continue to be closely involved in the company’s strategic direction and building on the success we have all achieved together as a team over the last 10 years. We are excited about this new chapter in the PokerStars story, and look forward to Gabi’s leadership in taking the company forward to continued success.”

Poker has featured on the silver screen on many occasions but very few movies manage to reproduce realistic hands. One famous hand took place in the 2006 remake of Casino Royale, a James Bond film first launched in 1967; Ian Fleming’s book hit the shelves 14-years earlier in 1953.

The original Casino Royale saw James Bond take on the villain of the movie, Le Chiffre, in a game of high stakes baccarat. The 2006 reboot, directed by Martin Campbell, saw baccarat swapped for a $10 million buy-in winner-takes-all No-Limit Hold’em tournament with $5 million rebuys.

As poker hands go, the final hand in the 2006 Casino Royale is as unrealistic as they come, despite Campbell hiring a professional poker player to assist them the poker scenes. It is beautifully shot thanks to the editor Stuart Baird telling Campbell to “shoot everything he could possibly think of, especially eyes, looks, close-ups”. The hand itself is a very stereotypical Hollywood poker hand.

Polygon interviewed Campbell and other key personel recently and it’s apparent he was please with how the poker scenes of his movie panned out.

“I think the sequence was pretty convincing. What you realise is it’s not just the card games – it’s the stakes. It’s also two guys eye-f****ing one another, basically. That was the secret.”

Campbell revealed he spent countless hours watching gambling classics, including The Cincinnati Kid, in an attempt to learn the nuances of poker on TV. He enlisted the help of veteran producer Michael G. Wilson as an informal poker consultant as Campbell strived for the ultimate in poker authenticity.

Tom Sambrook was drafted in a the film’s poker consultant. Sambrook was a regular at The Grosvenor Victoria Casino in London, better-known as The Vic, where he’d won the £2,525 buy-in European Poker Championships in 2002 for £120,000. Sambrook answered the call in 2005 by which time he’d only amassed an additional £16,380 from nine more tournament cashes.

The actors underwent tuition from Sambrook who showed the actors, including Daniel Craig (James Bond) and Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) how to compose themselves at the table, and how to handle chips and cards.

Sambrook told Polygon he had an input in how the final, infamous hand, played out.

“I put in [the script] that Bond does the teaser re-raise, inducing the big all-in. It took maybe six weeks to get that up to martin Campbell […] I said, ‘You’ve got to read this because most people won’t know or care, but there will be hardcore poker players that will just say, ‘They’ve done it again. Why can’t they get this stuff right?’”

The didn’t get “this stuff” right despite Sambrook’s apparent expert advice.

The final hand sees four players remaining in the tournament, including Bond and Le Chiffre, and all four have made it to the river of the board. Player 1 moves all-in for $6 million, Player 2 calls all-in with his last $5 million putting $35 million in the pot.

Le Chiffre raises to $12 million before Bond shoved for $40.5 million. Le Chiffre eventually calls off his remaining $27.5 million in chips and the cards are revealed.

Player 1: for a flush
Player 2: for a full house
Le Chiffre: for a better full house
Bond: for a straight flush – what else would the film’s hero have?

The hand is flawed on many levels. You can argue a case for Player 1 and player 2 because they’re just super-rich people playing poker. Not for Le Chiffre who is billed as a mathematical genius and an elite poker player.

Le Chiffre, holding only the second-best full house could have folded, leaving himself $27.5 million to Bond’s $87.5 million and still be in with a chance of winning the $115 million pot he so desperately needed. Surely Le Chiffre would duck out of the way and fight Bond with a 3:1 chip deficit heads-up, instead he calls a three-way all-in in a hand he is basically never going to win.

Poker Stars Sto Yogurt

Don’t think people fold full houses? Search on YouTube for Roberto Romanello correctly folding jacks full to Mike Matusow at the 2008 World Series of Poker.

Sambrook conceded the final hand was unlikely to happen in a real game, however.

“It’s not representative of an average hand. But the thing about hold’em is it does create these factories of madness. That’s why I love the game. It creates this very close, explosive situation. Once you’ve got a board with cards that close together, everyone’s thinking about the house, everyone’s thinking about the flush, everyone’s thinking about the straight. And in there is the sick feeling, Christ, does one of these guys have a straight flush?”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sambrook hasn’t cashed in a live event since November 2009 although he has some pretty cool memories of playing cards with legitimate movie stars.

Pokerstars Story

“I played my last game literally as the wheel of the plane hit the tarmac in Heathrow. I won with king-high, it was just fantastic.”