PokerStars set to Launch Casino Games in “the coming months”

Felix Stephensen

Off the back of what’s been described as “encouraging” results from the casino game experiment at Full Tilt Poker in 2014, Amaya CEO David Baazov has now announced that his flagship site PokerStars will also be rolling out casino games in the near future.

 During a recent earnings conference call, Baazov told that Amaya had estimated up to half of its PokerStars customers were betting on sports or casino games elsewhere and that as a result, PokerStars traffic suffered during the football World Cup in Brazil earlier this summer. 

Amaya’s head honcho was also adamant that the introduction of casino games would be appreciated by PokerStars customers, but that is certainly up for debate.

On the one hand, casino games are likely to entice more recreational players to log on, but at the same time, recreational players are perhaps more likely to blow their winnings on casino games after a bad beat than they are to stick around at a poker table.

The first platforms to trial the casino games will be PokerStars.it and PokerStars.es, which could see the integration made before the end of the year. Baazov also hinted that a sports book product would be coming to one of his poker sites in 2015.

It’s been a bizarre week or two for sponsored professionals in poker. First we had the Latin American exodus at PokerStars, then the 50% cut of the Ultimate Poker roster, and now we’re amidst something of a rat race to sign members of this year’s November Nine.

Earlier in the week we reported that Brazilian player Bruno Politano had been snapped up by 888poker, and now, as reported on PokerFuse, BetSafe – which operates a poker skin on the Microgaming Poker Network - has signed Norwegian pro Felix Stephensen.

Stephensen, who has very little in the way of impressive scores on his live tournament resume other than the $730,000 and change he’s guaranteed for his run in this year’s Main Event, is predominantly a Pot Limit Omaha cash game specialist.

However, sporting the BetSafe patch, Stephensen will go into the final table a couple of months down the line in second position sitting ominously behind chip leader Jorryt Van Hoof, and with the likes of Ola Amundsgard in his coaching corner, you wouldn’t bet against him winning it all.