PokerStars Parts Ways with Team Pros Joe Cada, Marcel Luske, and Alex Kravchenko
The exodus of players from the Team PokerStars Pro roster continues. A month after PokerStars severed ties with Latin American players Humberto Brenes, Angel Guillen, and Jose ��Nacho�� Barbero, the world��s leading online poker room has parted ways with Joe Cada, Marcel Luske, and Alex Kravchenko.
��PokerStars and I went our separate ways,�� Cada told ESPN��s Andrew Feldman via social media. He later followed that up with another tweet: ��If everyone is wondering what happened with PokerStars and myself, it��s pretty simple. I asked for 100% rake back, they said no.��
Cada won the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event for $8,546,435 and signed on as a Team PokerStars Pro shortly thereafter. In June of this year, Cada became the first player since Carlos Mortensen to win a second WSOP gold bracelet after winning the Main Event. Cada did so by winning Event #32 $10,000 No-Limit Hold��em Six-Handed for $670,041.
Cada��s profile has been removed from the Team PokerStars page, as have those of Luske and Kravchenko. Luske, affectionately known as ��The Flying Dutchman,�� is the Netherlands' all-time money winner with $4,381,937 in career winnings dating back to 1999. In a four-month period from December 2012 to April 2013, Luske won five tournaments in PokerStars-sponsored events, including a win in the European Poker Tour Berlin �1,000 Eight-Handed Pot-Limit Omaha event for �32,000.
As for Kravchenko, the Russian rose to prominence at the 2007 WSOP when he won his first gold bracelet in the $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo Split 8-or-Better for $228,446, and then followed that up with a fourth-place finish in the Main Event for $1,852,721.
��About PokerStars, can only say [it was] good, but everything good comes to an end,�� Kravchenko said of his departure in a translated tweet.
When reached for comment by PokerNews, PokerStars offered the following: ��PokerStars can confirm that Joe Cada, Marcel Luske and Alex Kravchenko are no longer members of Team PokerStars Pro. We wish them all well in their future endeavors.��
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