Benjamin "bencb" Rolle has joined PokerStars as their latest sponsored pro. He is joining several other recent hires. Parker Talbot and Sam Grafton also joined Team PokerStars in the last year. Stars has been scrabbling to replace Chris Moneymaker after he broke his 17 year long relationship with the company to go and join America's Cardroom.
Rolle has worked as founder of, and coach for, Raise Your Edge—a poker training site. He will continue to coach for the site alongside his role at Stars. As part of this sponsorship deal, Stars and Raise Your Edge will be partnering to produce new coaching content for customers of both companies.
"Working together with PokerStars I will be able to work on new content and become even more creative when trying to introduce more players to the game," Rolle said in a press release. "I am very excited and grateful for this opportunity. I see it as a great responsibility to represent PokerStars. And to remain a voice of the community, acting as a bridge between them and the platform."
Some of the new content will come in the form of coaching videos, but there are also plans to provide live training and full courses through PokerStars.
Stars announced the partnership on Twitter. "He's one of the biggest online poker crushers and it's our pleasure to welcome @bencb789 [Benjamin Rolle] to the team."
Raising Stars' edge
Partnering with a coaching company is a nice idea. Previous attempts at creating "poker school" sections by established poker sites have tended to feel like rather token efforts. If Stars and Rolle get it right, they could end up creating an industry leader.
"Ben is arguably one of the world’s top Multi-Table Tournament players and has been crushing high stakes for many years," Scott Goodall said.
Scott Goodall is the Associate Director of Communities and Partnerships at PokerStars. He expressed his excitement at bringing Rolle and the Raise Your Edge team into a partnership with Stars.
"Working with Ben and Raise Your Edge, PokerStars will be able to provide top standard content," Goodall added. "And we gain valuable feedback and input from Ben, the Raise Your Edge community, as well as our existing ambassadors and partners. This ensures we can continuously improve and provide the best experience for all our players and communities."
The Raise Your Edge community comes with a ton of established players who are serious about the game. That means new deposits for Stars. It also means a stack of winning players with a new loyalty to the site, which does wonders for the rake.
Having solid instructional material should be a good way to snag new players.
Rolle was a bit more emotionally engaged when it came to his reaction to being signed.
"I am excited to be working on new projects and helping to grow poker," Rolle wrote on Twitter. "With Pokerstars as a Partner, it is going to be much easier to make an impact and give immediate feedback."
"AND FINALLY, I HAVE ALL THROWABLES," he added.
Featured image source: Twitter
