After 17 years of service under the PokerStars banner, poker professional and streaming pioneer Lex Veldhuis is a free agent.
With a wide reach and plenty of loyal fans – Veldhuis has 145K YouTube subscribers, 59.7K Instagram followers, and 76.9K X followers – there's likely no poker-centric organization that would hesitate to enlist his services. As his time with PokerStars came to a close, Veldhuis took a hiatus from the streaming game, but he has made a resounding return in the new year.
In all likelihood, there are currently partnership agreements and benefit packages being cobbled together to present to the Dutchman.
Veldhuis, however, is in no rush to pick a partner.
'I trust in my platform'
In his latest YouTube video (featuring gameplay recorded during one of his livestream sessions), Veldhuis responded to a viewer who opined that GGPoker would be "dumb" to not sign him.
"It's also about what I want, right?" Veldhuis said. "I just want to chill, I'll see."
"I've been with Stars for a long time, right? Obviously, GG has had the bigger games for a while, but one thing that I liked in the past about Stars a lot is the way they approached content or the view that they had on Twitch," he continued. "Vision is very important for me because that also sort of decides the climate you're going to be working in."
Veldhuis remains confident in his own abilities as a content creator and poker player to sustain him for the time being – long enough to properly explore his options and discover life away from PokerStars.
"I'm okay in terms of financials so I don't need to make any crazy decisions," he explained. "I trust in my platform, I trust what I do, I trust in my viewership, my skills. I've been with Stars for 17 years, let's just chill."
While he's not at all opposed to the idea of signing up with a new poker entity, Veldhuis is enjoying his newfound freedom.
"Why not go play a Venom sometime, somewhere?" Veldhuis asked. "Why not fly to Vienna and do some sort of streaming and check out CoinPoker and WPT and a Venom and all that stuff? I've never been able to do it. Why not?"
Veldhuis' future remains unclear, but he's clearly enjoying the ride and finding solid cashes along the way in his tournament sessions.
Images courtesy of Manuel Kovsca/Rational Intellectual Holdings/PokerStars
