Marcel Luske, former PokerStars ambassador, is reportedly suing Rational Entertainment Entreprises, Amaya Services and Pokerstars. CDCgamingreports’s Mike Heuer, claims that Luske is seeking damages for copyright infringement, misrepresentation, fraud and bad faith.
According to a filling in Cark County District Court, the gaming operator, allegedly, copied Luske’s framework for poker tournament rules.
Luske believed the Tournament Directors Association (TDA) rules, were “geared toward the tournament directors and organizers, not towards players” and for that reason he created the International Poker Rules as an alternative set of tournament rules.
Luske had formed the Federation International de Poker Association (FIDPA) the year prior and he used the association to promote the new framework, designed to “ensure credibility, fairness, transparency and consistency throughout the poker industry globally.”
EPT Madrid
On the existing TDA regulations, Luske said the following:
“The ‘rules’ change at any time unfairly to players, in favor of the casino and to make the poker events done as fast as possible so players would spend money in other parts of the casino.”
In 2008, the same year Luske became a PokerStars- sponsored pro, the Bellagio in Las Vegas adopted Luske’s framework of poker tournament rules and got the FIDPA stamp of approval.
In 2011, after an issue with the chips at the EPT Madrid, Luske claimed his set of rules prevented such incidents from occurring. Soon afterwards, Luske claimed PokerStars struck a deal regarding the use of his International Poker Rules.
Breach of Contract?
The Dutch poker pro claims the deal was the payment of $25.000 per year for the use of the framework at PokerStar’s events. However in 2013, PokerStars announced “out of the blue” the company would create its own framework, called “PSLive Rules”.
Luske claims that “every single PSLive rule is an exact copy and/or derivate of language from the International Poker Rules’. Furthermore, in 2013, Luske claims to have declined an offer from Global Poker Index (GPI) to acquire FIDPA, due to the partnership with PokerStars.
In September 2014, Luske was also dropped from Team PokerStars.
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