There are clearly degrees of "big company/small company" preference (after all, I work for a big company because I used to work for a small company that got bought out!)

Your analysis of the Stars staff is probably about right, and I would not want it to be imagined that I am backing small poker companies over Stars. The collusion on small sites is almost certainly worse (I hardly play on any small sites now, so I can't be sure), and bots have been operating on Pacific for ages in the short-stack games (see Tipolina for a good example).

But Stars really did put its foot in it s couple of times here, and I don't think that the "Stars of old" would have made the same mistakes.

PJ