http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c749205e-8...nclick_check=1

"Manro Haydan, a London proprietary trading business, is betting it can make money from online poker by putting up the stakes for an army of more than 150 freelance "traders" to gamble over the internet.

The privately owned company, which invests for its own account, believes that by applying the sophisticated risk management techniques used in money management to poker it can shift the odds in its favour."

One major difference, though, is that poker players typically prefer to fund their own hands rather than give up a share of winnings to a backer, limiting the scope of the Manro operation.

"There aren't enough players that would accept our terms because 99 per cent of them want to fund it themselves," he said. "It is a quite different mindset."

Any takers?

If they keep Brandon Adams out of the door, they should be ok.

this wont work for reasons stated in op

Quite the sales pitch given the current state of affairs.

Why not just get one guy and set up 150 different accounts.
Sorry but if your not playing your own bankroll your results change

This is not news.

www.Badbeat.com has been around along time.

i dont see how this wouldn't work, there must be soooo many midstakes players who have busted or something that would take this offer up

edit: oh yeah i forgot about badbeat.com, read about them like a year ago in a magazine or something

i never really understand people who get stakes for cash games.

If you are going to get 50% staked for 200nl why not just play 100nl with your own money etc.

unless you're totally busto and need a stake for like a month to get back on your feet.

It could work very well actually. I myself staked a few ppl for MSNL.

There are always good players who beat the 2/4 or w/e games easily but are:

1) Running bad for extended periods of time
2) Are scared to play that high even when rolled
3) Are busto due to some degeneracy in other forms of gambling (sports betting etc) but are very disciplinned in poker.

I myself, beind somewhat degen, but quite good at grinding, been staked by numerous ppl a 4 times and made them a whole bunch of money.

well, considering there's this one f-tard over on FTP forum trying to tout AIG,
Manro isn't TOTALLY insane
I imagine there's ethics issues with Manro doing like Neverbeg-type steaking
thru the interwebz.

Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't make that association. Is Badbeat and Manro one and the same?

this

Some people might not be able to handle the bigger swings on their own, so they take up a short-term stake to get themselves adjusted to the games.

wonder what percentage the players would get paid.

you dont think they could find some real good 25/50 regs who dont have the roll to play with guy and other nosebleed fish who would be willing to have a shot at a big game they have an edge in with minimized risk?

This is all fine when playing 200nl, but it's psychologically different playing 20000nl

Quite the sales pitch since they can't force anyone to follow their strategy once the money is shipped.

Only an idiot would agree to as deal like the one you describe. Most horses want 60%. Staking deals rarely work. Certain things have to be true about a horse for them to be worth staking. If a guy wasnt good enough to work his way up to the stakes he wants to play and believes he is a winner in then that is usually proof enough for me that he would be a poor investment. The only people I would invest in are people who I knew were forced to break into their roll for an emergency and that is why they are underolled for the game they want to play. There are other exceptions such as short shots in juicy higher limit games, etc.

I'd be interested in seeing the sophisticated risk management techniques. This is the type of stuff that caused all the banks to blow up recently.

I can see this working out for a solid 2-4 reg who occasionally takes shots at weak 3-6 and 5-10 games. It gives them a chance to play 5-10 on a regular basis without any risk to their rolls

It won't work because whatever compensation structure you put in place the players will find a way to screw the backer (hedge find in this case) by either taking -EV risks (moral hazard) or chip dumping to friends. The only reason backing works sometimes for games like blackjack is that dumping to the casino makes no sense although you have other risks like the players outright stealing.

it works quite well for bax and sheets

They'd be way better off taking pieces of people in live donkaments for a bunch of reasons.

In theory, there are potential advantages to separating the player from the risk as other people with more money should be more risk tolerant. I remember one post a while back asking what reduction on their current win rate players would take in order to play without any variance, answers were as low as 50%.

You'd need to have an incentive structure that is result base, but have pay based on other factors as well. And you'd need some sort of way to check the quality of play besides short term results.

You definitely could not find 100 players for whom this would make sense though. Dumb idea in practice.

Incentive structures don't even work out very well in theory when you are taking all the loses and only a portion of the wins with a high variance to expected win game like poker or blackjack. In practice it is far worse, players who are losing big will increase variance and thus decrease EV or quit, while players who are winning big will try to decreace variance and thus EV too.