I have done a ton of staking, primarily for uNL-SSNL, 90% for cash games, and have had some success at it. Yes I have had a few screwups along the way, but ive walked away from staking as a whole with a positive experience and a fair chunk of profit. I figured, with staking seeming to be as popular right now as it looks to be, I would write up a guide from my experiences, what is standard, what is not standard, how to look for good potential players and how to weed out the bad seeds. However this is also good for the person being staked to read so you can make sure you understand that despite being staked you have the right to a fair deal.

Step 1:Finding your Stakee

I found most of my stakees through large BBV threads filled with hundreds of responses and just tried to pick the shining stars. Some people still do this, some prefer to check the marketplace threads. Finally a good number of stakes are done between players that know each other pre staking through some type of friendship, and an oppurtunity for both arises.

Traits to look for

-Consistency in Winnings: No massive swings, no random shot takeaments, a good solid approach to the game with no want to try to hit a big score. True winners are about the grind. If someone doesn't have a roll anymore because they took a shot, or got drunk and played, or anything like this THEY ARE NOT GOOD POTENTIAL PLAYERS TO STAKE. It doesn't matter if they have changed, people always have a chance to relapse into behaviors of their past. THIS IS ALWAYS A RED FLAG.

-A Solid Reputation: Preferably a year or more on the site, with preferably 500+ posts. Obviously this can change but generally speaking its best if they feel they are part of the community. Try to know who they run with, who their friends are, etc etc. Im not saying be a freak and a weird dude about it and make a list of who they hang with, just try to get an idea of the crowd this person runs with so you can get a better feel for where they are coming from. I think less then 1% of the posters on this site with over 1000 posts and 2 years at this site would scam anyone for any reasonable amount of money. That said still background check them.

-Why Do they need a stake?: This doesn't mean, as many people believe, if they need a stake they obviously cant be a good person to stake. Sometimes **** happens, sometimes people are nits about moving up (This has been the grunt of my profit actually), and sometimes people have bad downswings. That said, there are often reasons that DO mean you shouldn't be staking them. Check their history, Check their sharkscopes and OPR's, make sure their story lines up.

-Skill: There is no reason to take on a subpar playing stake. It can set expectations to places they can never reach and in general just isnt good business.

Step 2: Ive got my guy, now what?

I think it is VERY important at this point, to get all of your players real life information. If they get super defensive about it, I would let them go. Ive staked probably 40 players seirously, and I dont think ive ever had more then 1 or 2 be a little bit worried about sending you their info but they did anyway. Really if they are going to have any of your money I think its just good business to have all of their information (AND VERIFY IT IS CORRECT!). If for some reason something goes south you have all of their real life information (hate to say this but it has to be said), and I also think it acts a good way for them to realize they arent just going to be able to take this money and disapear, just isnt going to happen.

*Helpful Note: If you have anyone that you are having trouble with, feel free to contact me and I can direct you to someone who does a very good job of finding out information*

Anyway so moving on, verify the stake in several ways, but MAKE SURE you have it via email primarily. Have them email you all of their information, email them the terms to make sure they agree, and make sure to maintain good contact through email. Aim and 2+2 are great but really its best to do everything through email so you have solid records of everything.

Part 3:The Terms of the Stake and Monetary Decisions

Once you have the person, their information, and good contact with them, its important to make sure the terms are set EXPLICITILY clear. Things to be taken care of.

-EXACTLY what game and level is to be played
-EXACTLY how winnings and rakeback will be divided
-Some sort of time period at which the stake will be re-evaluated, can be set # of hands, number of days, winnings/losings, whatever you want. Have something though.
-How often winnings will be sent.

Let me expand on this. I think its generally a bad idea to have the stakee hold on to all of the money for the entiry of the stake. I think its a much better idea to have a weekly date set, for example, every monday, your stakee will send you via email a full update, all stats from the week, how much rakeback was earned, how much actual profit was earned, ships you half and keeps his half for himself. Then it resets to zero and the new week begins. HOWEVER if the stakee is negative, it just carries over to the next week. It blows my mind how often stakees think that they can lose 5 buyins, then the next 7 they make are split 50/50. That is absolutely nuts, yet for some reason they think that all of the time, quite mystifying to me. Anyway make sure you have these updates done weekly, biweekly, whatever you want. But keep in good contact and make sure you contact them regularly and give positive reinforcement when they send the right info, on the right days, etc etc I know it sounds almost childish but everyone wants to think they are doing a good job.

-How much money your stakee will have, and how it is decided when you are going to send him more money. Tons of ways to work this out but just make sure you have a set plan for downswings.

I would say for cash games, 50/50 with makeup is pretty standard. If the person your staking is especially good i think 60/40 (stakee/backer) is probably more fair. If a player is good he is very unlikely to lose you money in a cash game stake so its relatively speaking a much lower risk investment then tournaments for example.
However the opposite can be true, it can be 40/60 if for some reason you feel the player is not very good (but why are you staking him is the question here).

Step 4:Keeping a good relationship

I really cant stress this enough, I would say 95% of my staking deals I had a very good relationship with the person i staked and we would talk daily. The ones where things didnt go well almost all ended up being absolutely terrible, you need to have good open communication and be able to work out kinks as they WILL happen. Not if they happen, when they happen. Sometimes you will wonder how someone cant understand something but try to be cordial with them, no one wants to feel like an idiot.

Step 5:Profit!! Well what happens when they dont?

Its unlikely, but unfortunately sometimes your player will go deep into makeup on the stake. This is really tough on everyone as the stakee feels pretty bad for messing up and the staker sort of wants the stakee to play a ton because all of the next money is 100% for the staker. Sort of makes the stakee feel like hes in a hopeless spot and can kill stakes. What I WOULD RECOMMEND is if you ever get into one of these spots as the staker, talk hands with him for a bit and then offer him a 20/80 till he is out of makeup, give him something. Otherwise there is a chance he just quits, which at this point is EXTREMELY -ev for you. Keep both of your hopes up and keep him in the game.

That is pretty much all the advice I can give, If you have any questions feel free to ask in here, ill do my best to help out. Ive gotten a ton of pm's over this type of stuff and im glad to help out. And no, this doesn't mean im interested in staking currently, although down the road who knows =p.

~Doug

nice post, thanks

great post, answered a lot of questions I had actually.

Nice work Doug!

Very helpful post Doug

Cheers bro, there's not enough info out there for sure and this is going a long way to help.

I hear you're helping me out 2mo? I will add you on AIM in a few hours for a quick chat if you want?

Do you see his PT (or some other tracker) to verify he won/lost what he said?

How do you prevent, or whats the recourse, if he deviates from the parameters of the agreement (plays higher level, an mtt or stt, etc...)?

When getting his info, do you get SS#?

lol

Good post, Doug. Also, I vote we ban anyone who asks for a stake in this thread.

I won't go that far, but if it continues, there might be some infractions given out.

Thumbs up!

Ever since making this thread i get a bunch of random will you stake me pm's. Not responding to any of those.

Very helpful!

Thanks for the info WCG, I had only previously staked MTT/SNG players but being a cash game player myself I am looking at staking 4 or 5 SSNL players in the coming months, of which I have already chosen 2.
Your post was a great help

nice work and great info

What does "makeup" mean?

Makeup is the money you owe your backer when you don't profit.

Lets say you receive a stake for $10000 on January 1st, and you make $8000 for the month of January. When you chop on Jan 31st, you and your backer each get $4000. The bankroll is then reset to $10000.

February comes around, and you lose $3000 in the month. You now owe that $3000 to your backer, and this is called makeup.

Your backer sends you the $3000 to reset your bankroll back to $10000.

You make $5000 in March, but this is when makeup comes into play. You and your backer don't chop the $5000 evenly. $5000 profit - $3000 makeup = $2000. You and your backer then chop the $2000, and the bankroll is reset to $10000.

It doesn't matter how much you have made your backer in the past, you will always owe makeup if you have a losing month.

I asked the same question to WCGRider and he said - if they lose $2000, they have to make back the $2000 before getting any profit.

which is pretty standard

Thanx for the answers.

Maybe I was thinking of being to generous backing people without makeup. I was thinking something like I send them $X, and after a month they send me back the $X plus half the profit. If $X is lower than (or nothing) what I sent, they send me what ever is left. If I stake them again, everything restets, no makeup. I thought this was pretty standard, but now it feels very generous.

By the way, say with makeup, the player loses some money last month the backer decide to stake him, does he owe the backer any money, or does the makeup only work when staking contiunes. If the player would owe, wouldn't makeup essentilaly mean we loan him money for a bankroll, and the interest is half the profit?

What is standard when it comes to rake back and bonuses? The player gets to keep or split with the backer?

*sorry for the bad spelling*

Dunno back me and we could find out

"decide to stake him" should be "decide not to stake him again"

A very good post.

You're right about the kinks, they do happen.


At the moment, I'm being staked by a group of people rather than an individual.
They were all ok with the kinks, but if one wasn't and the rest were it would have produced a complicated situation.

Yeah that ws wayyyyy too generous. Might not even be profitable =/.

And no, when the stake ends makeup isnt due back to the staker, thats the risk of staking.

Rakeback and bonuses are case by case and ive heard tons of different things on this.

WCG: How do you think cash game staking and tournament "backing" are different? I feel like the basic concepts are the same no? If there is makeup, then the horse wins the makeup and then makes profit etc.

Do you have any insight to how tournament backing works/should work?

It's pretty similar, but you are more likely to go in to deep makeup than with cash game stakes.