lol wtf? all OP did was split the backing of a bunch of horses with some people.

It would be one thing if this was set up as a pool, or some kind of partnership.

But it wasn't. Even from the beginning her was talking about "shares", pricing them, facilitating trading, putting out something called a prospectus (even though it falls far short of what one actually is), referring to himself as a manager, calling this "a fund", charging fees on invested money; all things that he can't do in this context.

Now, it would be one thing if there was some level of miscomunication as to some kind of a structured partnership, but that isn't the case here. He was running an unregistered investment company. That's not legal here in the US.

Really, show this to anyone in finance, or with a legal background. He's in a scary amount of trouble. He blew over half a million dollars of other peoples money in what is at minimum uninformed incompetence, and at maximum outright fraud.

Why do you need a CPA? If any of the investors are worried that the fund manager spent some of the fund's money, all they have to do is ask horses if their makeup/profits numbers are right and see if the numbers add up with the amount the fund lost.

Still would like to hear an answer on this.

I was an investor, albeit with a significantly lesser investment in the fund, and little guys like me were not explicitly told current MU amounts or even if any players were in or out of makeup. That was one big surprise to me is how some of these players could have gone over their 100k bankroll limits and why there wasn't serious meetings to determine the viability of said players and if we should even be keeping them on the fund. However, we were updated every few days with not only a chart showing the current share price, but also little paragraphs and summary's from any major action horses were experiencing, who won what, who broke even for the weekend, and who lost money.

New horses were simply added, and I'm sure there was discussion within the tight knit pokerfund community of key investors and players, but no investor polls or anything of the sort. While I wasn't happy about this either, I did trust that Rocket would not add incompetent or unsuccessful players, and every player on the fund was in the top 99% or so on OPR. While I didn't like not being informed, he was simply adding another source of profits to the fund. obviously I am ok with that, and there was a trust of sorts from the beginning that the manager would make these decisions to the best of his ability. At any time an investor could withdraw their deposits from the fund.
The biggest issue for me in all of this was the transparency, or lack thereof. For what its worth, I don't believe Rocket was trying to screw anyone over or keep people in the dark, but he was simply inexperienced at running this large of a fund and didn't realize the large amount of time and effort it would take to have everything 100% publicly updated.

As far as warning him about jailtime and fraud for managing a fund and taking fees for this...while I was not particularly happy about this aspect I also 100% understood the necessity for it. He worked hard and spent lots of time managing this and deserved compensation from those efforts.

I lost money, I'm bummed...and while I am better friends with some of the "20%" players in the fund...I still believe that there should be some sort of recourse for MU. 20% buyback seems way to generous to me. It was understood from the beginning that players do not simply walk away from their makeup, but it would be sold at a discounted price to other willing to stake the horse in question.

I was in vegas during the time that everything broke down and the fund went under and it was hardly discussed. Again, besides lack of transparency/communication on the part of the manager...especially regarding anything negative...I don't see any wrongdoing on behalf of the pokerfund.
Sure, it took a few weeks to organize new horses. There's half a million dollars of MU to be sold, 2 weeks is great turnaround!

...just some thoughts from a small investor that had no inside information or daily updates like the players or larger investors...just checked the website daily and had quick AIM convos with rocket once in awhile to see how things were going.

they didn't walk away, they were dropped when they were told the fund was broke and couldn't put them in anything anymore, at that point their makeup was 0

From the prospectus:

This sounds like a massive breach of contract to me. He raised 600k, staked a bunch of horses with bankrolls totalling 600k, promised he wouldn't stake anyone new without asking first, and then staked a bunch of new people without asking first. That means that you agreed to a fund in which there was zero risk of running out of money without capping everyone's BR, and then the manager violated the agreement so that that was no longer the case and the fund ran out of money.

That's a really blatant breach of contract that directly caused the current situation. So, yeah, I'd be talking to other investors about getting together and getting a lawyer.

And if i was coerced into buying out i'd demand my money back immediately!

The blog that was mentioned earlier had all the information about who was being added. The blog has been taken down after the fund declared the liquidation setting and was replaced with the MU numbers.

Oh, I guess the blog/rest of the site got taken down today, because I was going through some of the older blog posts earlier... and yes rocket always said who he was adding, there was just no sort of open investor discussion. I didn't really write that out of spite or anything, NoahSd just asked and I let him know the process of how new horses were added. While some sort of poll would have been nice...I did mention that investors should obviously have trust in that the manager would not add -EV players, and i think the specific players he chose were all good additions, even though the fund was arguably not properly rolled to take on any additional horses.

cliff notes in response to noah: known from beginning new horses would be added.
not known that players were allowed to go over their bankrolls.

looks like the prospectus is down too now, but I think I saw that it said somewhere that players' brs could be changed.

Anyway, I guess I shouldn't talk specifics since I don't have all the details. It sounds to me like enough shadiness went on that I'd be thinking about whether or not the contract was breached at all.

Dear Poker Community,

I just want to use this time to make one clarification. All the horses didn’t resist this whole process, there isn’t an overall conflict between horses and investors. For example, Blue Knight1 and Hustla16 communicated clearly with all the investors. We didn’t want to make any specific accusations since that wasn’t the purpose of this thread, but we realize this generalization does tarnish certain players reputations, and I just want to correct that.

Each horse had a slightly different situation, obviously some had their make up sold quickly, others got direct offers for the current levels they were playing and bids on their make up, and the rest had general offers that never fully got developed.

The investors and I have talked about some specific situations and how they differ from one horse to another. We agree that Blue Knight1 has effectively removed himself from the group of horses that agreed to pay back their makeup then cut off communications. I want to reiterate how this thread isn’t accusing anyone specifically of anything, and that horses like Blue Knight1 should be respected even more for how he handled this tough situation.

Rocketmist

You dont actually think that anyone reading this thread was beginning to question the reputability of any of the horses do you? If so thats pretty funny...

it's certainly indicative of a flawed approached and likely of a perspective problem that has hindered a more successful outcome.

Rocketmist,
I assume you have paid back all the horses that bought out now that the consensus is that you had a right to ask for nothing? You really are a scumbag if you keep the money, if any money is owed to anyone, it's by you to the investors in return for not suing you.

I'd like to point out, since nobody else will it seems, I remember Rocketmist saying he would send all $$$ made from makeup sales to investors, pretty much saying he wasn't going to get a dime of anything sold. Assuming he actually did that, while it may not totally make up for all this, considering he was the biggest investor on the fund, I think it makes up a little.

Yeah, he did give up his part of the share.

I"m not qualified to have an opinion but if you sell someone's makeup the horse should honor it because otherwise staking wouldn't be that great of a deal for the backer but that doesn't mean he should spend his own money to buy back his makeup...i don't see anything wrong with refusing to buy your own makeup, but if you sold it then it should be honored...the whole reason to be staked is to not use your own money so i don't see why these guys have to buy back their makeup, esp if they are willing to honor their makeup if it was sold, but apparently it wasn't sold so...sell it if you can if you can't your sol

sorry it didn't work out, seems like a good idea if it was run right

Probably because about zero reputable backer is going to take a player who skips out on makeup obligations at the first out presented to them?

Also, if this were true backing cuts would have to be biased a lot higher than 50% for the backer in most circumstances.

As a backer, I'm also not sure if I'd want a horse who would willingly give up thousands of dollars for no reason.

wat

Intelligence and common sense are valuable traits.

My two cents:

Background

In Feb 2009 Rocketmist was looking for someone to stake him in SNGs. Then in less then a year he all of a sudden has made enough in less than a year to start a fund "THE POKER FUND" and become a majority stakeholder, hmmm? Along with those titles (Founder of "the poker fund" and Majority stakeholder) sounds like he should also hold the title of Magician.

How is this fund running again...?? Besides not having funds, this so called "fund" is fundamentally FLAWED. Its like putting a 3 year-old in charge of running a candy store! On top of not having the ability, rocketmist also lacks the intelligence to run this candy store > ie. let's let people steal/use/eat all the candy. Then whatever little is remaining we will just take and have a good time with. This fund was the a huge MISTAKE.

Rocketmist you should make this community aware of your "backroom" deals or at least be upfront with the other investors.

Rocketmist you should finish what you started/tried to do - leaving the poker scene!