I have done small 1-2% swaps with most of the people i have vouched for in WSOP threads. I'm not sure why we just didn't post them... i guess we just trust each other enough.

On the point about taxes/vig for UK players swapping money. Maybe non-US people should make clear about exchange rates etc. It costs me around >5% just to swap money up but at the end of the day I still don't pay the 30% an American has to pay when it comes to pay day. Thus a player of the same ability from the US is a worst investment but maybe not the 30% they thought...prolly close to 22-25%.

I have sold subsequent packages on numerous times also.. this is normally due to the fact like this year that i was 100% playing 3 events (but was selling action months before the event) and not sure until closer to the series the other ones. I have also done this with SCOOP/WCOOP/FTOPS before.

I have got a bit of free time in the coming days.. maybe I could get a staking template setup so everyone who lists a 2+2 stakes makes sure they include the correct details the backers want.

Excellent point.
I think a lot of people have "added" tourneys which they had fully intended on playing, based solely on how fast their first thread sold. To not give the original backers first dibs is just terrible.

Whole different question; how are added prizes taken care off, say you qualify through a site and get some bonus when cashing, does this ever count towards the stake ? Either in the form of a package to another tourney or a cash bonus ? I dont have a clue really...

edit;

In the Netherlands this is not possible, as a horse you will ALLWAYS get taxed for the full amount you cashed (online or events outside the Netherlands), no matter what deals you have made before.

To respond to this thread in general, this is my opinion of the Selling Shares forum of the marketplace:

It's a casino.

2p2ers come here for one reason - to look for action. (Some produce action of their own but everyone who comes here has part of their mind looking for action).

That being said, there are some investments that are a 'sure deal' - like a soft limit Hold Em game full of old bags ready to give away their savings, and there are 'bad investments' that will surely lose you money in the long run - like, say, blackjack or roulette. Why do people invest then? Same reason we see the blackjack and roulette tables full everyday. Some people thrive on the gambling, some people do it for that big short-run score, and some people do it because they can't help themselves.

Who are we to judge who 'plays' what games? Let us do what we will with our own money, and let those selling action do what they will. If you saw a new blackjack table with special rules clearly benefiting the house, you would stay clear, but there would always be someone at that table.

That being said, I'll end on this note; would you walk up to someone enjoying themselves at a roulette table and say "excuse me, but you do realize this is a bad investment don't you? You will surely lose all your money"

Thought so

There are a lot of good posts in this thread.

My view:

I really don't see a problem with a player coming in and trying to sell themselves at the highest markup they possibly can. If i started a thread tomorrow and tried to sell my WSOP action (excluding the ME) at 1.5:1, i think it would sell out. I think people would bitch and moan about it bc 50% is such a high markup, but once someone buys the first piece, others would follow.

Am I a good investment at 1.5:1?? I'm not sure. But I don't see how the burden of proof is on me if I am still selling out every package. I also don't see a problem if for my next package I try to sell at 1.6. I mean, 1.5 sold out so maybe I can push the bar a little higher.

Has anyone made a good argument about why someone should not be allowed to do that?

Disclaimer: I obv haven't done that and don't plan to for any future package. I just don't see whats wrong with it.

imo I think despite what I said above there is a markup cap that people will just NOT invest in. It obv will range. For a mediochre (non-awesome) player it's probably around 30-40%

Stuck, I think a lot of it depends on whether someone speaks up or not or whether the ball gets rolling. The first few people to buy are usually very important to whether something sells out or not. A lot of people rely on other people buying shares. If they see people already buying they assume it's a good deal regardless of the merits of the package. That's why I've personally only spoken up at the beginning of threads and not in the middle. Both because it's kind of useless and rude.

I really don't agree with you comparing buying shares to table games. 2+2 is more of a community than a casino pit. And if I could get get the blackjack dealer to change the odds into my favor by telling a couple of other people it was a bad deal, id do it in a second.

Alot of good points ITT, especially lipos, but one thing nobody has mentioned is the benefit of buyin action/shares vs fulltime staking somebody. Say for Ex. when sheets/bax take on a new player for the year, theoretically, they say heres your years worth of buyins, you freeroll and we split the profit either 50/50 or whatever they'd agreed to.
Now obviously such experienced investers have got all the skills and money necessary to invest wisely, practically guaranteeing profits.

Compare this to buying action, for ex somebody who puts up a package of wsop events intending to sell 80% at 1.25:1, here the player either doesnt have the credentials/reputation/connections or the willingness to commit to a long-term contract with a soul backer, so opts to sell smaller pieces to a larger number of investers, offering a more +EV investment for the investers as a whole ('freerolling' for 20% selling action, vs a 50/50 or the like deal for a soul backer, more long term) Seems win/win doesnt it?

sorry if I worded this pourly, I've had a long day and it kind of tilts after reading this thread that not once has anybody bothered comparing basically 100% markup of a fulltime backed players (which is all so common, and still very profitable) to that of a temporarily backed 25% backed player.

It doesn't work like this. Long term deals like you speak of are 50/50 WITH Makeup. This isn't the same as charging 2:1 markup and freerolling 50% on every tourney, b/c before any sort of split happens between the backer and the horse, the makeup figure account has to be restored to $0. For example, If I play my first $10,000 tournament for my longterm backer and have zero makeup at the point the tournament starts and I cash for $100,000 we both get to pocket $50k. However, say I am in $100k makeup (meaning I am currently down $100k in buy-ins on the longterm stake) and cash for $100k in the same tournament I get $0 while my backer gets all $100k. At this point my makeup figure account will be restored to $0.

i am well aware of the concept of makeup tyvm.
hypothetical situation:
1 type of poker tournament exists and runs 1 time per week, but @ infinite venues
you have 2 options:
1.stake 1 solid winning player @50/50 with makeup for infinity.
2.stake 1 equally winning player at each of the infinite venues for just 1 time @ 25% markup, with no makeup.



Also anybody saying "redbells go off when a reference doesnt invest".. thats ****i g rediculous that you discount somebodies credibility for not choosing to invest in poker tournaments.

Sorry, your post made it sound like you were absolutely clueless so I was trying to clear up the confusion. I'm still not 100% convinced you understand. As for your hypothetical I'd take Option 1, and I don't think it's particularly close.

Also, I never said anything remotely close to your second statement.

its not rediculous at all. If someone who is good at poker, and has alot of money, says someone is a sick good deal, oh, and he's my friend. but im not gonna buy action. Raises a huge WTF sign.

In your hypothetical situation, you are missing one key information, and that is the actual/perceived (whichever number is the criteria an investor uses for choosing his investments). If that % in this case is greater than 25%, in the long-run, the investor should be indifferent on which option to take.

However, if the player's ROI # is something like 10%, then the 25% markup would result in a long-term loss under option 2.

Yeah but he is saying it's ridiculous for the people who vouch/say the person is sick to lose credibility if they don't also buy. Obviously it raises a huge WTF sign but I'd say more towards the guy who is selling the pieces. Although of course I'd think WTF is the guy vouching/saying it's a sick deal doing as I'd never ever vouch for a guy if I wasn't going to buy a piece.

let me preface this by giving a little background before going on a long winded rant:

I have sold action for ftops/wcoop/wsop and random live events. I have also had a fair amount of success in some and have paid out mid 5 figures in profits to investors here. I don't play tournies that much, i'm mainly grind mid stakes 6max where i do pretty well for myself, but i don't have very good mtt results over small samples of high stakes mtts. However, i can honestly say that A. I do make sure I think i have a decent edge in everything i play before i play it (earlier this scoop i decided to sit out a couple of events that didn't look like great value even though i sold shares) and B. despite sometimes my markup > overall roi according to opr or whatever, i can say with confidence that i have never sold action in any event that i didn't think was a +ev investment for investors.

On the flip side a do buy a lot of action on these forums and my intent is to make money, not really to gamble. I do do a decent amount of research, pay attention to trends and look for good spots. Sometimes i got months without buying any action, sometimes i buy like 5-10k worth of action in a week.

As a result, i do believe there are people that are committing something close to straight up fraud in some of their threads, and they usually follow a certain trend, and i know many of these topics have been touched on itt:

1. unjustified markup: I see this all the time, a low to midstakes mtt grinder that has x% roi in mtts with on average buy in of $y over a large sample charges x% markup on an mtt or a series of mtts that is 5*$y. The assumption is that if i am winning at 30% roi at 26 dollar tournaments, i should have the same roi over an FTOPs series with the average buy in being $200+. I think this is especially important since a lot of the structures of these events play much deeper than your average 26 dollar tourneys and a lot of people are pretty clueless on how to play deep stack poker because they have very little experience.

2. Selling very large % of themselves This is especially troubling if they are selling something at high markup (i.e. if someone is selling 70%+ of themselves at 30% markup warning bells should be going off in your head). Obviously this is different for live mtts and wsop for various reasons, but there is almost no way to justify charging that much markup (assuming you are even attempting to make this investment profitable for buyers) and selling that much action. In reality, if your ROI is that big, there is no reason for you to be selling that much action, and you should want to keep as much of your action as you can. In fact, I am almost positive that anyone that is selling action like this is looking to freeroll a decent amount of equity assuming they are somewhat neutral ev vs. some fields which makes investments obviously -ev for backers.

3. Selling a large number of very small pieces. I think its pretty clear that the people that are putting large amounts of money buying shares into the 2p2 marketplace are doing quite a bit more homework on their investments than your random casual 2p2 lurker type with a couple hundo in online poker accounts doing nothing. Therefore, people that buy smaller pieces are easily going to be a lot more gullible than those buying bigger pieces. These threads are so easy to spot, lets say 2 people are selling 2.5k worth of action, the one that with a bit of research can be seen as +ev will be sold out fairly quicky with notable investors taking $250+ shares, the one that is a boarderline scam will take a bit longer to sell out, usually by 30 or more people taking $50 worth of action. Usually these people will be less familiar with the ins and outs of investing in poker, lurk less in marketplace, post less on 2p2, etc.

I recently called out tourbound for making an absurd thread here that fit every single characteristic i have noticed and listed above:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/16...k-ftop-754096/

anyways, i don't really want to get into a discussion about this exact staking thread, but I attempted to point out some basic signs that pointed to how this was a terrible investment, and mods deleted most of my comments and i was labeled as a troll by the very people that may be making a terrible investment without further consideration.

I realized the problem then and there:

I honestly don't care that much about people who are uninformed who don't know what they are doing with their money, but its another thing to actively facilitate a culture where these people can be easily scammed out of their money and not realize it. I think the main question is if there should be a system to protect investors who are unable to make rational decisions in the 2p2 marketplace?

Its a tough spot tbh, i'm not sure what active measures can come from this discussion.

Here is why our hypothetical isn't close.

Imagine your horse plays 500 $1k tournaments. He blanks his first 499 tournaments, but on the 500th one he cashes for $500k. In Option 1 the backer will walk away after the 500th tournament having invested $500,000 and receiving $500,000 for a net sum of $0. In option two the backer will have invested that same $500,000 but will receive only $400,000 (80% of the $500k score) for a net sum of NEGATIVE 100 THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Meanwhile, in option 1 the horse walks away with $0, while in option 2 the horse walks away up $100k while you are down $100k.

Maybe a little trollish Klink but I dont disagree with any of the points you raised and you waited til the sweat was over so you didnt ruin the "fun" for his investors.

Actively facilitate a culture where these people can be easily scammed out of their money and not realize it.

This perfectly sums up what I've had trouble putting into words.

klink:

I agree with a lot of what you said. Great post and I'm glad you took the time to write all that up.

A couple things I'm not completely sold on, however. When people package together a bunch of MTT's whether it be for a series like FTOPS or just a random Wednesday night, it's safe to assume their ROI will differ for every individual tourney in the package. Finding an aggregate ROI and pricing markup accordingly is what should be done. With that said, it's not anything close to "scamming" for a tournament to be part of a package that charges markup that is neutral EV or even possibly -EV.

My second point of contention is the use of the word "scam". I think that's a really loaded word to be throwing around to people who might be charging too high of markup assuming it's not over say 1.5:1 (arbitrary figure, I know, but for all intents and purposes there aren't many packages that have this sort of markup figure so it would obviously raise some red flags). As long as all the information of the buyer is presented in the OP with no intentional omissions or misleading language (which ironically enough that Tournbound thread had an incredibly informative OP) then I think even mentioning the word "scam" is pretty ridiculous.

With that said, I don't think I'd be able to sleep at night if I was some of the people who regularly sell pieces in this forum.

Amen and +1 to klink's post.

Pretty much exactly what I have been thinking, but unwilling to say due to my lack of credibility (being micro stakes etc etc) here.

Thank you so very much for that post.

I don't see this too often, but there are cases where a seller is willing to sell at a markdown. This would happen if someone satellited into the WSOP ME on Stars for $700 and wanted some insurance on his action.

Do you guys think we'll ever get to a point where online action will be sold at a markdown? Currently, no markup seems to be the absolutely minimum. If the seller has like 20% of the action, selling the remaining 80% at a 5% markdown will allow him to raise enough capital to play in a series like the SCOOP and also benefit investors.

btw tdomeski, I was completely wrong on choosing between option 1 and 2. Obviously see why option 1 is the obvious choice. Good example to illustrate the point.

@tdomeski

im not sure what you are getting at in your first point, but i assume you are saying that if a player has positive an roi > markup in 2 mtts and roi < markup in 1 and packages all 3 together than its fine? I agree with this but i don't understand how its really that relevant, what I am talking about is specific people who play 90%+ of their action within a certain stake (lets say between $4-$50) and assume that their roi in those mtts can be extrapolated to a package where they sell action on a series where they are playing 200+.

yeah i agree scam might be too extreme, i think something like "exploitation" might be a better way to describe it. The fact remains though that what i described is something we should probably work to curtail, regardless of the exact nomenclature we use to describe it.

Yeah I just sold a big wsop package at 1.3 markup and there's absolutely no way I have a >30% ROI in every event, but the aggregate of all events should easily be above 30% ROI. I don't see any problem with this. In fact I think it's quite useful in that it encourages people to sell pieces in events where they are hugely +EV as part of a package, to enable them to play bigger/harder events where their EV is less than the markup, that they might not otherwise play at all.

Also shouldn't there be a "rule" or something that says the OP should include in very clear terms what MU % is actually being charged? This may have been mentioned earlier sorry.

But some staking/share offers are being posted without any reference to the mu rate.

It's like "oh well you guys work it out".

These threads get a lot of questions from people asking what the rate is and getting confused.

I know it's just basic math and most players should be able to work it out - but some think math is idiotic etc. and I see miscalculations all over the place.

Just be upfront with all information. It's lazy and unprofessional at best, misleading and deceitful at worst.

Yeah this tilts me to no end. It's not that hard to take the time to write a good and clear OP if you want to sell shares. If you've never done it before, it's pretty trivial to go to another thread where it was done well, and just copy it and apply it to your situation.

EDIT: In fact I don't think it'd be a bad idea to have some sort of standard template that people could use to fill out, not that they'd be required to use it, but it would def be nice for first time sellers especially.

I was thinking about this the other day. It's kind of funny that the price floor seems to be at 1:1. I don't think given current market trends that this will change much in the future. It's kind of funny though b/c I know people would sell at a markdown if not for the fact that they don't have to b/c buyers will snap up action at no markup or at a markup.

When I sold pieces to PCA, I sold as an emotional hedge essentially. It was going to be my 4th trip down there and the last thing I wanted to do was what I had done the previous 3 years which was win a package, go down there and not cash and come home with nothing. I decided to sell 30% so I'd at least walk away with $3k in my pocket from my satellite win. I would have gladly sold at no markup or even a markdown in order to satisfy my needs of selling. Instead I strolled over here and saw players of equal or lesser skill (in my eyes) selling pieces at 1.2:1 to 1.3:1 so I threw a thread up at 1.2:1 and it sold out.