Hello
This thread might be a bit different from most threads in this section. I dont play poker (unless stars forces me to to get VPPs so i can send money around).
Currently, I run a stable that has 53 horses. I suppose the best way to give some background info on myself, i will just link a interview i did recently for tournamentpokeredge.com below. Here are a few excerpts:
Can you tell us a little bit about your poker background?
I started playing poker in college with friends. We played 5 dollar homegames pretty much every night of the week. I seemed to be doing well in them so I decided to put $50 online on party. I kept winning SNGs on Party, but my account balance never seemed to go up. After a while I figured out I was just playing Step SNGs. After losing my $50 on Party I decided to try FTP out. I did well on FTP for a while and eventually deposited on Stars as well. I played unbacked for the first part of my playing "career". After a while, I wanted to play a bit bigger then my roll allowed, so started to try and find a backer. I was fortunate to find a backer that would put me in higher games that I was probably not ready for in hindsight. I never made a profit for this backer and was eventually dropped when the backer had to get rid of most of his stable. I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to put the effort in to become a great poker player, but instead could maybe start a stable and make money that way.
I currently have a stable of 47 guys (edit: GROWTH!). My staking partner is Elio "smokrokflock" Fox. We have been working together since August 2010. During this time we have staked around 150 different people ranging from $2 180's on stars up to the WCOOP Main Event.
How did you first get in to staking?
I started staking around February of 2009. Stars was running a reload promotion at the time. I believe it was 100% on $700, so I decided to put $700 on just to get the "free" money. At the time, I was backed myself for MTTs and SNGs, but would get to keep this bonus if i made the deposit and cashed the money out right away. I was living with a friend who had a Stars account, so as soon as I soon as I deposited,I sent him my 700 just to hold onto. I couldn't cash-out the money right away because of a Stars policy (have to clear a certain amount of VPPs before cashing out). I was chatting with one of my friends (who was also backed at the time) and we threw around the idea of maybe staking a few people with the $700. He was a friend who lived near me, so next time I saw him, he gave me $350 cash and we were equal partners in this new staking fund.
When we were starting up this fund, it was right when the 2+2 Marketplace (MP) was beginning. It was basically just my partner (Pageh656) and I in there with a few other stakers. We basically got 95% of the applications that were sent out (or so it seemed). Our first horse actually came not from the 2+2 thread, but from a friend of a friend. He was a really solid player who landed on tough times (like lots of horses) and just needed a stake to get back on his feet. We staked him for $3.40 10 man SNGs on stars. The deal included all his rakeback and promotions. I am pretty sure this is right when Battle of Planets (a Stars SNG promotion) started, and our new horse was killing the games. He was making decent money at the tables, but most of the profit we made off him was from the BoP leaderboard. From this one micro horse, we got a small roll going of around $3000-$5000, and just kept building up small from there.
More questions are answered here:
http://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/r...421-dlugozima/
Giving an insight into the staking world seems like it would be an interesting thread. I will basically just share the daily/weekly problems that are involved in staking. I am unsure if i want to share exact profit figures atm, but will give a running total of the amount of make-up the stable has.
I am also doing this thread to help with some personal goals of my own. I am 26 and have been overweight my whole life. I played football (hand-egg for you euros) for my whole life. It was always encouraged to be bigger at the position i played (OG). After i gave up the sport as a sophmore in college (injuries), i just kept eating the same way i always did. This was problematic because i wasnt getting 10% of the exercise i had been previously. My peak weight was 350, and i currently weigh around 305. I have lost 40lbs since moving down to Cabo to re-open my stars account. I was down to 295 pre-holidays, but kinda fell into the trap of visiting family during holidays and eating all the delicious foods.
I also went to the doctor, and she said i had pretty bad cholesterol levels for a kid my age. I am going back in 4 months, so hope to have some progress in this category.
I will hopefully be updating this thread every few days. I am hoping to walk around the mountain i live on 5 days a week, and avg about 15 miles a week. Think this is a good start for me, and at some point i hope to turn it into running 15 miles a week.
I guess thats it. Hopefully this thread helps me on my way to getting healthy/making some money staking
Last edited by Alobar; 01-22-2012 at 11:50 AM.