I think the assumption that people are putting all their eggs in 1 basket is not a good one. At least the smart people would start to make arrangements after not hearing back after 7 days or something

would definitely agree with this

True Stuff

What if I put up a thread like Marvin? What if more people followed suit and Joe Everyinvestor had a thread up asking players to message them privately. It would clutter the marketplace with worthless threads and deter new users from coming to the marketplace (I believe).

Several people pouring heaps of money into the marketplace competing for who can pay enough markup to get the players they want doesn't exactly seem like a reason that players would stop visiting the marketplace

It won't but a player coming here and sending in packages to multiple investors to get turned every time certainly doesn't help. I would be interested in knowing the % of pkgs Marvin even submitted a bid for.

Of course freerolling is bad.

If I am playing a noon event on a 30% freeroll, and it's 8pm and I already sold for the late event on a 30% freeroll, and I have half my stack left, then I am incentivized to punt off my stack and jump in the later event.

Not to mention overall, you're incentivized to play suboptimally aggressive and run up stacks or punt them off in the early levels of almost every event.

It becomes much less bad when they're selling for a standalone event and/or a really big event that they are definitely going to be playing to the best of their capability.

Personally I think most ethical questions come down to the golden rule, in the case of the marketplace its clearly unethical to sell a package that you would not be comfortable buying. The hardest thing to decipher IMO is whether people are delusional, and overestimating their roi by a huge margin, or if they are trying to sell a package that is most profitable for themselves. Either way its not defensible, it may not be outright scamming but its very close because you are convincing investors to bet on you at prices that they can't possibly be winning at. Given that many people who are selling their action are doing so because they can't afford the buy in or do not want to take on the variance of a large buyin, selling at large markup is very ethically questionable, particularly because I expect a number of people selling these packages are entirely aware of how good a deal they are getting which is why they are doing it.

Now I support the free market, but I think part of the free market is having informed buyers protecting the fishy investors and calling out people when they are selling ludicrous package, because otherwise unscrupulous sellers can take advantage of everyone if the stealthmunks of the world don't call them out.

A package can be a good investment even if a player only has a small percentage of himself. In fact, it would behoove some players to take much, much smaller pieces of themselves than they think they should. A good example of this is the main event, where depending on your net worth, income level, and whether or not you list yourself as a poker pro on your taxes, you could actually lose money by taking too large of a piece of yourself even if your expected ROI is 50% or greater after factoring in the true costs of playing the event (rake, marginal tax rates, variance/risk).

One problem with investing in someone who has such a small a small equity share is they have less incentive to play correctly when cEV and $EV diverge (Carlos Mortensen theorem). In a tournament where media exposure could prove lucrative (especially in the event of a win) there's even less incentive to adhere to ICM.

Also, a player who is completely freerolling has an infinite ROI even if they are a losing player, so they may have less incentive to play correctly when they get short stacked early on or whatever.

Not necessarily.


As far as the 10K HU thing goes, I think the biggest issue is a misunderstanding and misapplication of markup. The Redgrape guy who got reamed for selling to the HU at 1.25 even said he had no idea what markup to charge and he was just copying Primordial's markup figure. Since quantifying an edge is so hard - especially in live tournaments where results and expectation will never converge - we have to rely on maximum likelihood estimations. Sometimes people are going to be way off base.

Ya i guess generally I assumed that this happens more frequently in big buyin, one off events that people would feel really uncomfortable putting 5k+ into and they would have enough financial gain incentive to play as close to optimally in all standard spots, maybe a tiny bit more gamble in slightly marginal spots, but definitely trying to avoid punts bc the incentive to cash/make $ for investors and receive future backing plus 30% of profit has to be pretty lucrative

Not really. People are so stupidly focused on wins / cahses with no attention paid to entries, it's probably better to try and punt and run it up and get more cashes and wins but worse ROI

I posed this question in the Primo thread as well:

If a player's "true equilibrium" markup was 1.3, why is seen as such a crime/scam/etc for them to sell at 1.4 or 1.5, where they are receiving a higher benefit, but not a crime/scam/etc for them to sell at 1.2 or 1.1 where the buyer is taking advantage of them to an equal extent?

It can't just be "well that's what they offered", because they voluntarily agreed, but so did the people paying 1.4 or 1.5. So why are so many OK with the buyer getting an unfairly favorable deal, but not the seller?

If your true expectation is 30%, then selling at 1.1 increases your expected growth and ROI and reduces your expected value.

For example, if you sell 70% of a 10k, you now have a 70% ROI on a 2.3k instead of a 30% ROI on a 10k, but your EV has gone down from 3k to 1.6k.

If you have a billion dollars, obviously you prefer to pay 10k with 30% ROI to paying 2.3k with a 70% ROI. If you have 200k, you prefer the latter.

Also, in this example, the player is risking 2.3k with an expected gain of 1.6k, and the buyer is risking 7.7k with an expected gain of 1.4k so it's pretty lol to say that a buyer is "taking advantage" of the seller.

It seems pretty obvious that reducing more than 3/4 of your risk at the cost of less than half of your upside is going to be a great deal for a lot of sellers.

Selling at a number between zero and expectation benefits both parties. Selling at a number above true expectation obviously ****s one party.

Thanks for the well-reasoned response.

Also, when seller sells at 1.1 both parties still make a profit from the tournament in the long run. Seller might give up a part of his EV in return for less variance, and hence less risk of ruin for him.

ok since this seems to be the thread where we talk about selling live action and ethics and stuff, am I right to be kinda pissed off at this? http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18.../#post38747568

Basically dude sells action to a package, mostly 1k's with a few 1.5k's thrown in and one $500 VDS. Then last minute yesterday decides he's gonna do a substitute where he plays the 1.5k 6m today and kills 2 1k's and adds in another $500 VDS. I'm really not ok with this since as far as I know he doesn't really play 6m and generally 6m tourneys are slightly tougher anyway and the 1.5k is gonna be tougher than the average 1k. It just seems super unethical to me to do something like that, I'm justified in being kinda pissed right? Oh also it starts in an hour and I just found out lol.

Yes you should request a refund for your 1ks and ask for no action in the 6max.

Cliff Notes: A: I have 35+% of my own action this summer. B: I think there is more play in a 1.5k 6-Max then there is in a 1k FR WSOP. C: I was also adding a VDS $500 with a ton of value. D: 1.5k 6m might be "Slightly" tougher, but I am still +EV vs a 1.5k 6m field on the first weekend of WSOP.

And I snap said I am not playing for package, because I would never do something my investors wouldn't want..

I did assume however that people who Invest hundreds/thousands of dollars for me to play 1ks and 1.5ks at the WSOP would believe in my skill set enough to agree with my assumption that playing the 1.5k is +EV for us all.

How about in the future you just don't try to change what you've sold at the last minute. I don't really care about the justifications; it just looks bad. Thanks.

Can't stand when people chime in with "nice words". We get it the guy is your friend. If someone requests references from well respected people that is different, But some random person says he's a great player and he'd buy if he wasn't busto or whatever excuse is dumb.

In other words:

#YourMoneyWhereYourMouthIs