Very good point. I agree is an opinion so if someone is -EV or u feel overselling MU or something is ok to speak up IMO

+1

True but they are going to be extra nice and won't say the leaks or other things cuz they are friends. Doesn't mean a lot

Neither will randoms.

The reason cash isn't typically sold at MU is it's super hard to define, especially since most cash game shots are bumhunting a particular fish. fwiw I've actually paid MU buying cash action but it was contingent on at least 100 hands being played with the fish still there. But I agree that most cash action is sold at face value even though edges are much easier to define and variance much lower. Also though most 50nl regs wouldn't be +ev in a 5knl game even with a huge fish. The online pro with a $50 abi would probably be super +ev in just about every 1k/1500 wsop event as well as the ME and some of the 1k-5k circuit/ept/lapt/whatever series events as well right? Yet I'm not sure how many $50 abi online mtt regs can afford to routinely back themselves in 1k-5k mtts. Whereas if you're a 1knl cash reg and see a whale at 5knl you can definitely afford to take the shot and if you lose a buy-in or two it's not the end of the world. If a $50 abi online mtt reg didn't cash in 10 1k mtts in a row and then bricked the ME (super standard for mtts, I'm assuming similar in terms of probability as the 2 bi loss at 5knl cash)? This probably hurts him a lot more.

I'm not really sure where I stand on people criticizing MU. I've definitely seen people buying packages where some like $30 bi online mtt crusher was selling at 1.5:1 to the ME and people were buying it super-fast and I think that's ******ed but I generally just felt it wasn't worth posting. I figure just for purely selfish reasons I don't gain from posting anything I could only lose. The one thing I do think is kinda iffy is when people go in their friends thread and talk about how great a value it is but then they don't buy any of it. It's ok to vouch for a person's credibility without buying any, but when you say it's a great value and then don't buy any it kinda makes me wonder...

Tbh this thread can go on forever

Heaters, luckboxing big score both live and online can easily manipulate stats, if a guy is such a boss why does he even need to sell action in the first place? It's part of the tournament variance beast. Not sure it's necessary to break down every variable. Buyers in general for the most part the past couple years haven't made any super -ev buys. It's buy at your own risk doing business in the mp you live and learn

Selling action and getting staked are virtually identical so getting staked for cash is the same as selling action at markup.

**** bob, people who can't close are pussies

He's not talking about getting staked for cash games, he's talking about selling action for cash games. For example I'm a msnl reg and see a really good 10knl game but I'm not even close to rolled for 10knl. I sell 70% of myself and now to me it's 3knl. This very rarely goes for MU and happens a lot when fish play big cash games and like the 10knl that runs might be softer than the average 1knl game.

Investors in cash game action at markup could easily generate a distribution given winrate and standard deviation.

You could do the same for tournaments, but the fact is the cash game guy is going to have a much better estimate of his edge than the tourney guy who is purely speculating (at least for live tournies where no one has enough of a sample). So it strikes me as a bit off that cash game action is almost universally sold at face whereas tournament action flies off the shelves at obscene markups on the regular here.

So youre saying one of the two is mispriced, and youre completely sure its mtts?

meh the thing is most cash game action is sold to friends at somewhat short notice and in games you don't actually know your exact winrate/distribution because it's usually a shot-take. If you're not going to get a long-term stake, generally the only reason to play higher is if it's softer than the lower games, which doesn't happen very often. In this case there's usually a pretty quick time-frame and the buyers have all the leverage. Live mtt schedules however are scheduled at least months in advance and are predictably softer than other lower-stakes games that run regularly online.

I agree with you that generally it doesn't make sense that mtt action gets marked up and cash by and large doesn't, but I do think the one that's out of whack is cash and I've explained why I think. I know you play hsnl not sure which sites you play but Merge ran some 10knl games around one particular whale around a year ago. A skype group I was in that consisted of mostly 200-1knl regs was literally snap-buying anyone's action who got a seat in one of those games and wanted to sell, and everyone sold at face value. I never played but I took some action and I feel like generally buying cash game action at face value from a winning player is pretty much printing money.

I also believe that generally mtt markups are too high, but obviously will never be able to prove that and people keep buying so it's possible I'm wrong.

I don't get how this is a problem at all. Ensuring that every package is mutually beneficial, will kill the marketplace completely. If smart investors actually divulged their opinions on packages, selling and buying would come to a standstill.

It's weird to me that their is a moral dilemma regarding players selling packages at market price, and yet most of our jobs are to profit off of peoples entertainment, which often has a false sense of potential profit attached to it. Poker players provide no actual benefit to society except potentially recycling shady money back into the system, and yet the argument being made is that people are losing EV because they don't know better, and thats not fair.

I realize that this is very much a culturally charged, collectivist vs individualist issue, and with that, it will carry strong opinions from various regions around the world. To me however, that whole line of logic doesn't fly.

Agree with most of the above.

Not all utility is created equal.

It's incredibly naive to assume that every buyer in this marketplace is only buying because he believes the piece is +$EV.

I'll speak for myself and say I've bought many pieces in this marketplace (back before BF) from members (that were close to zero scam risk) that I was pretty sure were -$EV because the utility I received from sweating/rooting more than covered the loss in my judgment.

Hell there is a thread in MTTc where smart dudes are lining up around the block to get action down in a horrible spot because it provides an opportunity for a fun sweat.

People don't mind paying for a sweat, and it certainly doesn't make them a misinformed buyer.

There are quite a few reasons players feel like to sell action. Tournament variance does not just make most players under bankroll, it takes a sgnificant part of EV away from those players who live under a graduated tax system. In fact, it is quite possible for investors to have +ev while players do not actually lose ev for a deal just for tax reason. (in general, players selling action are willing to give up ev, hence investors can have bigger ev if both sides know what they are doing)

It's easier to define an actual winrate overall in cash games but harder to define since the fish will leave after anywhere between 1 to infinite hands (obviously I don't mean this literally), and charging a MU of say 0.01bb for example per hand seems kinda silly, although certainly could be done and would be reasonable too. Also it's a bit more line up and seat dependant, whereas the EV ROI of the warm up in any given week is close enough to the same.
Tournies it's harder to know a true exact winrate, but for example almost everyone would agree that a very good player will have at least 50%, but almost definitely significantly more ROI in the Sunday Million in which case a MU of 1.25 or even a bit higher seems way more than reasonable since there is room to profit, and as mentioned earlier in the thread some people just want to sweat in the first place.

Okay so now we agree that people "just wanting a sweat" is driving the price up for tournaments.

and

Markup for cash game action would be perfectly justifiable. Can we please add a subforum for selling pieces of cash games?


Fwiw, I think the status quo is over-priced tourney action and under-priced cash action.

People already do sell cash games in the online shares section. Problem is it rarely makes sense, because games are almost never softer at higher stakes. Having 100% of yourself in soft smaller games > having 50% in tougher big ones.

I would just like to point out why there is relatively no cash game action--backing up my point that when things become more clearly defined in terms of edge, less and less buying and selling will take place.

This is not true at all. Every single time a NL10k to NL40k 6max game runs on Stars, it is softer than an average NL1k game. The lineup is a huge fish and a mix of people ranging from bad bumhunter regs to the best regs.

and yet they don't sell. . . .

Many of them do.

I think part of the reason that cash game package sales are not pitched with markup attached is because the seller is already fortunate to have the faith of investors who may not be able to track the games they are playing. Clearly when someone sells for online or live MTTs, the investors should be able to track their progress, but with live cash games this is not the case. I have sold action on here for cash games and even though I generally expect to have a massive edge in the games I am selling for, I do not feel it would be right to ask for markup based on the reasons I have given. Perhaps after a long period of playing and winning in the games, it may then seem fair to attach a premium to the shares.

I'm mostly talking about online anyway wrt cash game action, where it is easily trackable (have player forward hand history file from site directly to you).

@two SHAE, I don't understand why it would bother you if cash game stakes were sold undervalue. You could then just buy them all yourself right?

I would be fine having a staking section for cash games. The only difference is I would tighter trustworthiness requirements. I don't know how easy it is to verify hh's on other sites

There was a discussion about markups in HSNL and I made a post there which I'm cross-posting here. Basically to keep markups in check I think something should be done to create a more efficient market and prevent people attempting to abuse the marketplace too much.

Hey, I've tried a few times to short players/packages but 2+2 doesn't allow it(ie say someone was selling for WSOP events at 1.3, I could offer to sell pieces of them at 1.25). Its pretty stupid for 2+2 to prevent this since demand only allows the price to be driven up and a player's scarcity(ie they are the ONLY one allowed to sell) prevents it from being driven down and thus the market becomes inefficient.

Fortunately(for the market's efficiency) it has been drying up recently and as a result most of the worst value packages haven't been selling but at the same time allowing people to short packages would make this process more efficient. Obviously there are issues regarding people not paying up, but similar to how you'd want to evaluate a horse's trustworthiness you must do the same for someone offering to short a player.

Side note: I found this thread by sorting the marketplace from most responses to least. Almost every popular thread is a result of someone scamming people

I think this is:
1) Good for buyers- rates will be better
2) Good for sellers at fair markups- people will quickly pass over threads where OP sells at 1.3, then rando offers at 1.25, then other rando offers 1.2 etc and more of the marketplace's money will go to them
3) Good for haters- rather than just shouting markups are too high and being annoyed that only the horse "profits" off this markup, now you can too
4) Good for tournament fields(in theory)- keeping a bunch of meh regs who would have been breaking even or slightly better while trying to sell at 1.3 out of the fields is good for both pros and fish. In practice maybe some of the people successfully selling are so outrageously bad that they actually make the fields softer

And the only people this is bad for are people selling at unreasonably high markups