I'm really just echoing the consensus, but it seems like it should be 20%. Galen handled this really poorly, but he did handle it before he began playing in the tournament. Everyone seems to agree with that, and no one seems to think he was trying to cheat the buyer.

Also, offering some sort of freeroll is probably not the way to make this up to the buyer, unless the buyer is the one that suggested it. If he feels you cheated him out of 30k, offering him 1/100 of that in a freeroll is not going to heal any wounds. That said, I don't know what the best thing to do would be.

This isn't really a fair comparison, IMO. There's a pretty obvious difference between reducing someone's financial burden and increasing their financial burden.

That said, if the buyer wants to unilaterally reduce his share, I think he should be free to do it, even last second, as long as he alerts the player before he starts playing. It might cause some hostility, as this seems to have, but it seems like it should be allowable.

It's more important for the buyer to directly contact the seller before the tournament though, as the player might not play a certain tournament if he's no longer got x% sold. I can't imagine a situation where a buyer was willing to take x% but is unwilling to instead take x-n%, unless it's out of spite.

Not to derail, but I was actually going to ask about this topic. Is it ethical to sell to some buyers at different markup than others on the same package? If so, should it be disclosed to the other buyers that someone is paying lower markup than them? I think we need clearly defined marketplace guidelines stickied on every marketplace forum to answer questions like this and the one in the OP as although there are precedents for many questionable scenarios that come up, that doesn't mean they are fair. If a group of big buyers and big sellers could come together and come to consensus on rules that work for both groups I think that would really help the marketplace.

Isn't both parties liabilities only locked in upon starting the event in question? Sorry if i'm a noob, but i always thought that the seller has the right to amend any and all %'s bought right up until the start of the event at which case it is booked.

The problem in question is that the selling was initiated off of the marketplace, thus potentially foregoing the standards and customs set here.

Essentially a standard needs to be set where by any action which involves the mp (any staking/bap threads) shares a common set of predetermined rules agreed upon by all who place action here, unless explicitly stated by the Seller. Obviously 2+2 arn't going to intervene here but it doesn't mean there cannot be a code of conduct agreed by all who partake in staking.

I assumed that the current status quo was that it is the backers responsibility to determine what % of the player he has bought up once the package has started, which includes checking the marketplace for any updates. But i may be way off here, i don't know. I would say its a sticky situation, but i think 20% is right.

I don't really see what harm it is or how it is "unethical" for buyers to negotiate a lower markup behind the scenes, especially if they're buying a big chunk of the package. If I negotiate a lower markup for a 30% piece I don't see how it makes sense for the seller to be obligated to lower the markup for other people who already bought 1% pieces, or even why it is anyone's business what markup I paid for my piece.

However if the seller lowers the markup of the entire package publicly then I do think they're obligated to give people who already bought a piece the lower markup, but I think that's obvious.

If Gallen had trouble selling his action this would've never happened. He would make sure everybody confirmed their shares, and the slightest change had be notified to investors. Since he has a "waiting list", lack of attention for details takes place, and I believe this is a standard trend in the business.

I've been selling action for 3 years by now (just recently started on 2+2 tho), and when packages were hard to sell, I used to quote every single post from investors, making sure they knew how much I appreciated the trust they'd deposited in me. When 15-20K packages started to sell in a matter of hours, I started to post "SOLD OUT" at the end of the threads, and move on. I can only imagine how this works with a player of Gallen's magnitude.

This thread should be a wake up call for many horses out there, who feel investors should feel honored for having part of our action, when in reality is the other way around: We should feel honored that people we barely know decides to deposit their trust on us, giving us, in most cases without a single piece of paper to prove it, amounts of money that most people we know don't make in a year.

On the issue at hand, my vote would go for an agreement that allows both parts to feel good enough with each other that they can continue to do business together. It's obvious Gallen didn't try to angle anybody, as well as it's clear that he skipped a step when he changed percentages.

Awesome post. I'm gonna state the obvious. 2p2 functions because of poker players. Buyers are allowed into the community only because it benefits the players. Yeah the marketplace has rules to protect buyers and keep dishonest people out (not implying GB is dishonest), but in essence these rules are just there so the marketplace feels like a safe place for the buyer so the player (99.99% of the 2p2 community) can get what they want. Buyers are basically 2nd class citizens. GB u went outside the MP channels, into the world where a hand shake and a deal rules apply, where the rules are not clearly defined and not heavily weighted in your favor. You want all the perks, take the time to follow MP protocol, and reap the rewards. You didn't. You don't get all the privledges.

2p2 is biased towards the player for all the reasons Ezra and I stated, crisp would probably be crucified imo.

Btw I'm a player and occasional seller and am on the fence because I don't know what rules/precedents to apply.

the ruling here has to be 20%

I think most people seem to agree the ruling should be 20% even though Galen handled the situation incorrectly because this kind of practice has been somewhat prevalent lately in the MP (especially with confirmed ballers as andres pointed out), his action seemed acceptable. At this point I think the thread is about how the marketplace can be improved to keep situations like this from happening in the future...someone want to start writing a sticky?

I stopped at page 4 but hadn't seen it brought up much. You keep alluding to how you were so inconvenienced to be frantically attempting to sell action at the last minute(day before), posting from your phone, too much trouble to PM investors, etc. All of this brought upon by yourself.

This isn't a 100$ mtt on Stars you are selling action to; it's a 25k mtt with 1mil+ payout. One would think you would take the 10-20minutes to either contact crisp via text, phone call, PM so that this stuff doesn't happen. The structure is ridic deep, it's not like you are going to miss anything by sitting out 1/2 a level if necessary in order to get your business situated.

Just seems you should be a little more complete in the way you do business, especially when selling action to this huge a tourney.

Galen for whatever its worth , talk to crisp and just work it out..crisp is a big buyer in this market place and is a huge asset to this entire community as are you for giving all of us an opportunity to buy your action however/ just find some middle ground with crisp please end this in a timely mannor please. Best of luck

pretty clear 20% but the whole vivek situation is definitely not ok. galen seems like a bright guy so i don't know how he'd think that was kosher. anyone could see this leading to a whole can of worms if he made the money let alone 600k.

if i was an arbitrator i'd say something like 20% + a free 10 ball in a few wsop events. something like a markupless piece of the 10k plh where crisp pays more out of pocket doesn't seem fair to me.

also, i pretty much always agree with yellowsub and funkimunki in these marketplace debates and think they should be up there for consideration if a panel is ever formed.

I agree it shouldn't be an issue, especially since I did it on my current package, I just think these are the kinds of things that need to be laid out in a sticky since I could see people being upset that they paid higher markup than someone else on the same package.

I am expressing my fund's official position on the issue.

Galen has contacted me via pm on 2p2. We agreed on 25% which was confirmed by him.
We didn’t have any personal contacts after that.
There was no mention that a subsequent confirmation in a thread would be posted.

We strongly believe that the standard practice of changing the deal unilaterally doesn’t apply here as we consider this to be a live deal, made through a pm.
And thus changes are only possible with both sides mutually agreeing to them.
I want to state that you won’t see us making changes unilaterally as we think such business practices are unacceptable.

ICFund has investments in numerous deals in the market, we obviously cant follow every new development in threads, as contrary to the common belief here, crisp is the only person who monitors 2p2 for the fund and there is no team watching the market.

We have no doubts that Galen wasn’t angleshooting but we do feel that we didn’t do anything wrong whereas he handled it incorrectly. Taking this into account, we find it strange that Galen finds it possible to express his position in an aggressive way. I can post some of the pms if I have his permission .

We are definitely ready to talk everything over and find a compromise fair to both parties here.

My opinion is obviously worth nothing but I agree with Todd Terry.

Is there some sort of accepted standard of sellers being able to cancel booked action without agreement from the buyer? If there is, can buyers do the same?

It would seem that the answer to the above question is very important in deciding if Galen is/was able to reduce the share or not. (And therefore whether he owes the extra 5%).

Yes, there is a clearly established precident. A lot of people are arguing about how things should be, but it's pretty obvious to everyone who operates in the MP how things ARE right now. And how things are is that sellers have the ability to change action up until the tournament, and buyers who have already confirmed or paid do not (although buyers 'reserve' and then 'unreserve' all the time, that's viewed differently).

Whether or not that's how things should be, I don't know, but in this specific instance where I very clearly intended for the action to be 20% to the point where I don't even think anyone is arguing against that anymore, and where I very clearly would've only gotten 20% had I busted, I concur with the majority of people in this thread that have said that it's clearly 20% booked here.

See:

and


Also, I could dig up a bunch of examples myself.




The 5% was clearly moved before the tournament, the question now is whether or not I should have done that. In doing so, I took +EV equity away from him and gave it to someone else, and if I was in the wrong then I should compensate him for that equity.

This is where more people are debating, and I sent crisp a PM offering to more than cover the equity that I took from him (which I was technically within my rights to do) by giving him more than that in freerolls during WSOP.

Hopefully he accepts that and can move on.

Ok, well sounds like that's the case then, and anyway nice score!

I think big-time investors should probably come together to concretize some marketplace rules for the future.

I also think this is closer than it appears and that we do not have every pm sent. I would think if the action was booked through pm it should be changed and confirmed through pm. If I do book the action as either a buyer or seller I would consider that an agreement if confirmed and not changed unless the same process was used to unbook or change action. Not sure what is fair as it seems there was no intent to angle shoot rather poor communication but some settlement in the middle seems most fair to me.

Crisp, when did first read the confirmation thread Galen posted, where he claimed you only had 20%?

Lawyer in me talking as well. I think this thread is a great example of how to handle things as a seller and the problems that face buyers. I'm mainly a seller but:

1) I agree the fact that Galen would have never accepted more than 20% if he busted is very important. But another overlooked issue is whether crisp (or any buyer) would have accepted the investment at all if Galen had sent a PM amending the action.

When I sell action to a buyer, I'm very careful not to change their shares around because they may get offended (rightfully so) and just cancel the entire action. This would leave me unable to play the tournament.

Galen assumes, probably correctly, that crisp would have been fine with taking 20% when he is crushing everything instead of 25%. But for other sellers, it's not as clear-cut. I think there's a real chance that some large funds that have a lot of leverage would be upset at a seller revoking. They may withdraw the entire purchase in those cases. I.e horse tries to remove 15%, seller removes the remaining 50%. Horse cannot play.

Even here, crisp had some leverage because Galen would have been unable to play without the 20% right? In these cases, I think sellers can protect themselves by adding a generic message to their posts: "any modification of #shares or markup or %'s sold will revoke the entire action." This would allow sellers to continue the agreement with the really +ev horses (who they still don't want to cancel with).

2) But I think Galen handled this almost the best way possible. The reasoning he gave for removing crisp was legitimate and did not show any bias or discrimination against crisp. After all, if you were a large fund and your horse preferred other investors over you, and cut your shares out because they came calling, wouldn't you be upset and stop doing business with them? I would consider it.

But Galen made clear the reasons for removing crisp's action over others (sold to last, did not receive payment yet so easiest to modify). And he was very clear about it.

* This doesn't really address the concept of sellers revoking action to resell at a higher MU but I think that's a pretty dirty thing to do and would result in breach outside of the poker world. It's really difficult to apply contract law to the MP though and probably not the best thing to do anyways.

I find all the people saying 20% here mind-boggling. If I have private contact(pm, in person, phone, text, etc) agreeing to a deal and someone changed that deal through a public medium which I would have no reason to look at, my reaction would be "yeh right"
IMO the obligation is clearly on the seller here, to contact the buyer personally thru whatever medium necessary. If I had to pick 20 or 25 it would be 25 AINEC. I do think a compromise is reasonable and if I was the buyer I would do that to make it go away as clearly there was no bad intent.

3:40

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cughjrD3yso

Crisp n the icfund would of paid 25% no doubt
They have lived up to every res they made thus
Far so attacking their mp credibility really isn't the issue

ive bought %s in here before and never realized that this bs is standard marketplace practice. Is it considered kosher in these scenarios?

tournament has an overlay...im reducing your %

my starting table is all Italians...

im feeling super focused this morning...

someone offered higher markup...

a guy i like more than you wants a piece...

Personally I think this is 25%, and I don't even think it's that close. The reason I say this is because you PM'ed crisp, asking him if he wanted to buy action, and you guys agreed to 25%, entirely through private messages. You booked it through private messages, yet you changed it in the marketplace thread, which is your mistake. I know you are a good guy Galen and I don't think you are angle shooting in the slightest. With that said, you did make a mistake, and it is unfair to punish crisp for this.