whats unethical is if someone thinks they have a 20% roi in a tournament and tries to sell at 1.5:1 because of their reputation and the naivety of buyers. that means they are offering people a deal they think is losing. its just screwing people out of money that dont know any better and want to buy a piece of a great player. sure its on the investors to make good/bad buys, but thats not at all ethically ok to knowingly offer a bad product.

thats clearly not what galen did at all. galen simply overestimated edge and didnt need to sell so he sold at a premium he felt was both high enough to be worth his while if he didnt have his own action and +EV to investors which is completely fine in my book. in no way was he unethical.

I'd like to preface this post by saying that I'm hardly "friends" with Galen -- I think I talked to him once in San Remo when we were both drunk. And even if we were close friends, I'd like to believe I'd retain my objectivity.

I've followed this thread from the beginning, and I don't think Galen has done anything unethical. He doesn't shy away from his online results. He states upfront that he is relatively new to poker.

The crux of the debate seems to be whether Galen knowingly charged higher markup than his ROI. I tend to think not. He has a very high opinion of himself, which is going to rub some people the wrong way. But in his mind, he is one of the very best tournament players in the world, and he has some logic (not just his ego) to back that up. As long as his intentions are good and he isn't omitting any information, then he shouldn't be chastised for the markup he's charging.

for the record i don't think galen is an unethical person for posting this package for the reasons daut gave, i also don't know enough about galen to make that judgement

however, the package itself is certainly unethical and i'd be really surprised if none of galen's peers told him this was nuts. i had this thread sent to me by 5+ people between being posted and selling out so i'm not the only person who thinks this is all crazy and part of an overall trend of people in general asking for insane markup

I can't believe some of the stuff I've read ITT. I barely know Galen, but you guys can't just go throwing around the word "unethical" because you don't believe he's selling at a fair price (This is coming from a guy that a lot of 2p2'ers called a "scammer" for selling at 1.3MU in Epic). I would guess that most of the people that sell on here are selling action because they can't afford to play in all the tourneys themselves. It sounds like Galen (& I) can afford to and just wants to sell to reduce his variance. Some people may certainly see the value in a package like that and want to buy his action.
It's a marketplace where people can choose to buy or sell whatever they would like with their own money. Now you can certainly shake your heads all you want when you think some deals are a joke, but to call it unethical is just not right. More power to you Galen and don't listen to the MU Police.

not sure if you were replying to me or fatalerror but if its to me you need to go back and read my posts in more detail. i clearly said knowingly selling for higher than your ROI is unethical. aggressive negotiating based on a lack of need while thinking you are offering a profitable deal to buyers is in no way unethical.



and i dont like calling people out, but not surprising to see this response from the joe when he said this:


I dont know where people have this misconception about how big their ROI is or fail to accurately calculate them.

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=42082

Joe has 3.8million in lifetime cashes. having close to a 700% return implies he has roughly 450k in buyins lifetime. given he has played 8 years as a pro and has 90 lifetime cashes, id estimate hes played ~600 tournaments and guessing his average buyin is roughly 4k means his lifetime ROI would be is 1.4/2.4 ~60%

im not making fun of joe or anything, hes a great player and 60% is nothing to scoff at thats a fantastic ROI. but miscalculating it by that big of a magnitude is troubling to me and should be to everyone.



Right now the marketplace is an insane seller's market. The markup that packages are being sold at to naive buyers are completely overpriced and dont allow experienced buyers to make profitable guys because of the market value due to the bad buyers. its just insane. Many packages are unprofitable and the ones that are often have the vast majority of profit going towards the seller and very little going to the buyer.

suppose someone has a 75% roi and attempts to sell at 1.7. yes this is a +EV buy. but the ROI of the buyer is 1.75/1.7 = 2.9% Given how high variance it is and that everyone has finite bankrolls this is a pretty awful buy. Suppose the player sells half his action to one buyer. this would mean that the buyer puts up 85% of the buyin for 50% of the money and the seller puts up 15% of the buyin for 50% of the money. so if the seller cashes for 1.75x (his ROI), the seller put up .15 to receive .875, and the buyer puts up .85 to receive .875. its ludicrous to me that the seller can have nearly a 500% ROI on his money while the buyer is seeing 3%


so the problem is basically 2 fold
a) your ROI isnt as high as you think
b) the ROI being slightly higher than the markup makes it a huge variance coinflip gamble for the buyer


if you guys are content to let the marketplace become a bunch of overpriced bad buys then the players are going to get all the money in the end. that is not good for the future of the staking business. many buyers will not be able to continue because they are losing money in these buys. a more fair distribution of wealth is necessary for the balance of the staking business to continue to succeed.

First of all I think it's pretty ****ed up you guys are having this discussion in Galen's thread. With that being said I'd like to point out why this specific portion of your argument is invalid (the rest of your argument is perfectly fine and logical), this was also pointed out by another poster in the HSNL censored thread.

Say a player with a 300% ROI in a tournament is given a 0.1% freeroll, the buyer is getting an ROI of just under 300% while the player's ROI is infinite. The nature of selling at markup dictates that the player's ROI will be significantly higher than the seller regardless of the price especially when selling a large portion of their action, this does not however necessarily make it a "bad" buy (feel free to define this for yourself, I have my own opinions on this but don't feel like expressing it here is appropriate). In fact in this theoretical situation the buyer is getting an exceptionally "good" buy.

Having said all of this, I actually believe it is appropriate that the player's ROI should be higher than the buyer with respect to risk/return. The buyer is merely putting their money to work in what they believe is a +EV risk. Often the reason for the player to sell a significant portion of their action is to offset the sunk cost of travel and accommodation which the buyer of course has no related expense. I am NOT arguing that the buyer is or should be obligated to cover any of this, nor am I arguing that markup should be priced to reflect the sunk costs of travel/accommodation. Markup should be priced strictly based on the player's expected return in a tournament, I am merely providing a justification for why a player's ROI should be higher than an investors.

if it were at all possible this was a profitable buy i would have kept my mouth shut and not said anything because then its not a case of anyone getting screwed, just someone aggressively negotiating and succeeding. but this is a clear unprofitable buy. not gonna let people get hustled because they are not as knowledgable about ROI and markup.


sure the player is putting in the work, but the buyer is often incurring more risk. the player can stiff him whereas he cannot stiff the player. the player also might be playing for a freeroll and is putting up no money while the buyers are all risking something.

i dont feel too strongly about either side. there are arguments for the player getting a bigger piece of the pie than is "fair" but arguments for the buyer as well. this will always come down to personal preferences/beliefs.


but at what point does it become an unfair piece of the pie for either side? if someone has a 33% roi and sells at 1.25 i think thats completely fair, but i dont think 1.3 is. same as i think 1.1 for 33% roi is ok but not 1.05.

its hard to define this exactly and will end up coming down to peoples personal preferences on buying/selling but how it is now is absurd and way too unbalanced.

I understand your POV but I don't believe it is appropriate in this thread. Neither you nor I believe Galen is intentionally selling above what he thinks is fair is so let the market decide whether or not it sells.

As an aside, I have a friend that receives a very favorable staking arrangement with a wealthy friend of his who happens to be a very successful businessman. He receives a 65/35 cut with stakeback on a per series basis in the backer's favor, the backer also pays for expenses (travel, accommodation and most of his food). When he was first offered this arrangement he was younger and did not realize how poor of a deal it was to the backer, he later informed the backer that the cut was too favorable for him to be profitable. The backer's reply was that he wasn't too concerned about the profitability of it, he wanted to help him out with a nice deal and get a sweat once in a while and their deal continues to this day.

Would you consider this unethical? I think one thing you have not considered is the utility of a staking arrangement, for most the utility is purely financial but for others it is for entertainment much like recreational gambling. Is this inherently wrong? Is this "fair"?

This is what I chose not to discuss in my comments, while I have beliefs about what is a good price I think it is up to the buyer to decide what is a "good" price for themselves (I'm not going to use the word fair because I don't think it applies, see what I wrote above).

edit: In response to your comment about risk and that the buyer cannot stiff the player this is absolutely not true. The buyer can stiff a player by reserving a piece and cancelling last minute or by taking advantage of someone who has not done their homework and receives a pre-tax payout but never provides their tax information to the seller. Obviously the latter is easily avoided if the seller does their homework but this does happen to inexperienced sellers.

I think it'd be great if the mods could move this discussion to it's own thread.

This. Dunno who mods are but someone PM them.

+1 to hoodskier excellent post..

why shouldn't we have some of this discussion here? shouldn't there be some kind of public record when someone sells a package this outrageous? if daut didn't do this and bring attention to how insane this whole package is there would be a whole slew of people copying this whole sales pitch and i doubt anyone who has been a major part of the staking world would seriously defend that as a good or sustainable thing.

one could also argue that for a package of this size and the level of markup the seller would be responsible for some due diligence. something like selling the 1500 ante up @1.75 which is by far the most turbo WSOP bracelet event structure in the last 7 years isn't ok when you have a different markup on every event

daut couldn't be more right about everything he has said in this thread and i appreciate him having the balls to finally say something in one of these threads. galen is kind of getting scapegoated for an out of control phenomenon but at the same time this is also the all time most insane mp thread in history. i do agree we need a thread for the general discussion now that this has sort of run it's course.

+1

I think that you are the only one making me out to be a scapegoat.

Also, I'll lol again at the whole "waaahhh you're ruining the marketplace" notion since I'm pretty sure I've bought more action of people this series than every single person in this thread that's disagreed with me, and the ratio of how much I buy to how much I sell is many multiples higher.

I already explained why some of the markups are incongruent with each other, and also how in any package a particular event might be a good or bad deal. George Lind sold to all the 10ks at 1.3. Him charging 1.3 for a 10k HU is several orders of magnitude more ludicrous than anything in my package, but that was fine since he has a big edge in the other events since it's an entire package. And yes, I bought shares of him too. There are a lot of reasons to price packages a certain way, and not all of it has to do with ROI.

Also, stop representing your OPINION like it's a fact. I have a different opinion, and buy and sell accordingly. Seeing as I have made a bunch of money buying shares of other players that I deem to be good value, made a bunch of money for people buying shares of me, and made a bunch of money playing on my own, it's at least within the realm of possibility that i'm on to something.

Some people ITT are ignoring the very real concept that some people may gain value from buying into a package in ways other than money. Some investors who don't play much poker, can't make it out to the WSOP or don't feel comfortable playing in a live setting might get a huge amount of entertainment value from their investment here. Galen doesn't owe it to the marketplace in any way to sell his package in a way that would be advantageous to a professional investor, and those who think he does are delusional.

Let's say someone buys an $1100 piece in this package and for the sake of argument they will only get back $1000 on average in cash return. Some people may get no entertainment or enjoyment from the sweat and thus buying in this example would net them -$100. How does that make it unethical for the seller to sell a package if there are other investors out there who may value the entertainment that sweating this package provides at $300 and thus are getting a great deal?

How is it unethical for the seller to represent himself in terms of what he believes his abilities at poker are? If someone is buying an $1100 piece in a poker player, it's safe to assume that if they care about that amount of money they'll put in the research to figure out if they are going to get value for their purchase, whether that value is financial or otherwise. Was it unethical for Facebook to offer their IPO at what they believed they could get for it and believed that their company was worth? People are so worried about this marketplace drying up or something, but if this is really as terrible of an investment as people ITT claim, don't you think most people who play poker for a living would avoid it, and the people who would buy it are getting their incomes from outside of poker and thus buying a -ev package isn't changing their investment budget in any terribly significant way?

Please explain your comments comparing jorj's 1.3 in 10Ks to yours.

How can you say that his charging 1.3 in a 10K is "orders of magnitude" crazier than what you are selling? In your mind, are you just THAT much better than Jorj? Jorj has been playing live mixed games for years, so I doubt it, but I'd like you to explain.

I personally don't mind your package--I think you were up front about the fact that it was an atypical vanity package, tailor made for your needs and not necessarily investor friendly (although you did claim that it was "one of the better values in MP" lol).

But it's clear your ego is just through the roof, out of sight, based on everything you say in every thread you post in.

You are plenty happy to take the time to point out that every other player in the field is a mindless drone with tons of leaks, while you are the model of a mistake free genius...But Daut came out with an off-the-cuff list of 75+ players who are capable of playing super high level poker, most of whom have been doing so longer than you, and he hardly probed the full depth of talent in a field like the 10k 6max, which won't be full of a too many -10% robot grinders.

It has definitely become overbearing the way you pimp your perceived talent in every thread and remind us in every post what high regard you have for yourself.

Also, just because you are willing to pay 2-1 for someone's action that doesn't mean it's not insane!

You seem to have this idea that if you are 3x as smart as the next player that your ROI will be 3x as high.

I have a lot of mixed feelings. I think Galen is an extremely good player. Yes he has a big ego but he is an outstanding NL holdem tourney player ( can't really comment on other games, though my understanding is, he is very good at single draw and PLO as well). Did I think his markup was a little ridiculous? Sure. Do I think hes scamming or doing anything wrong? No... I know he thinks this is a +EV buy for buyers and has backed it up with some outstanding results in a short period of time. I think its most likely a small negative investment for buyers but I think there are a lot more packages with worse ROIs.

Reread what I wrote, and you'll see that you have misunderstood what I was saying.

No, but it does mean that I have some different viewpoints and am clearly being logically consistent. There are a lot of things being debated here. The fact that I buy action the exact same way that I sell it and apply the same frameworks to both is an extremely compelling counter point to any argument that's made that I am being sinister or fraudulent. In fact, it renders those arguments essentially moot.

I did miss you that said "10K HU" but I still think you paint things with a broad brush. Maybe it's "similarly ludicrous" but it's hard to see as "orders of magnitude" more.

I don't think you're being sinister/fraudulent/unethical, I just think you are operating under some interesting, possibly unrealistic assumptions. Maybe those assumptions are actually closer to reality than what's commonly accepted, but either way I'm sure you can see why your perspective is controversial.

There are so many different things being argued here:

1. There is an argument about what types of ROIs that different players have in different types of events, dependent on skill, game type, structure, etc. I have a viewpoint that is contrary to most players, and I think that the range of ROIs is much broader than many of my peers do. (I think that the skill differential between the best players, good players and grinders is much, much wider than other people do).

This, to me, is the most interesting discussion and the one that is as-yet unresolved.


2. There is a contention, primarily by Staker and Fatal Error, that I am not in the category of players that I think that I'm in, which is unarguably wholly inappropriate to post in this thread, and in direct violation of MP rules. Also, it's an argument that I feel like I can completely crush, but one that's difficult to do so without making an absurdly long argument about why I think I can justify my high opinion of my play. I'm aware that people think my ego's out of control, so I've tried to avoid this discussion about me specifically as much as possible in this thread.


3. There is an argument about whether I am "knowingly scamming" people or being sinister. The direct counter argument to this is that I am logically consistent, and I apply the same frameworks to buying action as I do to selling. Most people have avoided saying this, which is reasonable, since it's such a stupid position to hold.


4. There is some contention that I am "ruining the marketplace." I think this doesn't hold water since the marketplace is, after all, a marketplace, and also I find it ironic that most of the people complaining that I am ruining it for buyers buy only a fraction as much action as I do. I also do think that people should be able to short others' packages, and that would make the marketplace much more efficient.


5. There is an argument that some of my markups are inconsistent - i.e. a markup of X in tournament X is incongruent with a markup of Y in tournament Y. Steve Harris was the first one to bring this up. My package DEFINITELY features incongruent markups, but my counter argument was that in this case it doesn't matter as much. My markups don't necessarily have to be congruent with edge over field - field size (and therefore variance) is important, actual dollars are important (i.e. I sell at a lower markup because I'm selling such a tiny share of some events), and overall package value is important. Also, if I were selling things individually, then indifference pricing would be much more relevant.

This point is why I addressed George's markups, where he just charged 1.3 across the board, and in some events (HU) I think that's defnitely -EV and in most of the others, absurdly +EV, and +EV overall as a package, so I don't sit there and bitch about the one event that is -EV because I understand that I am buying a PACKAGE, and a package I was really excited to be a part of at that. (and as an aside, I'm trashing his ROI in the HU, but I really have no idea what it is, since the structure suits him so well even if so much of the field is technically "better" at HU in the traditional sense... just goes to show how tough it is to talk about ROI and how tough it is to hold a position with such certainty as some itt have done)

This argument is definitely correct and valid, but it's relevance can be quite small, depending on a bunch of other variables.


In conclusion, I think argument #1 is interesting, and I still have some really strong viewpoints about that and it rubs me the wrong way when Daut presents his arguments as factual, but I am still very curious to hear the other side of the argument. I feel strongly that my viewpoint on ROI is closer to the truth, but I am definitely aware that I might be wrong, and am willing to listen to the other side.

Argument #2 and #3 are stupid and inappropriate, and #4 I think is just whiners gonna whine. #5 is interesting, since it's something I've talked about so much in the past, but like you said, the "vanity" (a good description, I think) nature of my package makes it less relevant here than to someone who really needs to / wants to sell a package.

i havent really seen anyone say #3. i think everyone (or maybe its just me) repeatedly says that #3 is not the case. perhaps some of the language i used implied it like "hustled" but it wasnt meant to imply anything sinister about you. we think very highly of your morals and know you are not doing anything sketchy here. i understand you are being consistent in your beliefs about markup and you have paid high markups and are selling what you think are profitable overall buys to others.


#4 you are just proving our point. people who believe that ROIs are super high and are willing to pay very high numbers like yourself and the people who bought from you are pushing the marketplace action to the point where guys like me dont want to step in and buy action so we dont. you have bought way more here because i buy from other places where I get reasonable numbers. the reason we arent buying here is because of the rates given being too high. And i think its going to be bad long term for everyone when variance starts playing out more.

but what do you mean by "players should be able to short others packages"?



as for the ROIs....i do agree that robot players are the worst in tournaments. I would rather have a guy like that at my table than a tough/unpredictable semi fish who wont let me get away with anything easily.

But when it comes to the 10k 6max, those guys mostly arent in the tourney. When i say the 250 good tourney regs, (I REALLY HATE TO NAME NAMES) but im talking about guys like barry greenstein, phil hellmuth, erik cajelais, negreanu, myself, etc etc. these are really really good ****ing poker players. they just arent in the 80 toughest players in an extremely tough field. most of them are in the 5% ROI range (which is no shame at all in one of the toughest tourneys of the year with probably 100 of the 120 best players in the world), some are slightly negative, and the robotic bad ones are probably in the -20 to -30% range. but overall as a group those 250 guys probably have on average a -10% roi i think.

theres just a very limited amount of buyins to go around in a tournament. I do think you might be right about the tippity top players having a higher ROI and that approaching an unbounded area compared to the rest. for example its possible people like sauce/ike/jungleman/isildur have 100% ROIs just because they are that nasty at NL and maybe ivey as well due to his presence. the problem is though when you start taking out 10 buyins there for those 5 guys, now the other 395 guys only have 374 buyins left making the collective ROI even more negative than it was. thats less buyins for everone else who are also beast players. that makes it very tough for the #10 player to now have above a 50% ROI anymore. as well as the other 65 players i listed (along with beasts i forgot like smokey, jason somerville, allen bari, arbianight, jared bleznick, etc etc)


in a much larger fielded tournament i think you are absolutely right about ROI though. Specifically in the main event. I would imagine the robotic grinders only have a 0-20% ROI there even with all the dead money, but there are more great players who have astronomical ROI as you said. I wouldnt be at all surprised if you and others had a 400%+ ROI in the main event. However, I dont think this is the case in almost any other tournament due to the structures being too fast or the fields being overall too tough. ESPECIALLY not the 10k 6max.

i only picked out the 10k 6max because it was by far the easiest to dissect. I could probably go through others and list what I think realistic ROIs are for those but it would take a bit more work and the numbers would be less accurate. But i think my thoughts on the 10k 6max are near spot on.

unethical is a pretty harsh word

that's all i got