Also podcasting tomorrow with Andrew Barber at 6pm EST. Andrew recently wrote about the marketplace for tournament action and markup that we will be discussing in an attempt to figure out marketplace GTO. Here is what he wrote

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...chtGm7Koc/edit

Those eyebrows really take on a life of their own at times. Great stuff though on the podcast.

Shout out to BPB aka Back Page Busquet

new ben86/benni19 podcast incoming?

give the ppl what they want papi!

Those eyebrows are out of control Mr Biscuit

I largely agree with what Andrew is saying. If there was a 2p2 marketplace "index," or even better a YouStake one, I'd definitely short it.

I have a nitpick with the "dual prices" paragraph, though. It strikes me as a bit of mathematical trickery that makes the situation look far worse than it really is. Of course it is true that if you're selling most of your action at a markup you don't have to be a winning player to turn a profit, but I don't see how this is a "dual price."

To take Andrew's example of a player selling either 50% or 70% of his action at 1.2. Let's say he's sold 50% and knows he could sell another 20%. He himself is effectively "paying" the same 1.2 to keep his action (by forgoing the opportunity to sell it) that he's charging others to buy it. If a player believed that his action was overpriced, he'd sell 100% of it, or at least the maximum he could get away with without spooking investors. But in practice we see that players tend to keep as much action as they can reasonably afford given their bankrolls (or often more, since everyone sucks at bankroll management).

I see a much less nefarious situation than Andrew does. Where he sees misaligned incentives and "dual prices," I just see everyone overestimating themselves, their friends, and anyone who has had decent results. In other words, the same thing that keeps all the wheels in the poker world turning.

get tchan on the podcast

I subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and the last one in the feed is May 10 w Jungleman.
Why isn't my feed updating? I want to listen to the new stuff!

lol @ the cat falling at the 20~ minute mark in the olivier podcast

Will be live in a bit with Andrew Barber to discuss Marketplace GTO


[youtube]RdvqCa0tRdU]/youtube]

thanks to joe or whatever hardcores are doing the time stamps on previous podcast. They have been helpful a few times already going back and trying to find certain parts or things etc

+1. We could educate everybody about how to maximize EV and ROI, and minimize rake, markup, etc., but if everybody had the discipline and motivation to make GTO decisions, then all the profit disappears in this negative sum game and all the wheels in the poker world stops turning. What makes poker profitable for a minority of players is that the majority make non-GTO decisions, and get utility out of having fun on the table or sweating friends or WSOP ME champions, and they are willing to lose more money in the future.

I think winning players that charge no markup are shooting themselves in the foot as they have to give up a % of all winnings, but have to keep paying 100% of all their expenses. If a player sells 50% to travel to the WSOP and has a small profit after all buy-ins for his investors, he could lose money himself after paying 100% for all his flight, hotel, meals and other expenses.

not very gto imo

Ooops just to clarify I meant the bracket fail was not gto. The interview itself was very good and I agreed with just about everything, especially that big names get away with murder when selling %.

I disagree with what he claims is "charity" though, and that the investor should not bear any of the costs of traveling for a donkament. Let's say someone is selling at 1.2 and they rationalize that price because of the costs for travel/hotels etc. That does not necessarily mean that they are only worth 1.1 or 1.15 and they are asking 5-10% as charity. It means that the cost is built into the calculation, so the player and the investor both agree that the player has a 20% edge after cost. If the player were living there and had no extra costs then he would charge a different price. After all if the player thought he only had a small edge, and was then going to bear all the costs himself... well that's not very smart. Overestimating edges is another issue.



What is charity; however, is to bear the costs of traveling yourself, and then sell a % at 0 markup. The idea that the other player will later reciprocate this is great, but you've still put yourself in a -ev situation until the other player actually plays and sells an equal value of himself for 0 mark up.

I find myself largely agreeing that there are structural issues in the marketplaces and that many of the packages are likely not a good deal though I find myself agreeing with ike regarding the motivations behind the sellers. I applaud Andrew for trying to educate the masses, but I think that he's swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. I find the push to pay the minimum as an investor completely contradictory with demonising those trying to sell for as much as possible. I can't reconcile someone selling their action through an auction being a scumbag, yet an investor paying par (negative after expenses and opportunity cost) being ok.

I do think people should be profiting off their markup. I do think that investors should contribute to expenses. However, I also think that a fair markup should not involve an estimated negative return for the investor. I don't think things are nearly as clear to the people selling action as Andrew makes it out to be. While the players have a much better picture of what their ROI looks like they can still only estimate their own edge which will vary from field to field and change as time goes on. I have trouble finding a reason to expect these people to make conservative estimates and essentially hand the difference to investors especially when the market is willing.

Selling amongst friends is completely different from selling in the marketplace because you will generally be reciprocating. Sometimes you sell and sometimes you buy so you take both the benefits of buying at par and the downsides of selling at par but this isn't the case in a normal investor transaction so selling for par should not be either. I agree with the poster above, in that really is charity. I'm also not clear on how buying and selling between friends with markup increases variance. If we take Andrew's example of selling at 1.2 and if all parties buy and sell the same amount of action wouldn't the net result be the same (sold 50k at 1.2 = 60k, bought 50k at 1.2 = -60k works out the same as bought 50k and sold 50k at par)? It increases the investor's variance but it reduces the player's variance.

On an ending note, I actually think it might make sense for someone to offer a better price for a single investor. There are going to be overheads with collecting and paying out funds, doing accounting work, providing updates, and any other admin work and it seems perfectly reasonable to me to take a lower markup to reduce that. To be honest, this whole podcast left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. You've got someone involved in a backing fund telling people to charge less and that they are scumbags for trying to maximise their profit. I'd love it if I could deploy my capital over unlimited live events with no travel, hotel, or time costs too but these costs exists and it's unreasonable to expect the player to bear them alone or for them to not be compensated for their time. I agree that there are borderline scams out there and I think raising awareness about that is great. I think him telling people that he's not willing to invest unless they offer a certain price is how a market should work, but I'm not even convinced the marketplace should collectively show a profit. There are numerous examples of betting markets where the vig makes it a negative sum proposition so it's clear that people are (knowingly) willing to take the worst of it and until that changes it seems quite unlikely that the collective market will be a plus ev investment. Maybe some of the people in these threads are right in that in the end, it's entertainment.

I was expecting a much better intervew maybe bringing up the actually issues going on in tournament action buying and selling. Instead it's mostly nonsensical, anecdotal generalities about what people should do and what people are doing. It really comes down to these things:

1. bad investors will lose their money and good investors will make money. Money will run dry eventually from the bad investors overpaying, but then also as the markets become more efficient, the good investors will make less overall as well. Just like in everything else, there are going to be sharps and squares.

2. every player has the incentive to sell a the highest markup they can get, unless there are alterior motives, it would be absolutely idiotic for them not to.

3. Edges are hard to guage and there shouldn't be a standared for backer/player split given known edges. In theory if a player has 21% roi and sells at 1.2, thats still finantially fruitful for many skilled investors to take that 1% edge.

4. Players are protected by these marketplaces from the savvy investors who understand edges and markup but aren't allowed to undercut packages that are blantently overpriced. In any finantial market, this is what keeps the sellers in check. If someone is selling bananas at $10 a pop and getting customers, that only will last if no one is allowed to come in and sell at lower.

Most of the advice given in the just plain bad, off the top of my head here are a few examples:

"look to buy at par" - Most people selling at par for tournaments they can't afford just to are likely losing vs the field than good players who charge high markups because they can estimate there edge well. I would imagine that the average person who is selling at 1.0 for the main event is probably close to break even or losing while someone selling at 1.5 might have over 100% roi. Selling at par is def no sign of an investment being profitable.

"don't buy anything this summer over 1.1, except collosus and milly maker"

- lol ok buddy completely arbritary number with no explanation, then give examples of tournaments with horrible structures that dimish edges, along with huge rake as the tournaments you want to be paying more than 1.1 where i imagine anyone winning huge in can ****ing afford to play a $500 tournament on their own action.

"makes no sense to charge less for people who buy more"

- makes a ton of sense to want to deal with one big investor rather than deal with 30 small transfers to a bunch of 2p2 idiots.

"the highstakes players aren't gauging each other at markup, look at galfond and joe ingram"

- ok you are completely clueless. galfond sells at par to stuff because hes probably not doing very well vs. the field in any tournament he needs to sell action for. I doubt any of the big backers would have bought him with much markup in the 300k, what else has he played that he needs to sell for?. Don't know what joey sells for, but there is a **** ton of good high stakes players trying to sell at high markups to each other.

"selling at par and swaping are essentially the same thing"

- nope try again.

then theres a bunch of bad advice to people who are looking to buy action, with out actually taking about any metrics on how to guage edges or determine what markup to pay that can actually show profit. As one of the bigger backers in poker i think i got dumber listening to this nonsense.

^^^^^ 100 % on point , I was thinking a lot of the same stuff while watching this

Can someone tell me if the iTunes feed is current and up to date for the Poker Life podcasts?
Mine stopped at Jungleman.

Mine goes much later than this

Waste of a podcast. People who make investments without doing proper research are likely to lose money. People suck at estimating their own edge. Especially people who are running hundreds of thousands of dollars above EV in tournaments. People aren't going to just start accepting less money because its the fair thing to do. I'm fine with lazy/greedy people losing money and I'm fine with people who want to trade a little bit of EV for entertainment. Pool some money together and start shorting or even undercutting the packages with terrible prices if you actually want to make a change.

didn't watch but if summaries are right then definitely not a good source of info and it's unfortunate people who don't know better (don't make this mistake if you read this and the other warnings from other posters!) are going to expect this to be solid and expert advice..

so many factors but any mark up under the actual ev roi is reasonable (some argue that equal or higher can have justification too

expenses are honestly just independent. people can argue the investor should pay for them too but it isn't really true, in the sense that the seller can't be (or shouldn't be) buying -ev package. and makes no sense why Joe bob from California is charging more than Joe Sam from Vegas when they have exactly the same skills just because Joe bob had to travel to Vegas, makes zero influence on his ev roi (maybe even negative cause travelling tiring etc). to an outside investor the ev roi (and stuff like trustworthiness etc) is all that matters. (especially if it's not friends or family etc)

not buying anything over 1.1 (not sure actual wording) is just ridiculous and clueless and a lot of guys selling to collosus are probably bad buys or at least marginal in a massive field huge variance whereas a top mix player can be easily a steal at 1.15 with much lower variance etc. I mean same for NL events obviously


really nothing personal or to attack Andrew but I highly recommend people to take the advice with a grain of salt and to realise it is not close to expert advice/bible. I agree with most of what skier, dontban say above, think these posts if understood correctly are better advice for ppl than the podcast.

I know nothing about Andrew. I assume he is someone who is moderately successful (at least) in backing. but I will say this - he is likely a "winning backer" but doesn't mean everything he says is right, his overall strategy may win though. similar to how a guy who beats 10nl for a living will have a bunch of leaks, so if you copy his entire strat you can win but there is a tonne of stuff you can do better.

I need to catch up on this stuff, and watch the latest podcast but as a slight derail can i get some thoughts on the below????

Say for instance, 1000 people play an MTT and 65% of the field are staked by 1-3 entities(who also sell action between the 3 of them on their stables). If your in the field 35% how do we fee about that? likewise, your 1 of 3 people on the 10 seated final table with 100% of yourself in the same MTT... do you have a right to feel somewhat integrity comprised? Obv this is an exaggerated example but I would like to see articles covering this angle....

Should we care about this moral dilemma? Is it a moral poker quandary? In a poker blue sky world - do we just accept this can never be regulated?

^ IMHO it's fine if the players have the same backer as long as the players themselves don't have significant pieces of each other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market


zzzzzzzzzz