Lol, you legitimately know nothing about poker. Every decent sized city has a private game based around local whales, often millionaires or billionaires who will drop tens of thousands or more per night. They will be raising blind, playing PLO never having bothered to learn you have to use both cards etc.
These games are *very* soft.

I live in a smaller Canadian city and playing with the millionaires/billionaires here is insane, I couldn't imagine the action in Cali, Texas, NYC etc for private games.

Dumb, why should recs be playing in the WSOP but not backed pros. It's the most "prestigious" event in poker.

You live in a smaller Canadian city and play live poker there with billionaires (plural in fact}?

Hmmm, sure ya do, yup, okay ..... good for you.

Well google says their are 46 billionaires in Canada and 1.6 million millionaires. So yeah, good for him.

How can it even be considered “prestigious” if a significant portion of the field didn’t even pay for their own buy in/don’t have 100% of themselves?

Why would you care it someone had 1% or 100% of themselves? Why would you care how they obtained their money? Is a blue collar job paying for a buyin different than a crypto bro different from a pro being staked? No, it is not.
Chris Moneymaker only had half of himself, the horror in the biggest event of the poker boom!

Gzesh, maybe you're used to right wing boards or something, but in 2022, decent people aren't bragging about having to be in the same room with a billionaire, even if they are donating. The guy I'm talking to has been arrested for sex trafficking! It wasn't a brag!

this would be true if they didn't have families/rent/groceries and other financial obligations that prevented them from being able to spend time grinding very small amounts

if your monthly nut is 2k then you can't just say "f it, i'll just grind $2 sngs until i rebuild my roll" in the meantime you get buried in real life finances

in my poker days i was fairly successful in terms of dollars won, but i was constantly broke because i was in my early 20s and would ust say f it and go traveling, upgrade my living situation, or pay off my student loans each time i had a good month

a number of times took shots at nosebleed games with basically my entire liferoll sitting in front of me on the felt

i got lucky, it always worked out, had it not worked out (which could have easily happened) then i would have seeked a stake, frankly, looking back, i wish i was playing on a stake back then because i'd have faced much less stress wondering how i'd pay rent next week each time i played a big pot

it's incredibly common for very good players to be in not so good financial situations and they seek a stake

however, it is true that bad players and scammers also seek stakes so it's all about doing due diligence to ensure you're staking someone you trust in a controlled manner so losses are capped if he scams

i've made some decent pocket change staking, and this is including someone who i'm pretty sure has scammed me in my totals and of course you have a lot stables etc etc so there's obviously a way to stake profitably even including the risk of getting scammed as a part of the business

Meh.. it’s not so much I care how they obtained the money.

It’s more about the purest form of poker involving a level playing field like in a true freezeout tournament where everyone has 1 bullet and the same risk for ruin.

Mtts are so watered down now and aren’t actually technically tournaments anymore w rebuys and add on etc. It’s more of a hybrid style game. In a true tournament it’s one and done like March madness and that’s what makes it great the fact everyone has 1 out and fear of being knocked out.

Not having 100% of yourself alleviates this risk for my competition.

Remember before late reg existed in some tournaments if you bought a stack and showed up late you would get blinded out and that was standard. It also gave no advantage to late reg. This was a way to keep a level playing field.

Enough with the bragging buddy.

I've got news for you: nobody cares

I know what you mean. I live in a small village in ghana and the action here is crazy. Never seen so many billionaires donating. Off the hook.

There's no soft high stakes games in some random Ghanaian village therefore there are no soft high stakes games in the world.

you're wrong, he said that the action was crazy in the small village of ghana, therefore there are soft high stakes game everywhere in the world

You definitely don't need to be rich to stake and you don't need to be broke to seek a stake.

Ask me how I know.

Come on you have 25,000 posts? Learn quality over quantity my friend.

There’s 4 different types of poker players

Rich guy needs stakes loose passive
Rich guy gives stakes loose agressive
Poor guy needs stakes tight passive
Poor guy gives stakes tight agressive

The optimal line in poker is to be poor and give stakes or a tag

To give back for all their sins

That’s funny!

whats a smaller canadian city to you? im in a 56k city and I cant find a game in 10+ years but im sure its all about connections. but ya I both made a staker like 5k and staked someone who made me 5k this month yall tripping all about dat leverage

ya I think that poster is full of ****.

And this is why NVG is dead and most threads in PGC are of dudes trying to beat NL2.

I'd say a decent sized city is 250k+, most people are obviously within driving distance of such.

Every city of that size has at least a few chiropractors, car salesman or whatever who make well into the six figures and love gambling if you're not into business owners who are making 7 figures.

If you're a pro and can't get into soft games, I don't know what to tell you. Your personal skills suck, at best. You were actually dumb enough to say "soft high stakes games don't exist." That should clue you into their skill level and overall knowledge of the poker landscape.

I find it weird the one poster complains about rebuys these days, when in the 00s there were as many rebuy tournaments as freezeouts. Bounty tournaments weren't a thing yet. In the 00s stars had multiple $3 rebuy tournaments a day that would award ~$30,000 to first place! Every local casino daily/nightly was most likely a rebuy tournament, with the period up until the first break being the equivalent of a hyper turbo. That's what tournaments largely were until what, 2013 or so?

Is it true? Are y'all trippin?

you guys realize 10% of American households have a net worth over a million dollars

like ao said, any region of at least a few hundred thousand is going to have a fairly large population of people with a lot of disposable income and a decent chunk of that venn diagram is going to be some people with some gambool in them

when i was younger and considering pursuing a film career, i'd often hear that x indie film was financed by the filmmaker's dentist and it was widely known that most dentists are high networth individuals and often decide to finance things like making films - some dentists go on fancy vacations or buy expensive cars, other finance films, some donk it up at 10/25

most people who own businesses are all worth millions, even the head person at your local post office makes 6 figures a year

you guys not knowing about the existence of a game doesn't mean your area couldn't support one nor that they don't exist

I think it was the billionaires in the middle of nowhere comment that people called bullshit on

If I was inventing home games I'd say a pro athlete or someone cool, not a guy currently in federal prison for sex trafficking minors.

Like, there is only one person in the world who fits this description! It was a big story covered by the NYT, CNN etc but these people have *zero* intellectual curiosity.

yes