Here is the case.

Agent 1 one get new rules from a club and is 4 days late to forward the rules to sub agent . The rules are regarding penalty if they win to much. 4 more days goes by and the club sends the weekly summary and includes a penalty as the players won to much.

Now sub agent argues that if he had gotten the rules on the first day he would have stopped his players from playing. And wants agent 1 to pay the penalty for the winnings the 4 first days.

Agent 1 argues that when it comes to agent based unregulated pokersites players should be aware of that things like this can happen and that the penalty should be paid by the players who won and divided accordingly.

Who is in the right and any suggestion to how this should be solved? Sounds pretty bad that the players are the ones who should take the penalty?

In the real world, it would be spelled out in the contract between the agent and subagent. However, we're talking about unregistered pokersites. Contracts involving illegal activities are unenforceable and my guess is that the verbal agreement didn't go much beyond talking about how much money everyone was going to make.

Therefore, whoever is the most powerful and needs the future money involved the least will get their way.

Yeah there was no agreement on how to deal with issues like this before hand. But would like help find out what is ethically the most correct way to deal with it. Both parts believes that they are in the right. whatever the end results of the money is. How would this be dealt with in a perfect world?

Thanks for reply and helping btw, much appreciated!

Split the penalty seems fair...

If your players are pro/semi pro/regs and are raking a good amount maybe you should want to keep them happy first and foremost.

I would keep the penalty between you and the agent as to not upset the apple cart. The last thing you want is a bunch of upset players who want to now play elsewhere.

Go to your agent and explain you don’t want to upset your players and see if he will go half with you. Or come up with some deal that it comes out of future rakeback.

If the penalty is huge and you suspect your players won’t play a lot then you should argue it... you basically need to weigh if this is worth it for you in the long term.

Wtf?
How much is ‘too much’?
Is it in terms of bbs or $?
Sounds ****ing dumb to me.

It sounds to me like everyone here is behaving like a jackass except the "sub agent".

1) The club should give advance notice of rules changes.

2) The agent should then share those notices ASAP.


The sub agent is the only person in this story who hasn't done anything wrong, it seems wrong for them to be the guy who has to pay for it. This is why adult organisations staffed by professionals give advance notice before changing agreements (even unilaterally).

Yeah the players are raking a fair bit. I get 80-90% of the total club commission from the agent, but I pass on most of this for rakeback to the players so the margins are not the best.

The agent argues that if he was going to cover all cases like this then there is no profit in this for him. On his side he covers if club run away with deposits or dont pay out. He also argues that even when we got the rules after 4 days we still kept playing. This is because either part didn't fully understand the rules until the penalty came. As it was in Chinese.

He admits it was a mistake by him by being 4 days late forwarding the rules, but say that this is more of a technical mistake as he says it wouldn't have changed the outcome anyway as the players kept playing even after getting the rules. And he stands really firm on that he thinks he should not help paying the penalty and that he thinks it should be divided between the winning players. But we dont want to upset the players.

He says he made a mistake that ended up with the players making 150k more than they would have if he had forwarded the rules on the day and the players would have been stopped from playing. Therefor he dont think its fair he should pay 22k in this case as the penalty was 44k from total winnings of 195k. The 22k would what he makes from us in commission after about 2 months for playing. We on our side get about 200k payed out in commission for the same period. We think that this should not be a part of the discussion as we also pay out most of the commission to the players.

So then again it comes back to the question. Should players be able to accept taking penalty as they should be under the assumption that this things can happen on apps like this. Or will it from their point of view be a scam in the same lines as the club or agent running away with their money and not paying them. Even if explain the whole situation to the players. What would the general though be from the average player?

sorry for the questions I just really need some objective viewpoints on this so it can be dealt with the most fair way.

Yes is fing dumb and we will most likely stop working with that club.

to much is more than number of sessions x 100 = "allowed winnable amout"

so in this case we had 58 sessions and won 195k, but because the agent had other players that player 200 sessions but lost overall we didnt get the full penalty. Because of his players and sessions we maybe saved about 15k in penalty that would have been if it was calculated only for our players and sessions

Yeah, but what are the thoughts on explaining the situation to the players and let them pay it? is a nono or?

Typically in business costs like these get passed to end users.... the agent obviously made a huge mistake here so should be willing to negotiate with the sub users in good faith in order to keep the relationship and users happy but if he doesn’t want to then the users are SoL. The situation sucks and doesn’t seem fair but is the way business operates in almost every situation.

From the Agent's perspective.
If he had passed on the new rule at the time of the change, what would the money have looked like?

Sounds like it ended up something like: 22K agent, 22K sub agent, 150K players without telling the players on time.

So tell us what would it have looked like if the players had the news on time?
Would they have played less and ended up with more in their pockets?
Or played less, won less and the penalty would have also been less?

At the moment it ended like this. Agent 0k Subagent 44k penalty and players 192k profit (no penalty).

If the rules had been passed on at the time of the change we would have stopped playing straight away and there would have been 0 profit and 0 penalty.

There is also the case of that the players won about 135k the first 4 days were we didnt know the rule. and about 57k when we did know the rule. Can I then argue to only pay the penalty for the 57k and let the agent pay the penalty for the 135k?

Can I argue that it is so simple as because the agent didnt pass on the new rules to me until the 4th day. I am only liable for the penalty from that day on. And demand him to pay the penalty for the first 4 days? This is what I did. I told him we are not liable for the 44k but only the penalty for the 57k and that i expect him to to reimburse us the rest. I feel this situation is that simple. and they whats left of the penalty is basically his price to pay for being the middle man between us and the club. Am I right or wrong here? or are there other ways to look at the situation?

I think if a person wants to change the rules of something after it’s already going, they need to negotiate with everyone involved and create a consensus. The sub agent and players should only be responsible to follow the rules they agreed to when they joined the club. The agent can either negotiate some sort of extra fees for winning players, or just shut the whole thing down. Unilaterally imposing a new set of rules mid-game is absurd.

How thrilling must it be to have the honor of playing on a platform where this kind of thing is actually a thing, and on top of that the outcome of thousands of dollars is pending on the opinion of an online forum.

it truly baffles me that people are still playing on these sites.

Agent 1 obv at fault. how is it even a Question its so obvious.

Thats not how pokermaster works. In this case its the CLUB that made new rules. Then passed it on the the agent. Then the agent was 4 days late to pass it on to the sub agent. And even after we got the rules we didnt really fully understand it until we got the penalty because it was written in chinese. The agent didnt even fully understand it.

After we got the penalty we stopped the cooperation and cashed out out winnings. But now we want to claim back the penalty also as we think we are not liable for it.

Its better than 2 people both having subjective point of views.. it might help a little to see what outsiders think

yeah he did agree it is his fault. But he dont agree he should pay the penalty as its not his players who won the money. he argues that if anything, his mistake ended up making the players an extra 192k(-44k penalty). So he dont think its right that he should pay and that the players should be happy they made some extra cash before stopping.

Take Pokerstars for example. They would never just change rakeback or their rewards system without giving notice to the players working hard to achieve the required volume. Right guys?

Oh wait...

I kind of agree with the agent, but the details as given are still fuzzy.

Bottom line: The players kept playing after knowing about the penalty. Would they really sacrifice the 150K net gain out of anger due to the penalty and not have played at all? Obviously entry into this weak player pool is worth the penalty to these players. The penalty did not affect their playing. If they had stopped when they heard about it, I would feel differently.

Let's rewind the clock.
If the Agent says on day 1, "this is the new penalty" --> Players win zero. So the message from the agent means that the players gained 150K due to communication delays.

Also nobody should play on a site that makes rules like this and that communicates like this.

I think you reap what you sow. You picked you business partners and have profited immensely.

Foreseeable problems ? Absolutely.

It is up to you to make/keep your end users whole. Good luck.

What is your point? That pokerstars is also not very professional in their communication? PS is not the holy grail of a company, or what a company should be like.