Quote:
Originally Posted by raidalot
This shouldn't be described as shady imo. In general we should encourage people who invest in poker and are willing to take risks. But there are perhaps better ways to utilise the cash they burn this way (eg prize pool add-on, promotions, satellites with added seats).
They do this specifically so they can use the big guarantees to promote the event, when in reality, they're padding out the prizepool by staking players which will occasionally reduce their investment into the tournament itself when one of these players goes deep.
Absolutely it's unethical and hurts the casual players who are attracted to big prizepool tournaments, essentially stealing equity from them.
This is one of the main underhanded tactics that party use to try to compete with Stars, both online and live. It's not sustainable in the long term, but they've probably budgeted for it for the next X years, after which, if they're not within striking distance of Stars player volume, they'll give up and fail.