There has been a load of speculation about how BRS operates but nothing from anyone that played for them. I applied and was successful in being accepted in their academy in March this year on a 50/50 split.
I was given a daily roll of £50 a day to play exclusively on partypoker upto a max buy-in of $16.50. As long as these were not satellites there was no restriction on playing mtt’s upto that amount. From that perspective I don’t think there is anything untoward going on.
There were times where you would have the opportunity to be bought in to games above your roll, they called it NMU, later renaming it BRSR. These were posted up in their secret Facebook group and was a fastest finger 1st. Whoever put there name down quickest got funds sent for the comp upto however many seats they were ‘funding’. Generally this was between $33- $109. The cut was worked out differently for these games. Each Monday you would have 50% of all BRSR cashes that week deducted straight out your Profit and loss account. The remaining 50% went into your p&l, which was great if in deficit but not if in profit as you would lose another 50% of what you won. So essentially for BRSR your percentage was 25%. It did seem very low, but if it is true that a cut was taken by party then that explains it. Tbh I never really thought about where the money for these comps came from as just saw it as a way to increase my balance and return.
PPL is when things did get shady. I think in May, can’t remember the exact timeframe, they started doing ‘packages’ for 10 x 5.50 $ ppl sats and 10 x $22 sats. This worked on the basis that any cashes from with any PPL was on the same terms as BRSR. 50% direct to BRS the remaining 50% into your p&l. This was believed to be funded by party/dtd as the strict instructions were to ‘only reg to min runners to make sure they ran’. Any breach of this led to ‘reprimands’ by the academy manager (I’ll get onto that in a bit). There was no limit to how many times you could request funds to play these. You could essentially play an unlimited number of these. Any PPL funds that were won were taken out of your PPL account balance and held ‘centrally by BRS’. When you wanted to play you would ask the manager for permission to play a certain comp and if approved funds would be sent to your PPL account. So you did not have any control of your PPL funds and could not use it as you wanted like any other player. The one big catch with any PPL won was that if your sponsorship was terminated you would lose all the PPL you had won and would be kept by BRS.
There was on occasion opportunities of BRSR live events. For the most recent Grand Prix’s at DTD they were giving away what seemed like unlimited seats and multiple bullets per day 1 for any BRS player.
The management of the academy was horrific. The manager was clearly power hungry and got off on having that power to dictate. They would make up the rules as they went along and would ‘zero’ you (make your daily roll 0) for any tiny infringement of the rules or cos they felt like it. Before joining it stated on their now defunct website that you would have regular mentoring from the manager to help develop your game so you could get into the ‘main group’. In 6 months I never got any of this mentoring. I had been asking for 3 months for that mentoring and each time was ignored. When looking up their stats on sharkscope they have losses of over 40k and getting deeper. I don’t understand how a stable can have a manager that is clearly a high stakes fish ‘mentoring and developing’ players.
From a players perspective I did not consider or think about where or how I was being funded. I utilised the opportunities I had put in front of me. I do not regret any of them. I never played any hand or game soft against other BRS players and regularly bust, and got busted, by other BRS players. I do not begrudge any other player in the academy for taking advantage of any of the opportunities they had, as let’s be honest we all would if we had the same opportunities.
Things started to change in September. They announced that they were changing the profit distribution for BRSR for tourneys from $109 and up. They were going to take the buy-in back from any cash before any profit spilt, this made it almost worthless as a min cash would be worth so little to you.
On the 25th September Paul Jackson the owner of BRS posted in the Facebook page:
WE have decided to make some large scale changes in our recruitment endeavours and to focus more on quality rather than quantity.
To that end we have decided to close down our Facebook page our Website and end the BRS academy which whilst nice to have given many players a shot has proved very expensive time consuming and very administratively burdensome with only a very few (1% of all initial applicants) players actually going from academy application to main group of BRS.
The FB page and Website have also proved to be primarily successful at attracting academy rather than proven experienced players and the cost and administration of running and populating information in these portals (which need updating and managing) is also costly time consuming and just has not and does not generate the quality of player we want long term to justify the time and cost of maintain them.
So there is no longer a requirement or desire for players to publicly shout about other BRS player wins as this tends to increase the quantity of lower end applications more than anything else as people we would ordinarily not stake see the chance of getting a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
The vast majority of quality applicants come from word of mouth and the refer a friend scheme (which will continue) as well as other good players seeing us at major live events and we will focus on these areas going forward to attract new quality players.
Applications via refer a friend will now by done via email, with friends being referred emailing applications@brstaking.com, from which they will receive an application form via email
We will be taking on no new academy players at all from now on.
The academy will now be a trial group so that players that may not be good enough to be taken on through the experienced player route but who we feel have some potential to be guided forward, can still get a shot at showing us what they can do with the aid of our support system and coaching.
This was the 1st sign that things were not all that it seemed and that there was something else going on. At this point all PPL and BRSR funding stopped.
I had my contract terminated with no justification after month end payments at the end of September. At first this was surprising as I had combined profits over £1000 in both August and September.
From friends who had stayed in the academy I’m told that the group appears to have been disbanded in the last 24hrs. There have been mass sackings with some of the players sacked having banked 1000s in $PPL which is now owned by BRS.
In concluding yes partypoker and BRS appeared to be very closely affiliated especially when it came to PPL sats and live buy ins. But I think it’s also worth noting they have screwed over their players by sacking them and keeping PPL that has been won. That’s one hell of a shady practice that shouldn’t be allowed.
This is my experience with BRS. I took full advantage of all the opportunities I had put in front of me. But where the money that funds you comes from is vague and not clear and would not at all be surprised if it’s from party/dtd. Everything that has happened in the last 3 weeks does seem to be in response to the bad publicity about BRS. My gut feeling is that party/dtd has ended its affiliation with BRS due to the publicity about its conduct which is why so many players have had their sponsorship terminated.
