You don't need any money to start your own club. You need to know a bunch of people who would be interested in buying in and playing online.

That said, if the latter is a good description of your situation but you don't feel like trying to get them to play at the same time in a nightly game, the easiest way for you to make money might be to start an agency in a respected union and invite everyone you know to play there.

You won't be in six figure territory until you get quite a few regular higher stakes players in your downline, or if you have your own club, a nightly game of 1/2+ with several tables.

Is there a question you have that might be better answered here? I have YouTube and Reddit if you need to chat about a specific situation or whatever.

I've been wary of these bros games for a while due to the amount of collusion I suspect is going on. What happens when collusion is caught in a union on pokerbros? Are funds confiscated by the union from the club? If so what happens to those funds? If they aren't, isn't the club owner getting a freeroll by letting collusion rings run in their club and just keeping the chips when they get banned?

I'm assuming they aren't redistributed back to the players and thats why we never hear anything public about cheaters getting caught

Collusion is not as common anymore because the bot companies and club accounting system have together made this practice -EV.

I had to ask a friend about this one. The answer probably depends on the union, but in the largest one I work with, seized funds (including rake) go directly to a players' fund. This is seeded directly into the BBJ and overlay tourneys hosted by the union. They keep tight control over this and do not pocket the money. In fact, the union loses money on the BBJ, seeding it at a significant loss. However, if the collusion is discovered by a player and specific hand data is reported, rather than the union discovering collusion using IP info or something through the backpage, I see no reason why the union shouldn't be able to return lost funds directly to the players involved.

Do the game runners set the rake themselves or is it already set by the app? I always hear people mention how Rampage and Mariano run app games with criminally high rake. Is it really that high? I never cared enough to check for myself.

The club owners have comprehensive control over all table settings, including rake, fees for tourneys, BBJ, etc. In unions, all is of that set at the union level. I never bothered to check out Splash Squad and the other big box clubs you mentioned, but a quick check in the app reveals that the max allowed rake by the ClubGG app is 10% (10bb cap) and for PBros it's 8% (10bb cap.) So, pretty much the same as a home game in NYC. Interestingly, to set the rake higher than 5% (3bb cap) in PBros, you have to spend diamonds, which cost real money.

Most normal unions are around 4-5%ish for NLH, but many private games - the really juicy, splashy ones - can go as high as 8%. Personally, I do not hesitate to buy in to such games when given the opportunity, even if the rake is high. I would much rather play in one of those hole-in-the-wall higher rake home games than grind in bigger unions where the action is noticeably tighter.

Addendum: serious unions spend a lot of time and money figuring out what the rake should be set at, as well as other factors that affect their whole economy. Union heads typically want to reward losing action as much as possible, and don't want to take too much money off the tables too quickly. It's really important for a big union to keep 24/7 action going at 100+nl, and to accomplish that, they can't set the rake too high or else the players will go broke sooner than is desirable. The bot company apparently has an entire team of advisors to help club leaders with this specific issue.

If you had to pick one would you describe your wife as an elephant or a giraffe?

Giraffe I guess but why are you trolling on here and reddit... go study some preflop charts.

Hey thanks for sharing this, I've always knew that some of these high VPIP players in the table some of them were bots

I have a few questions myself.

Let's say you are a club owner, do you usually know what goes on behind the scenes, what the unions decide about the bots, etc? Or is this kept a secret by the admins only

I really appreciate your nuanced, inside take OP. Much better than blanketed "app games are rigged" statements that you'll hear online from more ignorant circles. Thank you!

Most or perhaps all of the roles you listed will constantly be sending and receiving money. What are the most common ways that people like superagents and club owners withdraw money/have money sent to them without triggering issues with their money exchange apps and banks?

Usually it's kept a secret, but also, it's easy to figure out by looking at the other clubs' data in the union, which is visible and shared. If a club wins for several weeks in a row it's likely a bot ring. However, it's also totally possible for a union head to run some bots and not tell anyone. But if the club consistently won, they would get caught.

Accountability is often provided through a tax/rebate system. Each week, a percent of winnings is taken from each club and given to losing clubs. In the long run this evens out to 0. Most of the time, consistently winning clubs are just kicked.

Glad you enjoyed, thanks for pitching in! Ahem, nice try, IRS!

Whenever possible, funds are transferred directly between players via peer-to-peer buy ins and cash outs. Usually, avoiding common blunders like putting "poker" in payment descriptions is enough to keep an account going for long enough to not make business inefficient. Also, some social payment methods like venmo and PayPal are surprisingly lenient. Crypto is hard to get players to use but preferred by club owners. I've done a lot of converting venmo to crypto for buddies.

As an app developer who is interested in introducing a new offering to the masses within the club model, what are some features or areas of concentration for user experience (club owners, agents and players) should we hone in on to make a positive impression. And/or, where are the current providers falling short?

Over/under on when will the FBI/DOJ get itchy and bust some of these apps and who will go down first? Wolfgang, Rampage, Owen? Maybe, someone like Rob Farha who is a lesser known player but moves tons of money for the apps? All these fed staffers want to either write a book or run for office like Rep. Dan Goldman with Billy Walters, so seems like it will happen sooner rather than later, like in a new Dem admin.

Based on common issues I hear brought up:

#1 SECURITY!! If you make it easier for club owners to catch bots in any way shape or form, the players will flock to you and the agents will follow! Kind of like food advertising: If we see "heavy metal free" tomatoes on the shelves, well, we might not have even known the competitors put heavy metals in their tomatoes, so we're going to buy those ones.

#2 Graphics: Apps like PokerBros, pppoker, and pokerrr2 look like absolute garbage. A sleek graphic design will definitely attract players.

#3 fine tuning for table features, for example tournament addons, 72o/standup game for cash tables, double/triple boards, add ALL of that in and make sure you know about all those little facets of the game.

#4 know how the actual business works and make it easy to do union/agent settle up. As of right now, doing a simple settle up takes unions all day or multiple days simply because of the way data is reflected in apps. It's a nightmare of spreadsheets, aggregating player data by hand, and long telegram convos with many screenshots. If the apps had a simple feature to display relevant data over a club/union's data cycle, that would $ave club$ and union$ load$ of time.

For example: a club owner should be able to set a superagent at a specific RB percentage in the app, and then be able to click on their name somewhere and just see how much to venmo them. If they had been issued credit this should be deducted.

My sister is a software developer and I know the business. If you want to collaborate at any point, she and/or I would love to join your team.

The apps are going to bigger, way bigger, first. They're getting way more attention from streamers and the user base is growing. And these clubs would consider a well-qualified lawyer working on the case full-time to be a minor expense. If a case were to open, they would fight back hard. They would have to change the laws, too, to better define what counts as "currency" or in-game "currency" - already many sites run on the sweepstakes model quite effectively. Clubs aren't going anywhere for a long time. Worst case scenario 5 years before those boomers in office even take notice. Heck, I imagine many people working those government jobs probably load up from time to time.

Already the state of Missouri managed to ban PokerBros. I'm not sure how. If and when other states follow suit, it won't even be for all the apps that exist, and others will be sure to pop up and take advantage of loopholes.

you never worry about the legality of running a club on these apps? it seems the punishments for running them can be quite severe despite operating in a "grey area". but then again global poker operates in that same grey area for a long time and doesnt seem to face much push back despite being super public. Im considering running a club on pokerrr2 but worried about the legality despite my club only going to be 30/40 people with one table a couple nights a week.

This is cooler than poker stuff, imo.

What exactly do you study, and what is your dissertation on?

Making a good career in music is awesome. Well done.

I am always thankful for having such a cool day job!

I study a long list of things related to Western music: history, education, performance practice, Gregorian chant, continuo, composition, improvisation, acoustics, liturgy, voice, music engraving, and more. My next project is to become an organ builder so I can take care of the instruments in the area churches.

My dissertation is on Kaikhosru Sorabji, an obscure modern British composer. He wrote the most complex and difficult pieces in existence, and some of the longest. However, he did not much care to publish his pieces, so they have not been well studied until today, decades after his death.

I appreciate the music questions!

Hey. Really appreciate you taking the time to reach out and spread awareness.

Currently in the process of starting up my own club and I have some questions to take some guess work out if you don't mind. Please answer as much or as little as you'd like.

1.) I personally am a fan of the interface of Pokerrr 2, the price, and the lack of certain politics. Which app would you recommend?

2.) In terms of growing the club, I have a good connection of players that would want to play online poker to get a basis. How would you recommend scaling to make it an 1000+ person club?

3.) How should I structure rake collection, and what rake percentage would be ideal for sustainability?

4.)How can I ensure the games run smoothly and consistently, even with a smaller player base initially?

And anything else you would be willing to share. Thanks and Good luck with your next steps!

1 - ClubGG is well priced and has the best interface of any of them. I recommend finding a good union in that app.

2 - Give agents the best possible deals at first to grow the base. Consider it an up-front investment. Get streamers, marketing help, and several high powered agents. Get to know people in the field. Don't poach.

3 - This is a very complicated question. It depends on the action, and what numbers you're pulling from week to week. I believe that for clubs to do this truly optimally they need to be changing their rake structure slightly from week to week or maybe even depending on the time of day. However, doing the math - and risking regs noticing and complaining (not realizing if/when rake changes help them) might not be worth the time. You should start with low rake, increase it when you get a nightly game going, and then decrease it again when you want to encourage 24/7 action. From there, find the sweet spot that helps your recreational players survive in the game for longer. That's about all the experience I have with that.

4 - Make sure cashiering is instant. Communicate with the players daily via a telegram or mass text channel. Offer bonuses for first timers and rakeback for the VIPs.

It will take a lot of time to build up to the point where you want to be, so don't think of this as a get rich quick scheme. Know that the market is very saturated right now. In pbros and ClubGG, the market is dominated by 1-2 huge unions with 24/7 action that you'll be competing with. You'll have to offer something to your players that those big unions don't. Good luck!

With any poker site, it's a bad idea to have money in there you can't afford to not see for a while, because any of them could go down at any time. However, I think that clubs will out-survive the big sites precisely because they're in that underground grey area, and the government can't just pull the site any time they want. Many larger clubs have connections with lawyers, and you might consider the same as you grow.

A much bigger pain in the rear would be the payment platforms and their TOS enforcement. Their automated "security" is sometimes trigger-happy and you have to know what to do with potential chargebacks and scams. However, once you have enough experience with it, and you implement good cashiering infrastructure, this becomes less of a problem.

Thanks man for the insight. Me and my partner switched to ClubGG and have some players that joined. Just finding it difficult to get a consistent game going especially since we are mainly texting our friends to play pretty often and that gets dried out. We have been advertising on a bunch of groups online, but are just having trouble getting a consistent player stream. We have been offering bonuses to those that play, but just find it difficult to scale. Any expert advice to streamline this process? I know it is a grind and not something that can happen overnight, but I gotta think that there is a more consistent way to go about it. Thanks again man.

If you're the club owners you should be recruiting a lot like you are but also having agents and incentivizing people to be continuing agents with good rb deals and/or referral bonuses.

The highest ROI way to refer seemed to be through tiktok shorts and streams a few months ago. You might try more on social media and having an official presence.