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.