Here is what happened. I accidentally joined a private game online. Then found the game was very soft and easy to beat. The stake is about nl100 to nl150, not high in poker but still attractive. I was thinking that why not looking for a guy to play there for me since I don't want to play all the day for money. Then I opened a thread here in the 'stacking'.

The first guy contacted me and showed me his graph. I was new to stacking at that time. I didn't know what else to do to work with a poker player. Since the graph was not bad, I let him play. He lost at first. Maybe an online winner can't adapt to the table which is more like a live game so quickly I thought. 3 days later he didn't show ability to win, but I still have patience. Then he disappeared for one day and a half. I know he doesn't have to stay in contact with me but he has to contact me every time he play. So I thought maybe he gave up.

At the same time the first guy disappeared, another guy came to me. This time I found a way to make sure that the graph he showed me is his (but still some flaw there). This guy was hard to talk. He didn't care what i said and just kept asking 'can i play for you?'. There was something more than it that suggests me don't go forward. But I acted like a calling station: tons of evidence say no but the graph says yes then I call. It came out to be a disaster. I won't say something about his poker skill here. He can't play well because of his bad 4g connection. And he kept complained about his luck. Finally, i let he go after losing more than the first guy in 1 day.

Maybe I trust man too easily but I just can't understand why people waste thier time. I know some players or maybe called gamblers take any chance to play. But I thought guys in 2p2 treat poker seriously. Maybe i was wrong. Anyway, this is a sad story. I lost some money, they wasted their time.

BTW, still looking for guys to play for me. But I will do it carefully this time.

Actually, I was the first horse in BigFlower's story here. I don't think my results were that bad, IIRC I ended up -100 straddles (basically 1 buy in) after 3-4 days of grinding. I put in decent hours every day for the first 3-4 days probably put in 20-30 hrs of grinding. I thought I played decently and was running below expectation, although obviously, it's hard to evaluate the various metrics that account for running well or poorly. The game structure is a 2/4/8 w/ 2 ante structure which I'm definitely not familiar so it is possible I made some mistakes adapting to it. Still the game was very soft with lots of limping and I'm pretty confident I would have been a substantial long term winner if BigFlower did not drop me so unexpectedly.

Ppg, did you disappear? Pay back the make up? I'd say 100 straddles is 2 bi.

$800 in 3-4 days? That seems normal for these stakes but needs a high bankroll. OP would probably prefer someone breakeven+ with tight stats over rising graph, but I don't know much about staking. Probably older posts with tips in that topic

No. What happened was, I was waiting for OP to message me so I could get into the game (I can't just log in and play on my own need him to unlock it). Then, unnoticed to me, my phone died. So I went about the rest of my day, fell asleep, woke up, did some stuff for a few hours, and realized my phone was dead, plugged it in, it charged for a bit, at which point I got OP's message finally and I responded immediately. So there was a substantial amount of time between his msg to me and my response, but that was simply a by-product of circumstances not a deliberate choice on my part.

No, I have not paid back any makeup. Nor should I, IMO, as there was no misconduct on my part.

This already gives a reasonable picture to anyone who has some clue: that you should do your research in terms of variance. Even in soft games there is no guarantee to make Profit even over weeks. If there is one to judge results over a few days worth of volume this will already always put the player into a very unfomfortable spot (which in your player #2's case probably also was a reason why he was complaining about bad run - if they have the feeling you will judge them over meaningless samplesizes). It will definitely be anything but good for their mindset -> expected results will drop, may even spew out of tilt etc.

In addition to PPG's explaination I see no wrongdoing here on his side and if there is any MU left I also don't see how it's justifyable to expect him to pay it.

You're defrauding people when you have someone else substitute to play under your name in a private game.

Surprised an experienced player would buy into this when you give the impression that you don't know very much about staking or poker in general, and you have no reputation.

I'm not really into staking either but I believe for the horse to fulfil their obligation to the staker, they may continue playing until out of makeup, pay back the makeup, or the staker may cut their losses and drop the horse. It looks like you dropped PPG so he owes you nothing.

I have to declare that I'm not blaming anyone. I take full responsibility for my loss. I don't need my money back. I was just telling a sad story about a investment. It's a complain about frustrations in life. But I shouldn't present it as it hurts these two players' reputation. For the first one, thanks to this thread, I got back in touch with him. I apologized to him and we continued our plan.