As WSOP Tournaments are getting closer, will see so many offerings of stake by professional poker players and Non professional Weekend warriors.

How to judge them ?
How to decide if their Mark Up is reasonable?
Where and how to research their claims.?
What to look for in their offerings ?

I have invested in tournaments staking for last 3 years.

Let’s discuss and create a thread where we get more ideas and guidelines to invest smartly.

I will post some of my idea soon.

Please post your ideas ,suggestions and questions.

It’s tough for live players. A few site for online results but other than HendonMob, I don’t know if there’s anything for live results.

Sucks because I used to grind daily tournaments and take them down regularly back when I was playing a lot more but they weren’t being tracked so my HendonMob is pretty darn weak.

That being said, if it’s a relative nobody with few verifiable results, I’m not doing any markup whatsoever.

As someone who's dipping his toes into selling action this year, I've had to really hustle to get any traction.

So I'll speak for myself, but these are the ways that I'm trying to show value as a player who doesn't have a huge HendonMob profile:

1. Having good coaching references and showing that I am actively working on my game.
2. Participating in poker discussions, such as on the MTT forum here or on discord, to illustrate that I have good poker knowledge.
3. Offering very favorable terms and playing at stakes (primarily $1K and below) where I should be competitive compared to the field.

Will this work? I'm not sure. But these are the selling points that I'm using in my packages. If there's other things I can try, I'm very happy to listen to suggestions.

Poker is the game of incomplete information !
With that in mind we have to make our decision of staking with whatever information available. That is Hendon Mob or whatever available data.

When I bought stake first time ( 2021).
I was playing a small buy-in WSOP event and a player said DENG and Arieh offering some stake on PocketFive ( Now Pokerstake). Luckily my first 2 investments tripled!!

I had no no clue about buying a stake In person I don’t know .
I didn’t know how to and what to research!

Since then I developed a formula for myself.
I bought many stakes since and did ok so far.

Some of the players I bought in to and their rankingNEG (3),Fedor Holz (10) , Cary Katz (12), Phil Helmuth (21) , Chance Kornuth (89) , Josh Arieh (108) and Galen Hall (202).

When I buy a stake in a poker player, I go with following parameters :

1, Is he/she trustworthy.
Social Reputation
This is important, just make sure they are not party guys . No previous cheating stories etc. I know there is a player with 10 or more WSOPC Rings , but use to sell 200% or more.

2, Total Lifetime winnings.
I go with players who has at-least 500K or more lifetime winnings. (Not just one or two result)

3, US/World All time money Rank
Past 6-12 months history

There are 607605 Ranked players worldwide . 268175 US Rank players.

I also check their past 6 month's performance. If they are hot or cold ( Hendon Mob Database). If they are then I consider depending on their m/u .


4, Is Mark up reasonable *
When paying Mark-up ,I only consider investing with Top 200-300 Ranked Player worldwide and Top 200 Ranked US player . I am willing to pay from 5%-15%

If unknown or not great numbers m/u must be 0 %


5, Is he offering all the bullets for the given tournament.
I have seen some players selling only 1 bullets
And play 2 bullets. This is no-no for me.

6, Never buy stake if player is selling over 50%
If player sells 60 or 80% in my experience they play recklessly on first bullet.

7, Does he reports tournaments progress live ( tweeter ,facebook, Whatsapp etc).
Other than WSOP reporting is very poor, a player must post report on social media.

8, The side benefits if any , are included in the package ?
Some tournaments offer random drawing for participants, End of the day Leader Bonus etc

9, The biggest problem is how to check if the players actually played the tournament, Most players are honest but there are cases where players will say I was knocked out in first level and never bought in to the tournament. Pocketing the stake sold. (There should be system to verify)

These are my guidelines for myself. I will still like to add more markers. Please feel free to post your suggestions and criticisms. (:

* There are 3 websites I know very popular for staking , including 2+2 Forum.

What are the other sites that are good for advertising staking?

Do you have proven verifiable results? If so, you can apply on StakeKings. Anyone can stake there but if you’re looking to be staked, you have to go through their application process.

*Pokerstake (Use to be called “PocketFives”owned by professional poker player Jose Arieh)

* My 1st choice

I have a StakeKings profile already:

https://stakekings.com/player/jpgiro

Most of the players sell their stake to reduce the risk connected with the game of Poker.

Poker is very high variance game . Even most skilled players cashes 1 out of 5 tournaments.
And wins big $$ , 1 out of 10 tournaments .
I am talking about players who are in top 500 In ranking.

Asking for M/U is most common.

Players in the top tier can ask and gets 5% to 15% m/u , which is understandable.

I find it amusing a player without much winning experience to show for , asking any m/u. They will be lucky if they can sell even without any mark up.

Again this is my views . Player can ask anything they like and any buyer can pay anything they wants to.

My advice/ suggestions to new and upcoming players to start slow ( No Mark UP). Show some results, creat a name and goodwill for your brand and comeback after some good results. You will get similar respect.

Good Luck all .

I've been curious about staking as well recently.

What kind of bankroll management do you guys use when staking? I know that professional sports bettors typically don't bet more than 1% of their roll betting small edges.

If a skilled player only cashes 20% of the time that's like making a +500 (6.0 odds) bet, so your be size should be even lower.

As for judging whether staking someone is a good bet or not, for live play that seems tough. HendonMob is pretty useless since they don't show a ROI number, only winnings. For online sharkscope stats should give you a pretty good idea.

I wonder if we have any full time 'stakers' out there.

Thx for info . Don’t know how to use sharkscope but will try to understand now.
Not much accounting guy so not very good at bankroll management.

I think Riverph7 has the right approach. I think there are very few players that should be staked and there are a lot of scammers. I think buying a small piece of a player that has 50% or more of themselves is a good strategy.

I also think overall staking is a losing proposition. After you factor in the variance and what the ROI is vs risk and then adding in or factoring getting scammed, it becomes a losing proposition. I bet if we polled 100 players who had done staking on any significant scale, that 80 of them or more will have been scammed at some point.

Furthermore a lot of people way over estimate their edges in tournaments. If you talk to the average "professional" they probably believe that in any live tournament that they have 50 - 100% ROI. Every player thinks they are better than average or elite. If someone has been a pro for +10 years and been playing tournament regularly, they really should have +$1M in live winnings.

I only buy from Pokerstake.com. Which guarantee the winning. I only buy from top 500 , their winnings are 1 million +.

I try to avoid unknown or questionable players even they have 1 million+ winnings as currently there is no requirement to show tournament buy-in receipt.

When stacking websites start requiring their buy-in receipts before they release their money,I will loosen up .

I think my formula working very well.

I just dig little more. Again this is from my stacking and profit experience. Following players are on my top choice list :

Player. Total Cash$. Total Cash#. Average cash. General M/U

1 DNEG. 50.7 Mil. 447. $113422. 0 %
2, J Arieh. 10.9 Mil. 118. $92372. 0% -1.12%
3, C Kornuth. 11. Mil. 212. $51886. 1.10 -1.20%
4, Galen Hall. 6.6 Mil. 91. $72527. 0-1.04%
5,J. Ausmus. 14.7 Mil. 252. $58333. 1.04- 1.08%.

I'm a StakeKings player and I can confirm they require a buy-in receipt before they release money unless you're a well-established player with them.

That’s very positive information. I wish we get same confirmation from Pokerstake.

In order to get clarification on the subject, I sent an inquiry to Pokerstake ( Josh Arieh) . Here is his response:

“ We require a photo of the receipt along with the starting stack. No funds are disbursed without these receipts.

If there’s ever a question about a stake, please contact support@pokerstake.com and we will gladly investigate.

Josh Arieh
Head of PokerStake“

That’s great ! I always likedPokerstake but now I love much more as they are 1 step ahead .

When I started this thread, I had people who are the buying the staking were in my mind .

Now after looking at the postings at all 3 main websites (Pokerstake.com, 2+2 forum and stakekings ) , I think if anyone go through this thread before posting their stake with any kind of M/U will do themselves a favor and positive results.

Asking for any M/U when you have minimal live results ( under 300k winnings ) will put you in dead end .
The idea about selling stake is to distribute risk and variance, not to make some extra money ( M/U).
Yes the proven professional has earned the right to get M/U due to their proven past performance.

Even that said ,DNEG always sell with no M/ U.