Thoughts on staking amongst friends

MBB asked “hey there, i have never considered staking someone … do you just do it because he is a friend, or because you think he has a significant edge over the field, and therefore 5% of entry is more likely to return a profit over the long run?”

He is a friend, he didn’t have a significant edge and as the funds came out of my BR, I was certainly in it to return a profit. Unfortunately, I won’t live long enough for the long run on this one so it was more like taking a shot that doesn’t hurt my ability to play the stakes that I enjoy playing right now. Let me expand …

For the record, and for the foreseeable future, I will be open to anyone staking me anytime with the exception of our Friday night home game which is just giving up too much EV, lol. Even if you come across this post in a few years time when I’m playing full-time (dreaming again), drop me a note and I’ll probably give you a piece of my action.

Btw I offer 50% of that game to my daughter every week and she always says no saying that she’ll jinx me. I’m not sure if it is superstition, as she’s very logical, or just not wanting to change something that’s working. On second thoughts, she probably realises that she can manipulate me into risk free cash almost any time for the cost of a short lecture.

At the moment, I believe that I would be +EV in any PLO live tourney up to a couple of hundred dollars. Basically, one that attracts recreational players and not worth it for the pros. I don't always want to stump up the full BI and will happily sell off a piece to reduce variance. And that is what my friend decided to do.

He is an extremely good player and he makes his living out of poker (not all playing) so I guess that he's a professional, of sorts. I’ve seen him run over lots of tables and always puts people on decisions. He’d proven his credentials to a degree by winning a live Satellite at Star City to the Main Event. Now, the Main Event is a big step up. The ticket was worth $6300 and he was looking to lock in up to 50% of that in cash to enter a couple of preliminary events. The sweetener that he added was a free 5% of his $1650 PLO BI. Essentially $400 for $315 investment, if he’s neutral EV. I thought that he was close and it give me an interest in the tourney. Obviously, I needed him to go deeper to get the entertainment value of railing him near the money for it to have paid off. Even having done my dosh, I’m comfortable with the decision and know others that I would take a piece of.

My preferred scenario would obviously to build my roll a bit more and swap pieces, probably 5%, for entertainment value and reducing variance slightly. Basically, the utility of a slight win when you bust out of a tourney is presumably worth more than giving up the equivalent dollar value when you make a score and are happy anyway. Again, I’ll review this when I’m handing over Joe Cada type cash.