blonde poker forum

Hi,

This post has been written for the two plus two forums. But as Blonde Poker was my first poker forum I would like to extend this opportunity to you guys. I'm looking for a pretty large stake ($20K minimum) but may consider a consortium.


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I'm looking for a backer for the WSOP steps on PokerStars.
They are running right now but I'm looking to start as soon as Stars advertises them and they get decent volume from the fish.

I will leave this offer open for at least week to make sure that I get the right backer.


Info on stars step program:

http://www.pokerstars.com/wsop/qualify/steps/


(http://i43.tinypic.com/rliakz.gif)


How the backing deal will work:

Backer ships me the stake. (We can buy into the steps using $W so if backer can buy $W at a discount he gets an instant edge from that, if he ships me cash I will try to buy $W at the best rate and we both get effectively get an edge from that).

I will grind the steps starting from Step 3 with the initial stake until the stake is spent and all that is left is Steps tickets.

Step 6 payout is 1st: $12,500 package, 2nd/3rd $1.5K cash, 4th/5th $1K cash, 6th $500 cash.

You have to "play" the first package you win, then you get $W. In the case of the WSOP, stars can't buy you in direct so they pay you cash. This is from the 2008 WSOP Package FAQ
http://www.pokerstars.com/wsop/faq/#a1


I would assume the same would apply this year but stars haven't updated their WSOP package for 2009 yet, so will keep an eye on that.

Profits from the Step 6's will be reinvested into the Steps program starting at Step 3. Any cash payouts I will try to buy $W at the best rate I can before playing the steps.

As rake is high in SNGs I will pay my backer $8 for every 1000 FPPs earned. This will work out at ~14% rakeback direct to thebacker, I will pay out on this weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or whatever backer wants.

When the WSOP steps quit running (i'm guessing a week or 2 before the WSOP main event) all $W will be sold at the best rate we can get. Backer will have the stake returned before any profits above this are split 50%/50%.


Couple of examples of what might happen:

Initial stake of $20K.
Account balance as result of step activity after $W sold: $40K
Backer gets $20K returned plus 50% of the $20K profit = $30K returned. Backer makes $10K profit plus rakeback.


Initial stake of $20K.
Account balance as result of step activity after $W sold: $17K
Backer gets the full $17K as less than initial stake. Rakeback doesn't count towards return of the stake, if I already paid backer $6K in rakeback he still gets the full $17K because it's less than the initial stake,


I will have pokerstars email a report of all Step activity so that results and FPPs earned can be verified. I will also keep all hand history files.


About me:

Been playing SNGs seriously for 3 years.

I have played easily over 100,000 SNGs lifetime. A lot of these were across multiple accounts (for 100% rakeback bonus whoring) on the old tribecca network in 2006. In 2007 I played a lot on prima on several skins, on one skin I won their SNG leaderboard every week for months and even won a bahamas package as a result. I've played a bunch on Party and BOSS/IPN under many different accounts. I've played smaller amounts on most other sites, a few hundred on Cake under the account Daleroxxu which can be tracked. I've made profit on every account I've had.

On pokerstars I have played over 40,000 SNGs, since this site is fully tracked by Sharkscope and all my SNGs were played under the 1 account I will post stats:


(http://i43.tinypic.com/2rmpo9u.jpg)


Recently I have been playing the high stakes double or nothings. These, given their payout structure, have much more in common with the steps than ordinary payout SNGs do.
I'm currently ranked #1 on the Sharkscope leaderboard for Double Or Nothings for all sites.

(http://i44.tinypic.com/1z6zlhu.jpg)

I'm also currently ranked #2 for $35-$100 games for any site and any game.

(http://i42.tinypic.com/sooaqw.jpg)


I played the Steps on stars when they first came out 2 or 3 years ago, grinding from the $7.50 Step 1s I reached two Step 6s where I cashed but didn't win packages. It was still a nice profit from the low stakes I bought in at. During this time I studied the ICM push/fold math for each step and created some custom structure files for SNG Power Tools to do this.

I've been on 2p2 for 3 years and have met many people from the forum in real life and can supply references to confirm my integrity.


What I'm looking for in a backer:

Preferably has experience of high stakes SNGs and/or the step program, but not essential.

Someone who is committed to investing a decent chunk of cash into this deal so that we can make the most out of it. I think $20K would be the minimum.

Someone who understands how sick variance is likely to be in these games. Running good or bad in coinflips in the Step 6s will make the difference between tens of thousands of dollars.



What you get from me:


A solid SNG player with years of winning experience and a great understanding of ICM and how to apply it to any SNG payout structure.

I use a HUD and can identify other good players and regulars by their stats. I will use game selection so that I don't end up loading a bunch of games where there isn't good value.

I tile my tables, I don't cascade or stack and I rarely play more than 12 tables at a time. You can be assured that the games you back me for will be given a lot of attention, I will be getting solid reads on players from watching/note taking and from HUD stats and won't just be playing like a robot.

Although I will still be playing my own games (standard structure SNGS) during the staking period (on my own dime) I will commit to a minimum number of steps per week as agreed with the backer.

The fact that I will be playing my own games during the staking period has the advantage to my backer that if the Steps are full of regulars one night I just won't play them, where if I was committed to only playing steps all the time this would be tougher if I had set aside this time to grind.

I will communicate progress regularly.

I won't quit you during the staking period while not in profit.

Such a good opportunity for someone with the $. If only everyone made such good proposals.

Gl Dale.

Do you just want one backer, dale, to shell out the full 20k?

awesome proposal mate, gl with this

Good luck, cracking opportunity...

Can I ask why, if you've won over 32k this alone on DoN would you need 20k investment?

Thanks for the kind comment Longy and the +1 booder


TheChipPrince,

I think I'm easily +ev in these

There will be other grinders at the highest steps but the very nature of the steps means I will be playing $2000 SNGs with some guys who are fish used to playing $5 sngs that got lucky in a few steps.
Hopefully once stars sends out the emails saying the WSOP sats are gogogogo the fish will come flooding to the steps like they seemed to last year.

However, I don't want to deal with the variance involved in playing effectively $2K SNGs, I've always been very risk adverse (a huge nit) and seeking a backer for these games seems like the prudent thing to do. $20K is a minimum but more would be useful to withstand any short term variance, $20K is < 9 step 6 buyins effectively. Ever lost 9 preflop allins in a row where you were 70/30 favorite or better? I have, it sucks in $100 sngs and would be absolutely soul crushing in $2K SNGs.

I'm making the offer really really good by paying out rakeback to the backer so even if I do run as bad as possible there will still be a regular payout.

Snoopy, yes for now, and 20K absolute min (although may not need all of it transfered to me at once). I will have this same proposal on 2p2 for a week once I get approval to post it.

One person would make this much easier for me but I realise theres very few people who can afford such a large stake.

If no baller comes forward then I will extend the opportunity to a consortium of people, like has happened with other stakes on Blonde. This would be harder to manage with multiple transfers from multiple accounts and having coming in and out and to communicate to other people, but on the flipside it would probably make a good sweat thread and allow a lot of people in on the action.

Good explanation, very best of luck...

If only I'd won the lottery this weekend..I'd jump on this.

Good luck with this Dale and Flushy   :)

your graph shows you make a steady regular profit playing regular sit and go's - especially at the range between $40-100.

Why not just get the staking to play those and earn the same money where you have proved to beat variance in the past?

He doesn't need staking for those. He wants staking for steps as his hourly is far greater in those but involves a crap load of variance so wants a backer to avoid the swings.

I like it gl Dale.

Absolutely awesome proposal dale.

All the best.

$20000 is approx 240 goes at step 3 - with standard variance how many step 4 tickets do you think will be won? and again of those tickets how many will be turned into step 5 tickets? and again for step 6?

how can you measure someone's hourly rate when all you are playing for is tickets?

i know you could say if he ends up winning 30 step 5 tickets with the $20000 then that would equate to $21000 but he can't cash them out at this stage

Matt I don't need staking for ordinary SNGs, I'm way over rolled for them and playing them is like printing money for me, all be it slowly.

The steps will have sick sick variance because when it comes down to it most of the money will be won or lost in the Step 6s which are $2,100 SNGs. A coinflip heads up in a step 6 is basically for $11,000. There is a lot of a risk in playing the steps for that reason, I want to make that clear, thats why I'm asking for $20K as a bare minimum, the more money I can throw at the steps starting from step 3 the more I can withstand short term variance.

I can't predict how many tickets I will win at steps 3, 4 etc. over such a small sample size. I make no guarantees. All I can say for certain is that I will play good and have an edge in every game I play, and hopefully that translates into a bunch of step 6 tickets where the cash is.

Remember, with sick variance that doesnt just mean theres a chance I can run bad and lose most of the stake pretty quickly, it also means I could run hot and ship a few Step 6s pretty quickly for a massive profit, works both ways.

cheers

an interesting proposal and i wish you luck - to be honest i don't think i'd ever look at the steps system as a way of trying to make a profit as you can't ever take the cash until the final level.

Do you think that the step 4 and step 5 sit and go's will be that much easier than the regular $200 and $700 sit and go's?

Awesome proposal. Dale could possibly be underseliing himself giving away 14% rake (http://blondepoker.com/redirect.php?id=1)back (http://blondepoker.com/redirect.php?id=1) and 50% of the profits after stakeback.

Although variance is big in these games, I don't see the backer losing too big a chunk of his $20k very often at all. You get the stakeback first after all, so 100% of any of his cashes until he reaches the $20k point.

Some shrewd balla is going to get an excellent deal here.

[ x ] Wish I had a spare $20k under the bed

I was thinkin same.

Good luck Dale hope you get the backing you want.

If this goes down the consortium route save some for me please.

What rate do you reckon you will get the W$ for at the point you cashout?

I am guessing a few people will have the same idea....

Does anyone on blonde know Dale personally? Not a slight on you Dale i would just like to know before possibly giving over 20k.

Flushy, there's a site i know of that sells W$ at 98% and buys at 97%. Perhaps an individual looking to buy into wsop side events thru stars may pay better, but as a sattelite grinder that's the best i've found in recent months.

Ah ok that seems ok, was worried that it might drop if loads of people are trying to sell shit loads of them.

If anyone else is interested in going in with me we could do it all through your or my account to save Dale the admin, i would take $10k's worth.

trading $w should not be a problem, after the WSOP stars runs the WCOOP which uses w$ so there will always be trading activity.
there are sites that have set rates and there is a big thread on 2p2 where individuals can trade $w with each other.

pokerstars just added the 2009 Step 6s to the lobby and they are 6max winner take all SNGs with 3000 chips and 10 minute blinds, the rest of the steps look like the same structure they've always been.
stars still havent sent out emails or updated their wsop faq for 2009 so I'm still waiting for that so I will know what the score is for sure and to make sure the first package can be taken as cash.

tank is right about me underselling myself on this deal but I had to make the deal attractive to backers because of the large risk and large amount of money required, I'm willing to give away a whole chunk of ev so I can take a shot at these, I deffinitely wouldnt play them outwith being staked.

also worth pointing out is that for a month last year stars offered double FPPs for WSOP sats, since I am paying $8 per 1000 FPPs earned to my backer this would effectively be 28% rakeback to the backer during such a promotion, I can't say this promo will run again this year but I have heard that info about a WSOP promo will be announced by pokerstars today so watch out for that.

still waiting for approval to post my offer on 2p2, when I do the offer will be open for a week, after that time I will go with the person(s) willing to put the best/biggest backing behind me and then start to grind the games.

as for references from this forum, I met a lot of you at Blonde Bash 2 in Glasgow, I also know a lot of the glasgow players from when I used to play live poker, I'm sure newmanseye can give me a good character reference since he was invited to my home many times to play in private poker games in the last 4 years.

yes ofcourse, high stakes SNGs have no value anymore as there are very few rich fish playing them, with the steps all sort of idiots manage to work their way up the steps and are effectively forced to play in games that are like 100 times their normal stakes. there will be other good sng grinders at the higher steps but there should be enough fish working their way up to them to give them some pretty good value.

Do you think the 6max format will kill a lot of your edge? Assuming there will always be 3 regs grinding the $2k's it doesn't leave a lot of value.

I hadn't thought about it before now because I really wasn't expecting to see 6max step 6s.

3 regs in a 6max sng is much worse than 3 regs in a 9max sng for sure.

I've asked vip scotty if the normal 9man step 6s will run too, so will wait to see what he says.

Stars servers are rebooting in 10 minutes for some changes, this is outwith the normal wednesday 12pm restart so will probably be to do with the WSOP promotion that's supposed to be announced today. Will see what that brings.

If they are going to only have 6 person step 6s I will have to monitor them for a while and look up stats for everyone playing them so I can judge what the value is, if any, in them. If I don't think there is value I obv won't want to bother with this whole thing.

This winner takes all Step 6 just doesn't look very appealing.
Hopefully they will add something else, do they ever have step 6's for the side events a $1,500 game and $1,500 would be interesting.

Thank you for your email.
 
We will offer the traditional 9-man Step 6 SitnGo for the WSOP as well.
 
As the satellites have just been launched this Step 6 is not yet available
but it will soon be deployed in the lobby.

Stars arent running any sats for any WSOP event other than the ME. Although you can usually buyin to the smaller events with FPPs and $w. I guess the fact that they can't buy you in direct and they have to just deposit the money in your stars account has something to do with that.

they do run steps for stuff like SCOOP and WCOOP which could potentialy turned into cash, steps for stuff like the EPT you have no choice but to play the first seat you win coz stars runs the tournaments and buys you in direct.


Yep, good stuff. Interested to see what the payout structure will be this time, the wsop package is $12K instead of $12.5K this year so the payout of the step 6s will be changed because of that at least. Also interested to see which steps 6s , 6max or 9man go off the most.

lend me $10k flushy

Dales a Good fella James, Deffo trustworthy, knows his stuff and will probably make you a decent return

ty billy

just checked the lobby and there is now a Step 6A which is a 12player sng with a 9player final table that pays 12K packages to 1st and 2nd and nothing to 3rd-12th.

this clearly means more variance than the standard 9man sng that paid 12.5k/1.5k/1.5k/1k/1k/0.5k to top 6 places last year.

makes a big difference to my proposal for sure just because the risk of ruin is likely to be higher.

sighhhhhh.... really wasn't expecitng this especially after stars claimed that the standard 9man step 6 would be running.

also they STILL havent updated their wsop FAQ or sent out an email or anything so I still need confirmation that the first package can be taken as cash (I've seen other smaller sites that only give you a portion of the money like 85% up front and the rest after you've actually signed up and played in the event, stars did pay out the full value of the package last year though)

Also I found out what their big secret wsop promo is, and it's that anyone who wins a package on stars and actually goes to play the event and signs the stars T&Cs (the one that gets you the free hotel package in exchange for wearing a stars logo the whole event) will get 100,000 VPPs added to their account, making them an instant supernova, or if already supernova up to the next milestone bonus. I guess it's their way of actually getting people to play since they have to give you the cash into your account instead of buying you in, so hopefully they don't go down the road of only giving you a % of the value of the package as cash up front like those smaller sites do.

What would the value of supernova be in terms of milestone bonuses etc?

http://www.pokerstars.com/vip/supernova/

OK I've decided not to go ahead with this whole thing.


Two factors:

The structure of the step 6 changing to a 12k/0/0/0/0/0 and a 12k/12k/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0 payout from the previous 12.5k/1.5k/1.5k/1k/1k/0.5k/0/0/0 payout. Higher variance, bigger risk of ruin. Any kind of standard run-bad playing these would cripple even a very large bankroll.

Last year the stars WSOP package was $12.5K, which was $10k cash and $2.5k cash for travel, you got a free hotel for signing stars T&Cs (wearing logo at event) so that ment the whole package could be taken as cash.
This year the stars WSOP pachage is $12K, which is $10K cash, $1K cash for travel and the rest of the value is supposed to be the hotel, shuttle bus and goody bag. This year for signing the T&Cs you get 100,000VPPs added to your account. Basically a $12K package is worth $11K if you're only playing it for the cash and not to play in the event. (think this only applies to the first package, should still get w$12k for the next packages)


Sorry to waste everyone's time with this thread, Stars took way longer than expected to get their WSOP info out this year and I wasn't expecting the above changes, which do make a big difference. Perhaps I should have waited until all the info was out there before making a proposal but I wanted to have everything in place so I could start grinding the games as soon as they started up and not miss out on a week or 2 of value.

That was far from a waste of time.  If nothing else, everyone now has a decent template for future proposals!

It also serves as decent cliff notes for the steps challenge this year.  Whilst I had nothing to do for an hour earlier, I FPP'd a couple of level 1's just to take a look.  Obvioulsy they were so bad they were unbeatable, but I imagine anyone that buys straight in to level 3 is missing out on some amazing stuff that you couldn't make up.

Is it possible Stars will be lobbied to change it back?  Can't imagine this is a good change for the vast majority.

As it stands, presumably you could fade your own variance to level 5 or 6 - so why don't you stockpile a load of tickets to that point on your own dime and then ask someone (or mulitples as it would be decent railing a concenterated effort at level 6 but no interest in level 2)to take a share of your action from there?  that way you can effectively set your exposure to suit, the maths/admin is a lot more simplified and it would be easier to obtain and control backing from the masses.  And you keep your own rakeback :)  Unless I am missing something (quite possible) you could set this up nicely so that effectively the level 6 sats are paying out to you like they were last year.

Thanks Simon. It's a nice idea in theory but the Step 6 has the least value out of all the the steps. Under my original proposal most of the value would have come from the Steps 3/4/5, many many many more of these would have been played than step 6s, even a 0% roi at the step 6's over a big sample size would still make the whole thing mega profitable if beating the Step 3's for 10% roi and the 4's and 5's at any kind of half decent return. Purely selling action for the step 6s, even at 1:1 has such a small edge and high risk for an investor that it's really not worth it. I'm not going to try to sell action to people unless it's a good deal for them, and this wouldn't be. There's also the matter that the first $12K package won can only be taken as $11K in cash this year, which makes the whole thing even more awful.

lol tilts me so hard seeing that six of spade card every time i write "s t e p  6 s"

6`s

i know i was doing that but then forgot halfway through typing lol

Can you not play steps 3 and 4 then use the $215 tickets for a normal sit and go ?

Sandy

Sandy,

Step 4 ticket = $215 so it woulod only be playing the steps 3's
but no, these can only be used to register for the $215 MTTs, scheduled tournaments such as the Sunday Million, can't be taken as t$ or used in SNGs

click on additional options and tick the dont use smileys options

6s 6s 6s 6s Td 3d 4d 3h 2d Jc Jd Jh Qh Kd Kc Kh


see

I should have read it better..

However i was looking to see what they'd do if you had a pile of step 6 tickets and i couldn't see anything so maybe you could use them for other step 6 sats later ?

Still thats enough thought on the matter since you made $30k on don which is sick. That must be quite a few even if you managed a high roi. 15% would be very high over a big sample for those.

Sandy

It is a pity you cant get a bunch of $215 steps and play the $215 double shootout's
If you win your first table you cash from 8th and above - getting $300.00 for 8th $650.00 back for 7th thru 2nd and a seat for 1st.

I have come close a couple of times already but they only have one of these each day.