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Thread: Greg Raymer (again) proposes lousy staking deal on YouStake

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Greg Raymer (again) proposes lousy staking deal on YouStake

    First off, recall two years ago when Raymer was first asking for a stake. He used to be staked in many events by Pokerstars, but since getting fired, he has been left to play on his own bankroll. From all looks of it, it appeared he was cash broke, despite a good 2012 where he ran up nearly $400,00 in cashes between July and November. However, note that Raymer was dropped as a pro in late 2011, so he was playing all of that (and all tournaments in late 2013) either on his own dime or backers' dimes, and he may have entered a shitload of high buyin tournaments. So, as always, $400k cashed doesn't meant $400k won (or anything won).

    Here is the 2014 thread: http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...-Needs-A-Stake

    Now in 2016, he's at it again:

    https://www.youstake.com/projects/gr...ent-cash-play/

    So it's basically the same crappy deal, but this time slightly worse because it involves a commission on YouStake.

    The terms of the 2014 deal:
    - Raymer collects $80k worth of stake money, puts in $20k of his own money
    - Raymer uses the $100k to enter a "variety of tournaments and cash games"
    - When the stake is over (the timeline wasn't made clear), he pays himself 40% off the top, then gives 80% of the remaining money to the investors (since he supposedly bought 20% of himself to start).


    The terms of the 2016 deal:
    - Raymer collects $50k worth of stake money on the YouStake site, puts in $20k of his own money and $30k from "outside investors"
    - Raymer uses the $100k to enter tournaments throughout 2016
    - When 2016 concludes, he pays himself 40% off the top, then gives 80% of the remaining money to the investors (since he supposedly bought 20% of himself to start).
    - The staker also loses 5% of his original buyin, as that's YouStake's fee

    So the differences in 2016 are the 5% YouStake fee, as well as the fact that this stake is more defined (a full year, tournaments only), rather than 2014 where he was just entering a "variety of cash games and tournaments" (lol). Also he has already found suckers to invest 30k from outside of YouStake.

    Anyway, you're basically getting a 57/43 staking deal (after the awful 5% fee from YouStake).

    Or, simply put, he's seeding $20k into it himself, and then playing with a $100k roll and keeping 52% of the profits.

    I don't believe his line about "marriage EV" in that his wife gets nervous when he loses. If he is successful at what he does (he claimed in 2014 that he had won every single year he played, for over 20 years), his wife wouldn't care about temporary ups and downs.

    Obviously he's (still) broke or cash poor.

    Not sure if he also did this in 2015 (he probably did), but in the past 3 years, he cashed $31k (2013), $81k (2014), and $44k (2015), which have to all be losing years given the heavy tournament schedule he plays (and the fact that he claims he needs $100k to play per year).

    Also laughable that he's using YouStake for this, and isn't allowing bigger investors simply to just send him money directly and avoid the crappy 5% fee. I can understand using YouStake for the people who want to invest $105 but LOL at anyone investing $1000 or more and paying 5%.

    (EDIT: There is a BIG problem I discovered, which dwarfs any of the above. Scroll down for more info!)

     
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      ShawnFanningsLimpDick: Shouldn't his wife be more nervous about him banging hookers?

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    Gold Suicide King's Avatar
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    I as him at thunder Valley trying to get a 1-2 dealers choice game. Confirmed busto.

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    Plutonium sonatine's Avatar
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    "Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness." - Alejandro Jodorowsky

    "America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers." -- William S. Burroughs

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    Plutonium sonatine's Avatar
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    literally
    "Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness." - Alejandro Jodorowsky

    "America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers." -- William S. Burroughs

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    Plutonium Brittney Griner's Clit's Avatar
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    So are you guys still saying he wasn't one of the Bonomo 3

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    lol Fossilman

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    PFA Emeritus Crowe Diddly's Avatar
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    He used to be into stakes way back in rgp days, I think I remember reading about that long ago when he was always at foxwoods or whatever.

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    I just thought of a potentially big problem here.

    The 20% he bought of himself could be a freeroll and a way to extract another 12% out of any money won.

    This is because we see no proof of the 20k self-investment, and we won't know if he really invested it unless he finishes more than 80k down for the year. And he can avoid that by simply playing a lighter schedule at the end of 2016 in order to avoid losing more than 80k!

    So this looks realllllly shady.

    He should not be able to buy pieces of himself in such a stake, because it potentially corrupts the whole process. The only exception would be if he was entering a single $100k tournament, which he's not.

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    How much of himself did he have when he hit the big score?

    Say 2.5m total after taxes about 11 years ago.

    How in the FUCK can you possibly go broke if u even had 50% of yourself?

    It aint like he is a dumb n-word and went and blew it all on a grill and a bunch of dumb shit. (Although hookers and blow is definitely a distinct possibility)

    Fucking degens.

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    Welcher jsearles22's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
    I just thought of a potentially big problem here.

    The 20% he bought of himself could be a freeroll and a way to extract another 12% out of any money won.

    This is because we see no proof of the 20k self-investment, and we won't know if he really invested it unless he finishes more than 80k down for the year. And he can avoid that by simply playing a lighter schedule at the end of 2016 in order to avoid losing more than 80k!

    So this looks realllllly shady.

    He should not be able to buy pieces of himself in such a stake, because it potentially corrupts the whole process. The only exception would be if he was entering a single $100k tournament, which he's not.
    Furthermore his "outside investors" may not exist

     
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      Dan Druff: Good point
    It's hilarious that we as a society think everyone can be a dr, a lawyer, an engineer. Some people are just fucking stupid. Why can't we just accept that?

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    don't understand the hate for Raymer

    he earned that bracelet

    most capable NLHE player to win the WSOP imo

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    Plutonium Brittney Griner's Clit's Avatar
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    My friend had a piece of Raymer's main event that he sold of 2+2. Raymer payed promptly.

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    Platinum garrett's Avatar
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    Druff its Greg Raymer, seriously like what are you doing here. The guy wasnt a dope before his lucky WSOP Main run, so this is like the least likely dude in poker you should be going in on. Let alone being allowed to be SEO'd on a poker and fraud site...

    Raymer, seriously???

    I would think he really is a pure poker player at the core. And not some pompous young prick, who often populate these types of sites and the game, thinking they are by default better than so many others which is pure bullshit....

    Lay off Raymer the guy does get a bad deal imo, and probably never needed poker to live a half way decent life anyway.

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    Plutonium sonatine's Avatar
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    So... garrett containment thread maybe?
    "Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness." - Alejandro Jodorowsky

    "America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers." -- William S. Burroughs

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    Oh I missed the other 2.4m he apparently won since WSOP win.

    A lot has happened to him in 10 years since he bested David Williams in a dramatic heads-up duel to win the gold bracelet and $5 million in prize money. For one thing, he was able to quit his job as a patent lawyer for Pfizer and devote himself full-time to the game that he had once considered mainly a lucrative hobby. He then followed up his WSOP championship by finishing 25th out of 5,619 entrants in the Main Event the next year, an almost unprecedented feat. His other poker accomplishments since include a near $800,000 third-place finish in the $40,000 No-Limit Hold'em event at the WSOP in 2009, a World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) bracelet worth $168,362 in 2007, a record four first-place finishes on the Heartland Poker Tour in 2012, and lifetime tournament poker earnings of over $7.4 million.
    Gay prostitute sex must be fucking expensive.

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    I don't think Raymer is going to outright cheat people. That is, if he cashes, he will pay what he agreed to pay.

    I'm saying that this whole thing is already a pretty bad deal on the surface (a 57/43 staking deal for a guy who has lost 3 years in a row), and the "20% buying myself and 30% outside investors" thing looks really suspect, and is perhaps a way to freeroll investors for a larger percentage of payout for himself.

    If the 20k "self investment" doesn't exist, and if the 30k outside investors don't exist, then in reality Raymer is getting 70% payout on all profits, while risking nothing. And the investors won't even be getting 30%, because the also lost that money off the top due to fees.

    I'm not saying I'm certain that the 20k and 30k don't exist, but as long as he stays under a 50k loss for 2016, we will never know. Since yearlong poker results are a combination of wins and losses (even a terrible year has some wins), he can just keep playing and start to lighten the schedule (or play lower) in order to keep the loss under 50k.

    This is a HUGE flaw in his model, and can be gamed by him incredibly easily.

    This cannot happen in traditional staking, because there is one staker, and that person physically provides the money to play with. So if the staker has 60/40, he hands money to the player prior to each tournament played, and then takes 60% of whatever is cashed, leaving the player with 40%. Then for the next tournament, the staker provides the entire buyin again.

    But here you're staking him up front for an unspecified number of tournaments played throughout 2016, and as long as he doesn't end up losing 50k or more overall, he could be paying you just 30% (before fees) of your piece, and you'll have no way to verify what's been happening.

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    Quote Originally Posted by NaturalBornHustler View Post
    How much of himself did he have when he hit the big score?

    Say 2.5m total after taxes about 11 years ago.

    How in the FUCK can you possibly go broke if u even had 50% of yourself?

    It aint like he is a dumb n-word and went and blew it all on a grill and a bunch of dumb shit. (Although hookers and blow is definitely a distinct possibility)

    Fucking degens.
    $2.5M at 50% is $1.25M then uncle sam gets like 40% and the good ol' state of CT gets like 5% or something close...so it's "only" $600-700K to his hand 11 years ago...that ain't a lot of dough over an 11 year period if you're playing a bunch of WPTs, high buy-in events etc...he obviously had stars footing a good chunk of that bill, but once that money goes and you get variance cramming it up your ass in high buy-in tourneys it's not surprising...

     
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      NaturalBornHustler: you apparently missed the 2.5m...AFTER TAXES part

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Let me show you how absurd this is.

    Let's say I went completely busto, but none of you were aware of that.

    And let's say that I came up with an aggressive plan to enter big tournaments, but estimated I would need a $500k roll this year to be able to play such tournaments. I am not providing a specific schedule nor justifying the need for $500k. I just say that I need $500k, and I am selling pieces to accomplish that.

    Then before it all begins, I claim that I am buying $200k of myself (40%), and got my dad to put up another $200k (40%). So all I really need is 20%, which I offer to sell to people on PFA.

    I promise to pay you 60% of all profits on your piece.

    So a bunch of you on the forum collectively buy $100k from me, for the "final" 20%.

    In reality, I do not have $200k, nor did my dad give me a penny.

    In reality, my bankroll is $100k, which you chumps sent me.

    I then hit the tournament trail, playing a variety of $2500, $5000, $10000, and $15000 events. If I start off well, then I'm playing with profit, and my lack of $400k behind will never be known.

    If I start off losing, I cool down my schedule to where I never am $100k in the red, claiming not to want to travel, feigning illness, claiming not to like the field of the bigger buyin events, etc.

    So if I finish the year losing $98k, I return the remaining $2k to you guys, and have lost zero of my own money.

    If I somehow do well and win $500k, you guys are only entitled to $60k of that (since you only bought "20%", and I'm taking 40% off the top), and I keep the other $440k to pay both myself for my agreed upon 40%, along with the phony pieces that I pretended to buy for myself and my dad.

    So basically you will have put up my entire bankroll and taken all the risk, and yet find yourself entitled to just 12% of my winnings, while I keep 88% of the winnings.

    Seriously, that is exactly what I could pull off in such a scenario. This is what Raymer could be doing on a smaller scale.

    This is a HUGE issue.

    The only way to combat this is for a third party to collect all the money up front (so it's clear the money invested by Raymer and his "outside investors" is real), and then for a proper tournament schedule to be set which actually requires a 100k bankroll (which means way more than just 100k of tournaments, where it's agreed that if the roll is busted, Raymer just stops playing and the stake is over).

    You can't just collect 50k, claim that the other 50k came from you and other investors, not provide a schedule or proof of your own investment, and then keep 50% of the investor's share of the 60% they're supposed to get. That's what Raymer's doing.

     
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      MumblesBadly: Solid exposition of the fraud risk.

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    Bronze BuSTMeANuT's Avatar
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    His response from the 22 thread:

    http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...3/index17.html

    Greg (FossilMan)
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    Re: Greg Raymer posts $105k package on YouStake for 2016
    There has been some criticism of the 5% YouStake fee in this thread, which I would like to address.

    Many regular staking investors are used to backing online players. The edges there are very thin, with smart investors hoping for returns of just a few percentage points on their investment. Of course, if you can get an average return of 3-8% on your money in a period of a few weeks, rinse and repeat, you are earning quite a lot by the end of the year. But if you add in a 5% fee, the whole thing now becomes a losing proposition.

    But smart investing in live play offers much higher rates of return. Even when a player is selling at a markup of 1.2, it is possible that he has an edge in that live field of 1.5 or higher. Part of the disadvantage of investing in live play involves issues that YouStake solves. YouStake handles all the money movement, so while you pay their fee, you do not also pay any transaction fees to PayPal or anybody else, which is sometimes an issue.

    You don't have to worry about a player taking your money and not playing the event, i.e., straight up stealing from you. When you buy $1000 of action in a WSOP event, YouStake doesn't just give the money to the player, they give that money directly to the casino on the player's behalf. Then, if the player cashes, the money goes from the casino to YouStake, not through the player again. So now you are guarded against a stealing player.

    The site offers a convenient forum for the players and investors to communicate regarding each event. There are contracts in place, electronically signed by player and investor, so there is specific documentation should there be any reason to involve legal action. The concern about tax reporting is now taken care of for both player and investor. In a private transaction, the player gets paid in full by the casino, with reporting of that amount to the tax authority, and then has to distribute shares to investors. Come tax time, what if the tax authority doesn't believe the player? What if the investor now claims he didn't get a piece? YouStake gets the winnings from the casino, pays out the proper amounts to player and investors, and documents exactly how much each has received for tax purposes.

    And while YouStake charges that 5% fee, that is on the front-end only. They get nothing more, or less, based upon the results of the play. So while it is very possible that the 5% fee will make a difference in your investing decision, it's not just a sunk cost, but provides tremendous value in exchange.

    Thanks, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

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    isn't the markup on this like 1.43 or something absurd like that when everything is said and done?

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