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!)