In the world of poker, one thing that many never have a chance to do is get involved in “staking” a player in a tournament. “Staking” – the act of providing part of the buy in for a player and receiving a percentage of what said player earns from that particular tournament/s – for quite some time has been the domain of those with good skills at spotting talented players and who happen to have a little extra money to put towards the talented player’s efforts. With a new online site, the ability for even the “Average Joe” to stake a top professional poker player has finally come to life.
StakeKings (formerly known as Global Poker Link) has been around since late in 2015. On the site, players such as Brian Rast, Jonathan Little and Xuan Liu have put pieces of themselves from the biggest online tournaments in the game on the market for “backers” to buy. When these players have success in a tournament – whether online or live – those backers earn back their initial stake plus their percentage of the winnings. PokerNewsDaily was able to talk to the founder of StakeKings, Scott Silvi, to find out more about the operation and just where it might be going over the next year.
PokerNewsDaily: Where did the idea for Stake Kings come from?
Scott Silvi: StakeKings was created as a merger between two companies in August of 2015. ChipStarter, founded by myself and Justin Knutson, was a mobile app designed to enhance the live poker experience – handling swaps, buying / selling action, last longers and other situations. Tyler Hancock, a longtime poker affiliate kingpin, had been running PokerBrokers for several years, a curated matchmaking site designed to pair elite pros with backers. The three of us met in Las Vegas in June of 2015, and quickly realized a shared vision for the future of our products and industry.
PND: What reasons might someone have for staking one or more of the players on Stake Kings?
SS: I think there are a lot of reasons why people might join our site to back pros. Of course there’s the potential for profit – we just had one guy turn $150 into more than $6000 on our site buying action in just two different packages. Beyond that, though, I think our model allows for a type of engagement that has never really existed before.
The hole cam gave us the ability to play “arm-chair quarterback”, analyzing and second guessing the decisions made by our favorite pros on television. With many of our pros streaming live on Twitch, you not only get to see their hole cards, but you actually get to listen to the rationale and thought process behind the decisions they’re making. As a regular backer on our site myself, I can tell you that those flips deep in a big event get the heart racing – even if I only have 1% or 2%.
Also, me and millions of other U. S. residents are unable to play on PokerStars. I long to be able to play the Sunday Million again, but cannot. Having a chance to have a sweat in 4 or 5 pros who are all significantly more +EV than I am is a pretty sweet deal.
We’ll be releasing some incredible engagement experiences for live sweats as well, as we move into the second half of 2016.
PND: Do you strictly stick with online tournaments or will there be/is there a live tournament element also?
SS: We offer both. Our original go-to-market strategy focused almost exclusively on elite pros streaming on Twitch. As our platform matured, and our base of pros widened, we’ve started to see a healthy mix of both. We’ve sold for the Aussie Millions, several WPT / EPT events, have multiple packages up for the WSOP. We even have Brian Rast selling 5% of his $300K Super High Roller Bowl coming up at the end of May.
PND: Who are some of the players that are taking part in the staking action with the site?
SS: We’ve had several dozen pros post on our site. Some of the bigger names include Brian Rast, Jonathan Little, Chris “Big Huni” Hunichen, Parker “Tonkaaaap” Talbot, Christina Lindley, Jeff Gross, Dylan Hortin, Rupert Elder and Xuan Liu. Dylan Hortin was an early investor in the product, and Jeff Gross joined our team in January to head up our Pro Acquisition team.
PND: How difficult is it to get the staked players to offer up pieces for sale on the site?
SS: We’ve been very successful at recruiting elite talent to our marketplace. A big part of this was signing Jeff Gross, aka “Professional Best Friend”, as our Director of Pro Acquisition. Jeff pairs his incredible passion for poker with a very strong network of top pros. He’s been instrumental in opening doors and generating conversations with top players.
We are very particular about who we allow to sell action on our site – as members of the poker community ourselves, we understand that not every venture that has come out of this industry has been created by people with high integrity. We are not interested in working with pros who have left black marks in the poker world. We are not interested in jamming affiliate deals down the throats of our users, potentially tarnishing the names of those pros who do sell action on our site. In fact, we recently took down our last affiliate partnership deal off our site, as it adds almost no value to any of the users on our site – instead is only designed to line the pockets of the sites owners. I think our pros recognize these things, and understand that we are here to work with them.
We also offer several different value propositions to pros – from reducing variance, moving up levels, or engaging with their fan base. We also pioneered what we term the “Multi-way Auction” – where pros can auction off pieces to multiple backers, and in turn prospective buyers place bids on the markups they’ll pay for pieces of action. As a result, markups are market-driven, which has produced markups never really seen at this scale.
StakeKings is also a full VIP service – we handle all the support questions, deposits, withdrawals, payouts, refunds, etc. If you’re playing in 18 events on a Sunday, the last thing you want to do is track the 80 people who bought action in the three packages you posted for the day – to make sure they paid, to issue refunds for events you elected not to play, or rebuys for events you didn’t use, or to issue payouts if you cashed in your package events.
PND: For online poker, there are usually online promotions that are used to promote the product. What promotions can you put together to draw in people to participate in the action on Stake Kings?
SS: This is an area where we are constantly evolving and testing new ideas to see what really gets the pro and backer excited. Thus far we have had several leader board promotions that included cash prizes and entry into tournaments on various sites. Points were awarded for most pieces purchased and our most recent one was to see which backer could accumulate the most winnings over a set period of time. Another promotion even offered backers the chance to play Dylan Hortin heads-up live on his stream. Giving fans the chance to play against one of their poker hero’s proved to be a great engagement opportunity for the fans and pros alike. We’ve also had some bonuses for the stakers that give them $20 when they buy 10 pieces of action on our site.
PND: What are the immediate plans for the future with Stake Kings?
SS: Overall, our focus for the rest of 2016 is on driving engagement amongst backers on our site, as well as between backers and pros. While we went to market as a poker staking website, we really think of ourselves as an engagement and entertainment company. We are already working on the next generation of our platform, which we are really excited about. We’re also in talks right now with a lot of interesting parties – some of the top pros in the world, some intriguing strategic partners … lots more to come this year.
PND: Where do you see Stake Kings at this point next year?
SS: With really strong early growth numbers, a very active pipeline of elite pros, partners, and board members, we have positioned ourselves really well out of the starting gate. With the next generation of our platform, we will continue to come up with exciting and innovative ways to get the most out of a sweat. Continually pushing the envelope to prove to our pros, backers and the poker community that we, truly are, Stake Kings.
To check out the action that StakeKings has, be sure to visit their website. Perhaps you might be the next big “staker” of one of poker’s best professionals.
