It’s one of the dirty little secrets that the casual poker fan knows little to nothing about but that veterans of the tournament poker world are well versed in. Staking, in which a person provides a portion of another player’s tournament buy-in (or, in some cases, a cash game stake) for a percentage return should that person cash in the tournament, has been around almost as long as there’s been cards and chips. Now National Public Radio (NPR) is delving into the world of poker staking through the eyes of one of its more successful “investors.”
NPR reporter Keith Romer was able to enter the tournament poker staking world while interviewing Derek Wolters, who has been able to earn $493,726 in his six years of tournament poker play (in fact, he most recently finished in sixth place at the World Poker Tour’s Rolling Thunder event in California). While Wolters has that decent resume, he makes most of his money in staking other players into tournaments. The discussion between Romer and Wolters looks back at the 2012 World Series of Poker, Wolters’ participation in that tournament and how he won without even playing at the final table.
Romer notes that, like the 6597 other people, Wolters had ponied up his $10,000 for entry into the tournament. What his opponents didn’t know was that, even after Wolters was eliminated (“You lose the last of your chips and just, like, do the walk of shame out of the poker room,” Wolters commented to Romer), he still was in the event and eligible for a part of the more than $62 million prize pool, especially the $8.5 million-plus for the first place finisher. Wolters ticked off the online poker monikers of the players who he had at least five percent (5%) of that were playing in the tournament after his elimination.
By the time that Wolters is through reciting the names, Romer notes that Wolters had a piece of 12 players total, all based on a handshake and without any official (or legally binding) contracts between each other. It would have been nice if Romer had followed up on this with some other questions, but instead the conversation moved into another area.
One of the 12 players that Wolters had a piece of included one guy who was actually, according to Romer, sleeping on the couch at Wolters’ home. “I don’t know who first said it,” remembered Jake Balsiger, “but one of them was like, yeah, you know, I’ll take ten percent. And we all said like, yeah, I’ll take, you know, 10 or 15.” By the time that Wolters and his compatriots were finished, Balsiger had his $10,000 buy in and was in the tournament.
Romer notes that Wolters did get a nice payback for his investments. Two of his players eked into the money on Day 4 and another would be eliminated on Day 5, but Balsiger kept on going. Balsiger’s run would eventually end at the final table, where he would be eliminated in third place for a $3,799,073 payday. After the stakers were paid off, Balsiger only walked away with about $700,000 of that chunk of cash. As for Wolters? He took down a $600,000 bounty despite not even playing a hand at the final table.
When Romer asks Wolters if he’s a better poker player or an investor, Wolters says, “I’m definitely a better investor, I think. There’s a lot of really good poker players. But there’s not that many people who do as much investing as me.”
The Romer story about Wolters and Balsiger does present the “good side” of the poker staking business, with both men happy with the arrangement and all sides settled at the end of the day. What isn’t brought up by Romer are the potential pitfalls of staking. One only has to look back a few years prior to Balsiger’s 2012 run to see how this works.
In 2006, Jamie Gold stormed his way to poker’s World Championship, earning the largest payday in the history of the WSOP Championship Event of $12 million. As soon as Gold hit the cage, however, one of his associates claimed that he was owed half of Gold’s winnings per a verbal agreement the twosome had before the Championship Event began. After a great deal of mudslinging that eventually brought about lawsuits, the two sides eventually settled out of court, but the ugly side had been exposed. Other incidents have come up over the past couple of years, with the players doing the staking taking the route of “outing” those they have staked over social media when they don’t pay their debts.
The story shows that there can still be good outcomes in staking, even in a handshake deal between two people. But there’s still something to be said for having it in writing…
