PartTimePoker hosts one of the industry’s leading staking sites. It matches low-stakes and high-stakes poker players with some of the industry’s top backers. Coming off a highly-successful 2008 World Series of Poker showing, the founder of PartTimePoker, Chris Grove, spoke with Poker News Daily about the challenges of running a staking site in today’s online poker world.
Poker News Daily: What is PartTimePoker?
Grove: I started PartTimePoker about five years ago. I had been playing online for a few months and was frustrated by the lack of useful information out there for intermediate and beginning players. Back then, there were a lot more affiliate-driven websites. Those exist alongside community sites like TwoPlusTwo and PocketFives today. I decided to make a website that I would want to use. PartTimePoker started as a strategy and review site for players who played part-time. The site has since morphed into offering propping and rakeback. It’s more content-driven as well. We acquired NeverBeg, a major staking site, in February of 2007.
PND: Explain the allure of staking. Why do players do it and what effect does it have on their games?
Grove: The allure has changed. When we first started offering staking, PartTimePoker was a much smaller site than it is now. It was more about forging a community. It’s fun to have a rooting interest in other people and we provided a way to do it.
From a player’s perspective, one of the reasons it was called NeverBeg was that it was a place for people who were broke and needed money to find funding. Now, the allure is a lot more straight-forward. For players looking to reduce variance, they can do so on the site. For the backers who visit PartTimePoker, we have an impressive lineup of players. If you invest wisely, you can get a good return on your money.
PND: How does the staking process work on PartTimePoker?
Grove: Overall, we have two outlets. One is called “staking.” The other is called “buy a piece.” Staking is backer-initiated. A backer will say that he has a certain amount of money and is looking for someone to use it. Players will reply in a thread and then the backer selects who they want. In buy a piece, players post a part of their action that they’re looking to sell and set a share price. Backers can purchase however many shares they want to.
PND: Talk about the accolades of some of your players who have been staked.
Grove: We had a very good showing at the 2008 World Series of Poker. It was a breakout year for us. We had three players who were staked make final tables. One was in the Razz event and two players final tabled separate $1,500 buy-in Hold’em events. Those three cashes were worth around $500,000 total. The site had over a quarter of a million dollars in backing for the WSOP. It’s a pretty good amount of money for an online backing site and provided a good return for our investors.
PND: How do you find backers? What’s he allure for them of staking, especially when they assume risk?
Grove: If you’re a good player, you’re giving up a potential payout by accepting backing. I’m a winning player and so to give up any action is sacrificing some of my would-be winnings. Variance has driven the relationship. Anyone who has knowledge of poker knows that there’s variance involved. From the player’s perspective, it’s about smoothing out variance.
PND: How has the recent poker boom changed the staking industry? What do you see as its future?
Grove: Backing definitely has a fairly permanent place in poker. It has had a very long history and I don’t see it going anyway anytime soon. People are naturally risk averse. They’re willing to give up a part of their earnings if it gets them some peace of mind.
PND: What measures are there to protect against bad business?
Grove: Online poker gives backers a really unique opportunity to track the play of people that they’re backing. Before, if you gave someone a couple hundred dollars, you were going out on a flier because you couldn’t review exactly how they were going to play. Now, you can track results. Whenever you have more information at your fingertips, you’re going to have more confidence and interest in investing.
It’s certainly a leap of faith to transfer money over the internet to someone and then expect them to follow through. We’re limited in what we can do. I can’t go over to the police department and ask them to arrest someone. A lot of what we do is predicated on blocking access to the site. We’re in contact with other staking sites. We’re in regular contact with online poker rooms like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. We keep a lot of information on our players and use it if there are any problems in order to prohibit them from doing it the future. The best deterrent is to make PartTimePoker a place where the benefit of being able to pocket a few hundred dollars isn’t worth it.