It may come as a surprise to you, but a large number of tournament poker players – the pros that you see every week on television, not the amateurs who take a flyer on an occasional big buy-in event – are staked. They are playing poker on other people's money, and as a result stand to win only a percentage of what it appears they have won when they make a big score.
In high-low split games, both the highest-ranking and lowest-ranking hands win, though different rules are used to rank the high and low hands. 3 4 Each hand belongs to a category determined by the patterns formed by its cards. If You're Playing With a Backer, How Should Winnings Be Split? April 6, 2009 5 min read. E-mail your poker questions and comments to email protected for use in future columns. This is a discussion on Sharing the winnings in a tournament. Within the online poker forums, in the Tournament Poker section; Last night I reached the final two in a $1.10 Omaha tournament, We. Poker Variants: Split Pot Games This page lists poker games in which the pot is normally shared between two or more winners according to different criteria. Sometimes these are the highest and lowest hand, and sometimes other criteria are used such as highest concealed spade, and so on. In some split pot games the pot is simply shared. I'm using Excel 2002 and need to create a spreadsheet for figuring a way to evenly split prize money at the end of a poker tournament (based on the size of each players chip stack). Let's say there are 5 players left (they all have different amounts of chips left in their stack).
Why do they do this? Aren't these big name pros good enough at poker to make it on their own? The reasons are myriad. But the variance in tournament poker is huge – much bigger than in cash games, and even a good poker player who is probably a winner in the long run can go a very long time without cashing high enough up on the pay ladder to show a profit.
Not only are the swings big in tournament poker, the costs associated with playing are high too. After all, when you play big tournaments in brick-and-mortar casinos, you have to play them where they are, which often means plane fare from your home to the tournament as well as the cost of in a hotel for however long you plan to be there. For someone flying from Europe to Las Vegas to compete in the World Series of Poker, it means factoring in the cost of a hotel, meals, and getting around town in addition to entry fees.
While the top echelon poker players usually don't have to be staked – Doyle Brunson and Phil Ivey, for example, can play on their own money – the tournament players slightly below them really need to minimize the risks of going broke. It's also important to realize that Ivey and Brunson are marvelous cash game players who win millions each year in the day-to-day grind of high stake, cash game poker. But many otherwise good tournament players are lifelong losers in cash games, and do not have the ability to build their tournament bankroll this way. To make a living they have to beat tournaments and avoid cash games.
Being staked is the answer. Other players who have the cash at the time stake players, or others stake them – non-poker playing investors who see a chance to make a score by backing a winning tournament player.
Amateurs who take a piece of someone on a one-time only basis stake some players. You can invest $500 or $1,000 to help your favorite pro buy into a $10,000 buy-in poker tournament and share in the rewards when he cashes in the event. Guys who invested in Greg Raymer when he won the World Series of Poker's main event a few years ago must have felt very happy indeed when he won and his investors collectively reaped a small fortune as a result.
Erik Seidel and John Juanda staked Mike Matusow to a million-dollar payday at the WSOP's main event. Erick Lindgren backed Josh Arieh when he won $2.5 million for third place in the 2004. Billy Baxter invested in the late Stu Ungar during the 1997 WSOP championship, which Ungar won handily.
But being staked usually means one of two things. You are on a makeup deal, or you're not. When you've struck a makeup deal with a backer, you agree to repay him the costs of entry and fees from tournaments where you've failed to cash before winning any money for yourself. The basic staking deal calls for a backer to pay another player's buy-ins and entry fees, then split the winnings only after buy-ins and entry fees are recouped.
Staked players who don't cash for four, five, maybe 10 major events can owe their backer $100,000 or more because buy-ins and entry fees get taken off the top before the winnings are split. When a poker player is in the hole for that kind of money, even if he wins an event he may not see much of a payday. So there's a tendency for players who are on makeup with one backer to terminate that relationship as soon as their agreement is up and find a new backer, where the books are balanced at the outset.
The other kind of arrangement does not involve makeup. Each tournament stands alone, and if the player doesn't cash in three straight events, but wins $50,000 in the fourth event he plays, he would win his share of the $50,000 and not have to worry about paying makeup to a backer.
On first glance it seems like makeup is a better deal for the backer. But maybe not. There is a tendency for the staked player to bolt whenever he is on makeup and in too deep of a hole. Then the backer has no chance of getting back his investment, the player is out on the street, broke or close to it and looking for another backer where he can start at ground zero all over again.
In a deal without makeup, the backer can take a higher percentage of the money his player wins to account for his added investment. In other words, a backer could offer a player a makeup deal where he is playing for 50 percent of himself, or a deal without makeup but the player keeps only 30 percent of his winnings. The backer assumes all the risk related to entry fees, but will come away with more money if his stake horse is a winner.
Backing deals that do not involve makeup also tend to last longer, because the player always starts from square one in each tournament, and doesn't have to climb out of a hole to pay makeup before winning any money for himself.
Playing on other people's money also keeps the staked player free from worry during the tournament itself. When facing a big bet with a strong suspicion that an opponent is bluffing, it's easier to make that call when there are no worries about surviving in this tournament to win enough to play in the next one. When playing on their own limited bankroll, players may tend to fold that hand because mere survival often becomes more compelling than a desire to win.
Rather than having a single investor stake him for one tournament and risk losing that entire stake, some players develop an investment portfolio of sorts. They might map out ten or 20 events, figure the cost to enter all of them, then sell shares to investors or other players. This method hedges against bad runs and short-term variance. The drawback is a lot of bookkeeping and communicating with backers. But for a winning poker player, this might be the best staking method, since it doesn't involve digging one's self into the makeup hole, nor does it run the risk of burning up a backer due to a short term run of bad cards. This method also avoids giving a single backer a sense of ownership over the player.
But is staking ethical, or is it a potential conflict of interest that threatens the public's fascination with big buy-in tournament poker if one player backs another? Whenever another who is also playing the same tournament backs a player, the appearance of a conflict of interest can raise its ugly head.
Suppose an investor and his horse wind up at the same poker table, or perhaps two players backed by the same investor are squaring off against one another? Will one player dump chips off to another for the investor's benefit? While it's possible, the penalties for this type of collusion, including a lifetime expulsion from tournament poker events, serve as deterrents.
Nevertheless, the appearance of collusion can be as damaging as collusion itself. While poker has experienced incredibly rapid growth worldwide, it hasn't consolidated those gains to the point where it can survive a big collusion scandal. Tournament directors have the added job of ensuring that their events are clean, and that includes a game free of players influenced or directed by financial backers.
If you're looking for a stake, don't expect it to be easy. First, you've got to be a winning player, otherwise why would anyone take a flyer on you? In addition, most investors want to have some sort of relationship with you. This is a character and trust issue. If you cannot be trusted, if your character is called into question, backers won't touch you. Backing can also provide a measure of prestige. If you were to be backed by Phil Ivey, it conveys a large amount of status and prestige.
If you're exclusively an online poker player then backing is a tougher nut to crack. Building relationships is more difficult online and there's little real chance to get to know players who are, for the most part, merely screen names to their playing peers. It's tough to assess someone's character and trustworthiness unless you interact with them in person.
Nevertheless, players who meet others in live poker games and brick-and-mortar tournaments can easily build relationships that extend over into the virtual world. If you develop a relationship with a backer or a group of them, there's no reason why you can't be backed for online poker tournaments too. One of the added benefits of online backing arrangements, is that your backer can always watch and assess the quality of your play, regardless of whether you cash in a given event or not. If you play well, your backer will know it. If you win money but play poorly, your backer will know that too, and he may well want to get out while the getting is good.
The bottom line is that being staked offers skilled players who do not have a big bankroll an opportunity to play in events they otherwise couldn't afford, and maybe a chance to earn more money than they could if they played on their own dime in smaller events. The drawback is that you don't keep all of what you win. It's entirely a case of circumstances, and this is a decision you'll ultimately have to make on your own.
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By Lou Krieger
The author of many best-selling poker books, including 'Hold'em Excellence' and 'Poker for Dummies'. A true ambassador of the game and one of poker's greatest ever teachers.
That reminds me, Lou, ah, there's a question I've been meaning to ask you…
I'd never be backed, I prefer to keep all my profits. Of course, I'm not sure anyone would want to stake me to begin with so the point is moot.
Lou, two things:
1. Do you really think there are many winning tourney players who lose at cash games? Perhaps, those 'winning tourney players' are really losing tourney players who experienced a temporary friendly side of variance during a few tournies.2. How can you possibly argue that any tourney player can overcome high variance in the long run when you also have to factor in the tourney fees and expenses that keep adding up along way combined with the coin-flip nature of the vast majority of confrontations. You see…it's perfectly demonstratable that a high variance is a result of a very small edge any player can have against another(as a result of the coinflipping). So, if anyone has a very small edge, how can they expect to cover the fees which are always 10% or larger? It can't be done. Sure…there are some people who have an unfair variance for a while, some of have temporary pscyhological advantage of a recent win, but long term there are only those who get sponsorships. Selling stakes is merely good for the house as it keeps a maximum number of addicts in action while they continue to fee off their roll to the house.
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Most video poker variants include a single special feature that distinguishes it from other games. This feature in Split Card Poker is that 2 cards can occupy a single spot on the screen. This (naturally) improves your probability of getting a good hand.
The 2 cards that occupy this individual spot are called 'Split Cards'. They're always suited, of the same rank, or of adjacent ranks. As with most of these variants, you activate this special feature by doubling the number of coins you're betting on each hand.
How to Play Split Card Poker
All video poker games share certain gameplay features, which are explained in detail on our main video poker page. They're almost all variants of 5 card draw. You place a bet of between 1 and 5 coins on your hand, then you're dealt 5 cards.
This is followed by the opportunity to discard between 0 and 5 cards. (In other words, you can keep or discard any combination of cards.) You're dealt replacements for the cards you've discarded, and then you get paid off based on a pay table which is organized by the standard ranking of poker hands.
One tip we share on every page we write doesn't change:
When you bet 5 coins on a hand, you trigger a higher payout on the royal flush. It pays off at 250 to 1 if you bet 1, 2, 3, or 4 coins, but it pays off at 800 to 1 if you bet 5 coins.
Split Card Poker is a multi-play video poker game. In these games, you're able to play multiple hands at once. The initial hand is the same on all lines, but the replacement cards are dealt independently for the additional lines. If you bet 1-5 coins, Split Card Poker machines play just like a standard game.
Betting 10 coins per line triggers the 'Split Card' functionality. Your wins are still paid off as if you'd bet 5 coins, though—the extra 5 coins just trigger the bonus feature. You don't get to choose which card becomes the Split Card, either—the computer does that for you. Here's how that works:
The computer chooses a card at random from your initial hand or from your hand after drawing. That becomes the Split Card. The 2nd card is in the same suit as the original card, and it's either the same rank or an adjacent rank.
Example
You're dealt 5 cards, and the queen of spades is chosen as the Split Card. The 2nd card in that position is also the queen of spades. But it could just as easily be the jack of spades of the king of spades. This increases the probability of a flush, a straight, or another high-paying hand. The probability of getting each of those variations is the same.
It's possible that you could wind up with a hand that would qualify for multiple rankings on the pay table. If that happens, you get paid for the highest of those hands. You don't get paid for each of them.
One of the other things that a lot of these newer video poker variants have in common is that they're really just older video poker games with a bonus feature added to them. These bonus features are optional and usually require you to pony up some extra coins in order to activate them. The original game that has the extra feature added to it is called 'the base game'.
Split Card Poker is available in the following base game versions:
- Deuces Wild
- Double Double Bonus Poker
- Joker Poker
- Super Aces Bonus Poker
- Super Double Bonus Poker
- Triple Double Bonus Poker
The pay tables and returns for these games all work the same way until you factor in the Split Card. But since we don't have detailed, accurate information about how likely it is to get a Split Card on a hand, it's impossible to calculate how it affects the payback percentage.
You can visit the appropriate page for each base game to get the payback percentage for the various pay tables. Most video poker games have a 95% or higher payback percentage. The best games have a payback percentage of 98% or more. Of course, that assumes you're playing with perfect strategy.
We're sure there are strategy adjustments that need to be made to account for the Split Card option, but we're not entirely sure what they are or how to calculate them. Our usual go-to source for this kind of information is Michael Shackleford's site, and he does offer a detailed analysis of the game there. But he had no strategy advice to share there.
We can share some general strategy advice, though. It helps to have some card sense. If you know that there's a 1/47 chance of filling a draw, you can calculate the expected value of drawing to that hand versus standing on a pat hand that might not pay as well.
Example
You're dealt a hand with a pair of jacks. But it's also a 4 card draw to a royal flush. If you hang on to the jacks, you have a 100% chance of getting at least even money. You also have a 2/47 (or 1 in 23.5) of drawing to a 3 of a kind. You might also improve to some other hands, like 2 pairs, 4 of a kind, or a full house. The payouts for all of those are low compared to the payoff if you hit the royal flush. If you draw to it, you win 800 to 1. You'd rather have a 1 in 47 chance of getting an 800 credit win than you would a 100% chance of getting even money.
All of these strategy insights apply to Split Poker as well as to regular video poker.
Split Poker is one of the more interesting twists on regular video poker. It's just one wrinkle tacked onto one of the more traditional base games. It's also a game where the bonus feature's exact effect on the payback percentage is a little unclear.
Poker Winnings Split Numbers
It's probably worth trying for the novelty of it, but we doubt it's going to become a mainstay of your gambling hobby.
