Home / Poker News October 2012 / Poker Staking With Jason Mercier
Poker Staking With Jason Mercier
Posted by: Randy Williams - Mon, 2012-10-15 09:23
Most of the rank and file
online poker players are in awe of the pros, who play in some of the largest buy-in live poker events world over, while crushing the nosebleed stakes tables online and turning over what could possibly amount to the national budget of a tiny country every month. Sure they’re winning and generally successful online too, but sometimes nasty bad beats happen and these guys seem to just take everything in stride, like they’re printing money. Where do they get that much dough though?
The funny thing is, many times the winners and deep finishers of big live
poker tournaments do not play on their own bankroll. They get staked by other players and by pundits who specialize in staking them. Why would somebody stake a player? In return for a nice profit of course, in case the staked player goes on to win or cash big. In the world of high stakes poker, such staking arrangements are extremely common. Some high rollers like Jason Mercier play and back other people in different events too. Just think about an event like an EPT stop: there’s a lot going on and one can’t really play in all the events he/she would like to. Some of the high profile “stakers” have whole stables they finance. Mercier for instance has been known to buy players like Brent Hanks, Dan O’Brien and Allen Bari into tournaments among others.
According to Mercier, staking players is like an investment and a way to generate money for someone who knows his way around the high stakes circles. The standard backing deal is apparently a 50-50 one with makeup included for losses incurred before the first cash.
