Invest in a poker great
Poker Hall of Famer Daniel Negreanu announced last week that he is selling pieces of his action for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Europe. The opportunity to invest in Negreanu’s poker skill is open to all comers.
WSOP Europe begins in about a month, running October 13 through November 4. The WSOP recently added five more events to the poker festival, bringing the total number of tournaments to fifteen.
King’s Resort in Rozvadov, Czech Republic is once again the host of the annual series.
Stakes offered at zero markup
In presenting the staking offer, Negreanu illustrated how expensive it is for someone to participate in the entire WSOP Europe.
He calculated that with no re-buys, it costs €449,600 to play in all fifteen events. Every tournament allows at least one reentry, though, so factoring in a reasonable number of added buy-ins, Negreanu increased that total to €1,211,700.
Thus, even someone with the resources of Daniel Negreanu needs to sell some of his action.
He is selling the staking packages at no markup.
We recently saw a controversy involving staking and markup with the Nick Marchington WSOP lawsuit after the Main Event.
First attempt backfired this summer
Negreanu is giving people who missed out on the same deal from his WSOP play this summer the first chances to buy packages.
Partially to defray the costs of the tournaments and partially to promote his video blog, Negreanu sold parts of his action from the 2019 WSOP in Las Vegas. He announced the deal in late May, just before the WSOP began.
Packages were divided into tiers. He offered up 10% of his action in events with buy-ins of $1,500 or less, 25% of his action in events with buy-ins of $1,501 to $10,000, and 50% of his action in tournaments with buy-ins of more than $10,000.
Negreanu put limits on how much any one person could spend in order to give as many people as possible the opportunity to invest. Fans could get in for as little as $5 in the lowest tier. Like with the WSOP Europe, markup was zero.
the promotion was extremely popular; each tier sold out in minutes
Negreanu sold the staking packages on his website. Unspurprisingly, the promotion was extremely popular; each tier sold out in minutes. Unfortunately, something went wrong on the technical end. The available packages totaled about $275,000, but the site allowed around $1.8 million to be sold.
Negreanu rectified bad situation
Negreanu apologized profusely on Twitter once he found out what happened. He accepted the stakes of the first people to book action and refunded the excess. Negreanu also covered the credit card fees of those who were given refunds.
Because of the snafu, those who were affected by the website glitch are getting first priority for the WSOP Europe staking packages. Negreanu said he will provide details on the packages and how to buy them “shortly.”