money · staking
Poker staking.
One person puts up the buy in, another plays, and they split what comes back. The idea takes a sentence. Everything that goes wrong with it lives in the sentences nobody wrote down, and this page spends more time on those than on the idea.
what it is, and what it is not
Staking moves risk from the player to somebody else. It does not reduce the risk and it does not create money; it changes whose money is exposed and adds a second person whose expectations now matter. That second part is the whole subject. A player who was managing his own variance alone is now also managing a relationship, and a backer who thought he was buying results has bought a share of a very noisy process.
It is worth being clear about the alternative, because it is usually the better one. Playing within your own means, at a level your own money supports, removes the whole category of problem described below. What that level is is arithmetic rather than opinion, and it comes out of the bankroll calculator in about a minute.
six sentences that belong in the agreement
None of these takes long to write and every one of them takes a long time to argue about afterwards. If a deal is too small to be worth writing down, it is small enough to lose without an agreement, and that is a fine reason to keep it that size.
What is being staked, exactly
Which games, which buy in levels, and over what period. "Tournaments" is not a scope. A named list of events, or a level and a date range, is.
The split, and what it is a split of
What percentage of the profit goes each way, and whether profit is counted per event, per session or over the whole arrangement. Those three produce very different numbers from the same results.
Whether losses carry forward
Makeup is the part newcomers do not see coming. If losses carry, the player earns nothing until the earlier losses have been repaid out of later wins, and that debt can outlive anybody enthusiasm for the deal.
How it ends
Either side can lose interest. Write down what happens then, including what happens to unpaid makeup, because that is the moment the arrangement stops being friendly.
Who holds the money and when it settles
Who transfers what, to whom, before which date, and how it is recorded. Most staking disputes are not about strategy or honesty; they are about two people remembering a schedule differently.
Who else the backer has in the same event
A backer with a share of two players at one table has created a shared interest between them, whatever anybody intends. Operator rules treat that seriously, so it belongs in the agreement rather than in a surprise.
what goes wrong
This is the longest section on the page, and deliberately so. Almost all of these happen between people who liked and trusted each other when they started, which is exactly why the agreement is worth more than the goodwill.
Makeup that never clears
Suppose a player loses 1,000 and then wins 600. Under a makeup arrangement that 600 goes against the debt, 400 remains outstanding, and the player has spent all of that work earning nothing. There is nothing dishonest about it and it is exactly what was agreed, but very few people picture it correctly in advance.
A scope that was never written down
The player enters something bigger than intended, or plays a format that was never discussed, and both sides are certain the deal covered it. This is the most common dispute and the easiest to prevent, and it costs one sentence.
No way to enforce anything
These are private arrangements between individuals, often across borders, usually for amounts far too small to be worth a lawyer. The practical remedy when somebody does not pay is complaining in public, which is not a remedy.
Money that was needed for something else
Backing does not create money, it moves risk. A backer who puts up money he cannot afford to lose has taken on a gambling loss with extra steps, and a player who feels responsible for somebody else savings plays worse, not better.
The rule you did not know you were breaking
Poker sites care who has a financial interest in whom. Playing softly against a backer, or against another player the same backer holds a share of, is treated as an offence in its own right rather than as a lesser version of collusion.
A results record that proves nothing
Poker swings hard enough that a run of results, in either direction, is a poor guide to how well somebody plays. That cuts both ways: a backer can be persuaded by numbers that mean little, and a genuinely good player can look like a bad bet for a long time.
The last one deserves repeating on its own, because it undermines the premise rather than the paperwork. Poker results move so much on their own that a graph is a weak instrument for judging a player, over the sample either side is likely to have. That is the same argument that runs through the lesson on tilt and variance, and it applies to somebody buying a share of your results exactly as much as it applies to you reading your own.
about staking sites
Marketplaces exist where a player offers a percentage of an event and other people buy shares. What they add is real: a written record of who agreed to what, a settlement process that does not depend on either side remembering, and a fee for providing both. That is genuinely more than a conversation and a bank transfer.
What they do not add is judgement. A platform can record that you bought a share; it cannot tell you whether the person is worth backing, and a public results history is a much weaker signal than it looks for the reasons above. No specific site is recommended or criticised here, because we have not tested any of them, and a confident opinion about where other people should send money is not something we are willing to invent.
One more thing sits outside the deal itself. What staking income is, for tax purposes, is a question about where you live and how your own authority treats poker in the first place. It is worth finding the answer before the money moves rather than after, and the page on poker and tax covers how to find out what applies to you, which is as far as anyone who is not your accountant should go.
the rule most people meet by accident
Operator policy requires that every user plays his own hand independently and in his own interest, and it names soft play against a friend or a backer as an offence in itself. That matters most in the situation nobody plans: one backer holding a share of two players in the same event, who are then no longer independent whatever either of them intends.
The fix is administrative rather than moral. Both sides should know who else the backer holds a share of, and both should read the rule on the site where the account lives before the money changes hands. Where that line sits and what happens when it is crossed is on the page about collusion, and the wider money picture is on the money overview.
next step
Work out what you can back yourself for.
Most people look at staking because the level they want to play is above the money they have. That is a number, and it can be checked. The bankroll calculator gives you the buy ins a given risk of ruin demands, for cash games and for tournaments, without an account.
questions about poker staking
What is staking in poker?
An arrangement where one person puts up the buy in and another plays, with the profit split by an agreed percentage. The backer takes the financial risk, the player provides the time and the skill, and everything difficult about it lives in the details of the agreement rather than in the idea.
What is makeup in a staking deal?
Losses carried forward. If a player loses and the agreement includes makeup, later winnings first repay those losses before any profit is split. It is the single most misunderstood term in staking, because a player can put in months of winning sessions and still be owed nothing.
How do poker staking sites work?
They are marketplaces. A player offers a percentage of an event, other people buy shares, and the platform records the deal, holds or moves the money and takes a fee for doing so. What they add is a record and a settlement process. What they do not add is any guarantee that the person on the other side is worth backing.
Is staking a good way to make money?
This page will not tell you it is. It is an investment in somebody else results in a game with very large swings, with no protection if the arrangement goes wrong and no reliable way to judge the person from a results graph. If you would not lend the same amount unsecured to the same person, the poker part does not change the answer.
Can staking get you banned from a poker site?
Staking itself is normally allowed, but what it creates can break a rule. Operator policy requires each user to play his own hand independently and in his own interest, and playing softly against a friend or a backer is named as an offence. If a backer holds a share of two players in one event, both of them need to know that before they sit down.
Do you pay tax on staking profits?
That depends entirely on where you live and how your tax authority treats poker in the first place, and it is not something to take from a website. The right move is to find out what the rules are for poker income where you are before the money moves, and to keep a record of the arrangement either way.
Nothing on this page is financial, tax or legal advice, and no staking arrangement, platform or backer is recommended here. If poker is costing you money you need, that is a different conversation and it starts at responsible play.