WELCOME

[ Please excuse the appearance of this temporary web site, until the new remodeled web site is completed ]

Welcome to The Player Coop!  The network for poker players.

We are currently remodeling the site, but in the next few weeks, we should have some exciting:
* training content (currently in negotiations with another site)
* coaching (additional fees), and possible staking
* database review (additional fees)
* reviews
* hand analysis
* player profiles
* peer to peer marketplace

Membership fee tbd as are forms of payment, but is free to anyone who signs up using any of the links to the right.

Thanks for your interest and check back soon.  Below are a few earlier posts that spawned the idea for this new web site.  Send an email to thepokercoop@gmail.com if you want to be updated.

OMFG!!!  Finally!  Subject Poker claims that Merge is allegedly going to take new customers starting at midnight.

If you were thinking about signing up at another Merge skin, consider signing up thru me by clicking one of the links to the right.  I really want to get this informal network of players going, and I now have a couple of good international contacts in the group to help the cashout process, in case there are any check disruptions.  But this is one of those systems that work much better when there are more people.

And you get the free insurance.  We had a minor scare last month - and that won't be the last one.

Remember how crappy you felt when people were scrambling to get their money off and you were sitting there with your 5-figure roll with no where to go?  If you are going to play poker seriously, you can't play under those conditions.  Give yourself another outlet - outs are always useful.  The DOJ isn't going to just sit around if Merge gets much bigger.

If you are an international player...  You can collect low-risk vig by participating in the network.  The insurance will still be useful (see FT and AP/UB) and I'll count rake on all non-US sites towards your insurance.

AND!!!  YOU GET THE SAME BONUS YOU WOULD HAVE GOTTEN HAD YOU SIGNED UP THRU THE POKER SITE.  If you are a high volume reg, send me an email and we can talk about other incentives.  Just more win.  Join now.

A bunch of people got scammed on the 2+2 Player to Player transfer thread the other day.  Apparently "ericlee" decided he wanted to do a bunch of trades with various people using Chase QuickPay.  It's kind of weird because I have a 2nd nephew named Eric Lee.  The scammer's real name is Eric Fields - the motherf*cker is trying to bring the Asian man down (again)!

Apparently he was able to cancel all the transactions because according to Chase: "You further agree not to use the Chase QuickPay Service to receive money from anyone to whom you are obligated for tax payments, payments made pursuant to court orders, fines, payments to loan sharks, gambling debts or payments otherwise prohibited by law."  The douchebag ripped a bunch of people off and then had the nerve to post that in 2+2.  I need to get a special tree branch for this dude.

I guess stuff like that really sickens me... because in this low time of online poker, players should be COOPERATING WITH EACH OTHER to make the most of our current situation - NOT RIPPING EACH OTHER OFF!  There seems to be way too little cooperation and way too much of everything else. Anyway, in light of the current state of cashouts, transfers and liquidity, I'm curious to see how successful my informal group of buddies is going to be on working together to improve liquidity.

From a theoretical business school process management perspective, you have say 10 people and each person can only cash out $2,500 a month.  That sucks.  The group should be able to take out $25,000 out of the system assuming perfect and optimal funds transfer.  That's like burger-flipping money.  Make that $50,000 a month if each person has two accounts.  $75,000 a month if that second account is on a site that has two cashout mechanisms.  Multiply by a factor of 1.5 to 2 if some of those members are international and can cash out easier.  Multiply by another factor of 1.5 to 2 if you can combine some cashouts to take advantage of the faster wires that some sites offer.  That's $169K to $300K a month between 10 people.  What cashout worries?  The big hurdle is getting that trust and teamwork together.  I think the best answer is by having everyone only have to trust as few people as possible (that's me!) and have everyone put up collateral (at no cost to them).  It seems so simple.

How it looks on paper can be vastly different than in real life.  It is going to take a strong player network to be able to achieve something like this, so I'll be curious see how things go.  So far, my goal by the end of the year is to improve liquidity by 50%, but as you can see from the above, it's theoretically possible to do over an order of magnitude better.  It never hurts to think big.

It appears Merge is starting to take new sign-ups again - at least one skin (Sportsbook) started taking new signups a few days ago.  It seems reasonable to assume that other skins will be following soon.

As much as I think the player cooperative is a great idea, it doesn't make sense for me to run a full-blown business like I was considering.  I was actually thinking of having a feature-laden web site, a forum on 2+2, etc.  Interest was rather tepid, but more importantly, it appears some of the potential legal headaches just aren't worth it.  Thanks DOJ.  You've won the battle, but not the war.  One day, if you find a big Asian dude squatting and laying a huge deuce on your well-manicured-from-robbing-US-poker-players-lawn on your night-vision surveillance cameras, that'll be me.  You will know it's me for sure if you zoom in and see the letters "F.U. DOJ" on the left cheek and "<3 Doublefly" on the right (I have a big ass), with some hair in the middle.

I still play some online poker when I have time and I have a network of poker buddies.  So we are going to incorporate some of the concepts, just to make playing poker a lot easier post BF.  Some of those ideas were pretty good (if I do say so myself).  As I always say, as you go through life, it always pays to have outs.  Having a network of peers (like ours) give you some outs.  Sometimes outs are presented to you, and other times you have to create them, but always make sure you have outs.  If you're interested in participating, send an email to doubleflypoker@gmail.com.  If you use one of the US poker referral links on the right, I'll automatically include you.

Speaking of referral links, I decided the best thing to do with the "void" left by those cheesy Google "buy gold" and vocational school ads was to refer people to various poker sites.  You'll get all the standard VIP benefits, bonuses and promos of all the US sites by signing up thru me, and you'll get a lot of extra perks.  I also teamed up with Schwallie (RakeTakers) to provide players with non-US referrals.  There are also some undergound sites for both US and non-US players.  At the end of the day, promoting online poker is my own version of civil disobedience.  Poker's not illegal (unless you live in WA state).  So F. U. DOJ!!!  I am going to sit in the front of the bus if I feel like it.  God help anyone who tells me otherwise.

I get internet access in prison, right?

Liquidity post continued from yesterday.  I made two claims the other day about the Co-Op…  how in the long run, 1) you won’t get scammed and 2) that all trades will happen.  How so?

1) In the long run, the reason we we will all be able to trust each other is that the Co-Op is holding each member’s poker site insurance.  The poker site insurance is going to be a significant percentage of most player’s bankroll.  If a member goes “rogue,” you can be compensated out of their insurance money.  But I would be surprised if most people didn’t find all the benefits of the Co-Op to be worthwhile enough to make sure their reputation in the community was impeccable.

I’m not sure what the exact procedures are going to be yet, but an easy solution is to have a secure web site where I post everyone’s Co-Op email account and “pre-approve” people to trade certain quantities (like $250, $500, $1,000, $5,000, etc).  This way, you can transact up to that amount with peace of mind.  This will severely limit the scamming possibilities.

Just the other day, some poor schlub on 2+2 may have gotten scammed for $900 – he hadn’t heard from the counterparty for 2 days.  It pays to have a network of players where everyone has posted collateral.

2) So you might be wondering how I can be *sure* the trades will happen.  You may not remember, but I used to be a trader.  As a fellow player, I can provide a back-up market to all members, in case no one is interested in your request.  Volumes will be small in the beginning but will increase over time as the insurance fund grows.  I can post a 5 cent wide market for each of the sites: for example, 85 cents to buy Carbon funds and 90 cents to sell Carbon funds.  The prices will change, based on supply and demand.  The huge bonus is that once I post those prices, all the members can trade INSIDE of that price range.  If you know you can buy Carbon funds from me at 90 cents, people wanting to buy are probably going to bid somewhere between 85 and 88 cents.  Similarly for people who want to sell.  I’m think most transactions will occur very close to the middle of the range I set.  A similar concept would work for transfers across sites.  I’m hoping we have enough member flow so I don’t have to get involved at all.

In the beginning, I may have to limit the sizes of transactions until I get a feel for supply and demand and how the cashouts at various sites work.  But as time goes on, I will be able to do more size.  Again, we have to make sure the transfer volumes aren’t “excessive,” so as not to annoy the sites.  But with many members, one trade here and one trade there among fellow players shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The "Idea," continued from yesterday.  I think people care more about what can be done with providing liquidity, so I’ll talk about that first, and I’ll talk about the poker site insurance second.  This one is probably going to have to be a two-parter.

This Cooperative is basically the parable of the sticks – in a nutshell, a bundle of sticks is stronger than each of the sticks individually.  How does this parable apply to you and the Co-Op?

* It takes US players 5 weeks to cash out.  It takes international players 3 days to cash out.  It takes 1 day for an international player to send money to the US.  In finance, we call this an arbitrage opportunity.  It’s just easy vig for one of our foreign members to do an “occasional” transfer with a US player.  Everyone’s happy.

* Several skins have faster bank wires, but those usually have five figure minimums.  It’s kind of retarded for a bunch of people to each wait 5 weeks for check if a wire can be done faster.  Some sites allow the Affiliate to get paid by bank wire.  Hmm…

* If you have two accounts (and some networks like Merge allow accounts on multiple skins), you can cash out twice as fast.  It sure would be nice if you could find a “buddy” who could transfer you some money to a secondary site.  Or maybe a whole network of buddies...

* Poker is a game of skill, but it does have some volatility. Some members are going to be on an upswing and others are going to be doomswitched.  Rather than taxing the already-stressed deposit and withdrawal system of the US poker sites, we can trade amongst ourselves to even out those peaks and valleys.  That's a win for everyone - including the poker sites.  And in the big scheme of things, this should help sites process cashouts quicker overall.

* People probably leave more money online than they need to because they don’t want the hassle of having to redeposit.  Well, what if redepositing was as easy as sending the Co-op members an email and receiving the funds in as little as an hour? (12 hours at the most)  And you would pick up some VIG.  Ka-ching!

The sites don’t want us to get too "crazy" with the transfers, but they won’t mind one here and one there.  So we'll have to tone it down a little from what I was originally planning, but the framework is still very workable.  All of the above already goes on in the 2+2 player to player transfer thread (directly or indirectly), so it’s not like I’m making up anything that’s revolutionary – I’m just packaging it in a sexier and more convenient form.

But you might be saying to yourself, “why would this be different from the 2+2 transfer thread where most trades never happen and even when it does it sometimes takes days?  And how do I know I won't get scammed?”

Once this is going strong, all trades will happen and you won't get scammed - because *I’M* holding the sticks together and you have the strength of the Co-Op.  (To be continued)

Send an email to me at doubleflypoker@gmail.com if you're interested.  I probably need a minimum number of people interested, otherwise we'll go with Plan B.

So here is the second attempt at presenting my "Idea:"

The state of US online poker is a bit depressing.  Stars and FT lost over 15,000 players A DAY because of Black Friday (according to PokerScout), and the other US sites picked up only about 700.  (later post)  Where did all the players go?  Part of it may have been the WSOP and summer vacation.  But where is everyone else?  Surely only the top few hundred players could afford to go abroad to set up foreign accounts.

People seem to have two main concerns with playing online poker nowadays:

a) Having their money stuck (or even lost) on a poker site that shuts down.  With FT money trading below 35 cents on the dollar, people are nervous about putting any money back online.

b) Getting their cashouts in a timely manner.  Taking 4-6 weeks for a measly $2,500 cashout is just way too long - especially if you play for a living.

Here is my solution.  There is still a lot of money floating around in the poker economy, and I figured out a way to take care of "most" of the above problems.  Unfortunately, when I went to confirm the idea with some of the sites, they discouraged the use of "excessive transfers."  I'm ironing out some of the details, but here is the general idea.  What if some big-headed, hairy-nippled, goofy Asian dude you all know and love were to do the following:

1) Open up a bunch of poker site affiliates.  Yawn.

2) Get you to sign up for those affiliates.  Yawn.

3) Here's the part you care about.  Rather than pocketing the affiliate money, I set the bulk of that money aside as "poker site insurance."  You would get ALL the standard VIP/rakeback/deposit benefits.  The insurance premium is funded only by "my" affiliate referral fees.  So I take the affiliate fees from your last 12 rolling months of play to “insure” up to 70% of your online bankroll (including pending cashouts).  This is all FREE to you!  Obviously in month 1, you'll have very little insurance, but by month 12, I think most players will have hit the 70% max.  And there are a few situations where you could "borrow" against the insurance.  I’ll explain the details in a later post.  But having a floor as high as 70 cents on the dollar should be comforting - especially since Merge money can be seen trading at 80 cents on the dollar NOW - when they are still fully operational!

In effect, over a rolling twelve months, this is more of a player COOPERATIVE - I'm making virtually no money for those 12 months.  I'm organizing the structure through which we as players can all feel more comfortable about playing online poker again.  I have several great ideas on how we can improve liquidity and cashouts thru this cooperative framework.  The fact that everyone has posted insurance collateral means transfers can be more readily available.  Even with the sites' transfer restrictions, I think we as a group of players can find ways to increase effective cashouts by 50% or more.  (see later post for the details)

But my mamma didn't raise no fool.  (Don't ask Mrs. Fly tho)  Maybe that MBA wasn't a total waste of time.  After the rolling 12 months, this is more of a standard affiliate deal - so in month 13, you have the rolling 12 months of protection, and I finally make my first full month of money for signing you up.  I have to show the Boss (Mrs. Fly) that I'm not just wasting my time and I do have to pay my assistant something for her help, after all.  But if US poker is still going strong after month 12, I think you'll be extremely happy (unless you suck at poker).  If we get A LOT of volume, I could even give you additional benefits starting at month 13 and the benefits of the Cooperative should exceed that of the best rakeback site.  But there are a lot of things that need to happen between here and there.

I have no idea how much interest this is going to generate.  I'm hoping this will make you feel more comfortable and help get US poker going again.  If not, I only wasted a few hours of my time, and I can just scrap the whole idea and become a "regular" affiliate like anyone else.  TBH, Plan "B" will be much less work for me.  But I love the game of poker and would like to see it take off again in the US.  Also, I hate it when I think someone screwed me over and got the best of me.  So F.U. DOJ!

It's win-win.  Well technically it's like the photo: fail (poker haters) - win (you) - win (me, after 12 months) - win (poker sites).

Send an email to me at doubleflypoker@gmail.com if you're interested.  I probably need a minimum number of people interested, otherwise we'll go with Plan B.