ThePokerCoop

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.