Poker Payday (dot com) ?

[aliengenius]

There seems to be very little info out there on them. Legit or scam?

Anyone ever sign up for this or accepted their contract?

They want $99 to draft the contract :deal::
You have to play 27-54 tournaments throughout the year (both online and B&M), and wear their hat or shirt when playing live. Also, they want 10-30% of your winnings.

Arguments for "legit":
1. claim that $99 gives players incentive to not treat buy-ins as freerolls, and therefore play their "A" game, not some crazy all in on the first hand cause it didn't cost me anything play that would reflect poorly on them.
2. you have to agree to give them 10-30% of your winnings (making it a legit money making business for them, as opposed to a too good to be true type scam).
3. big advertisements in well known poker magazines

Arguments for "scam":
1. they want $99 of your money up front (they claim it is a fee for drafting the contract) even though they are going to "give" you $5,000 + in buy-ins.
2. on the phone I got the car salesman "let me run this by my boss and see what we can offer you" line. Why wouldn't they already know whether or not they wanted to offer me a contract based on the info I gave them already? I really didn't provide any further significant data to them on the phone.
3. you get the feeling of kind of a run around regarding the $99- it's a drafting fee, it's to give players some stake/partnership to play well, it's both !
4. they want $99 of your money up front.

As I said, there is very little info out there. One guy claimed it was just a bunch of freerolls between their customers (everyone who gave $99) where they put up the prize pool (guessing it was less overall total than they took in). Another seemed to indicate it was legitimate when he complained about there being no tournaments through them right after the pull out from the US by some rooms.

Anyway, I turn to this good forum for advise...

 

[Dorkus Malorkus]

Scam. Perhaps not a fully-fledged "We're going to take your money and run" scam, but they're definitely hiding something. Quite simply, two phrases come to mind, "businesses don't give something for nothing to just anyone", and "if it sounds to good to be true, it probably isn't (true)".

Ask them to just take the $99 from the money they 'give' you. Watch as they decline.

 

[aliengenius]

It's not as though they are purely giving you something for nothing. You do have to give them a percentage of your winnings.

Staking is not unheard of in poker-- could this just be an attempt to do it on a wider scale and take advantage of the boom in poker?

Could this be the scenario:
1. they get a fairly large number of players who have shown some level of seriousness by posting $99
2. said players have demonstrated a possible potential to be profitable by showing some level of skill through past results and/or their online poker test.
3. they start these players off in "freeroll" tournaments they have negotiated with online sites, where they put up a small prize pool.
4. after demonstrating competence in these events against their other "clients", winning players are bought into progressively higher buy in tournaments.
5. business model therefore allows them to cull the better players from their stable and spread out their variance in higher buy in tournaments by having numerous players who have agreed to give them a percentage of their winnings.

Also, it's only $99, not as though they asked for a good faith investment of several thousand.

Further thoughts? Anyone actually done this?

 

[joosebuck]

build your own bankroll so you dont have to deal with possible assholes

 

[Dorkus Malorkus]

If you want to give $99 away, give it to charity or something.

1) There is a distinct possibility this is a scam, and

2) Poker is an easy enough game to be profitable at anyway.

Oh and googling 'poker payday scam' gives you some interesting results.

 

[blankoblanco]

I've decided it's some sort of scam; at the very least they are dishonest.

Exhibit A: I "applied"... they give you a poker aptitude test and I chose the worst answer I could on every question. The results said "I'm an average to above average player" and I qualify for a potential sponsorship, and to give them my credit card info so they can charge the $99 if they accept me. But looking at the questions and the choices, it honestly looks like they don't even TRY to weed out the bad players, which makes no sense unless there's some sense of scamminess to it. Marginal situations where different things could and would be done based on your style. Took it again and chose the last choice on every question without reading (the questions change) and it told me I'm above average and have an aptitude for poker lol

If they show no effort at all to weed out completely incompetent players or even figure out who the decent players are, it's probably pretty scammy...

 

[Jack Daniels]

I have no valid input to this as I haven't researched them or ever used them. However, I will just mention that it seems to me that this whole thread is just a very elaborate spam attempt put up in such a way as to keep discussion going without getting the thread deleted.

But that's just my take on it as I read through the progression of posts.

 

[Welly]

I have no valid input to this as I haven't researched them or ever used them. However, I will just mention that it seems to me that this whole thread is just a very elaborate spam attempt put up in such a way as to keep discussion going without getting the thread deleted.

But that's just my take on it as I read through the progression of posts.

Post 3 was what made me think this as well. It seems way too defensive.

 

[Dorkus Malorkus]

First post seemed genuine, after reading second post and researching OP knows a lot more about the place than he is letting on.

Benefit of the doubt to a degree though - I'll just lock this. I think we've established that at best the place in question is dishonest, at worst it's a scam.