I think Hellmuth is the weird case where people could absolutely knowingly make a bad buy just because they want to sweat Hellmuth.
I also think it’s absolutely fair for people to point out that the price he charges isn’t profitable.
Trust when buying action is on a few layers.
You have to trust that they:
Are actually playing the event they are selling for
Have only sold the amount they have indicated
Aren’t wasting a bullet on purpose
Then you get to stuff like that they weren’t up until 10 am the previous day grinding/partying, are in a good state of mind and moderately “professional.”
I know more than a few scumbags who have skipped events, oversold etc.
Why do you want to deny entertainment value for people who think it’s fun to point out when people are wrong?
The recent post in the crypto thread that shows a Matt Levine blog will say what I’m trying to say way better than I could.
If you know you’re making a bad bet, sure. Overwhelmingly most people staking someone have no idea they are making a bad bet and being taken advantage of.
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For sure. I’ve been burnt twice on this. Once time I found out a horse didn’t play and another that he sold himself at different rates. The last one is fair game I guess but still a bit sketchy.
Now I only buy from people I really trust.
This debate has been going on for so many years that one of the original Markup Police has hit retirement age.
https://twitter.com/MikeMcDonald89/status/1531002085986148352?t=ZA1yUD3OretvZ8fdeFLUBg&s=19
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I have sold at different rates before, but I have told people before making anything official. It’s usually a swap/friend rate among other “top pros” personally, or if they have bought enough I might give a more favorable rate in a larger event.
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I am not so sure about this in poker all backing though. I can see that some very causal noob might buy a piece of Hellmuth or some superstar at way to high a mark up but are people really buying poker bunny not knowing? She is only known from a very niche poker stream who’s audience is made up of hardcore poker fans 99.9% of which understand markup and ev.
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LOL this was TJ Cloutier’s business model
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Ya if I knew he was I would have been fine with it. He didn’t tell me and I only found out when another friend told me he bought some at .1 less than me.
Really even that is fair in my mind. I mean I buy a plane ticket knowing the guy next to me might have paid half what I did.
Still made me second guess buying from him again though. 
This is so weird to me. It’s like being upset at people reviewing products. If i was about to buy a chef knife for 500 bucks and two well renowned chefs were reviewing these knives for me for free i’d be pretty happy with that. I might still buy it if it’s shiny and i like it.
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I have no idea what a “proper rate” is for most players. For pros, I would generally try to bucket them with players who I believe are of similar skill, but that obviously isn’t easy. Almost everyone sells at an inflated rate.
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I dunno what the rates are but a full wsop/summer package is the least amount of variance you can possibly find in the tournament pieces world. Especially if theres not a huge discrepancy in buyins within the package
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I would assume with her prior backing and the connections she has made since, if she could sell at that rate to other pros she would have already.
It’s not the worst crime or anything, but I’m not a fan.
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All this to say I wouldn’t be buying a piece of poker bunny at those rates, except maybe in the main event were it feels like someone who knows what beats what could viably charge 1.4 
It’s just funny to me how the whole discussion of markup ever even got to this point. The markup police are actually killing action by trying to prevent players from making better staking deals for themselves.
To look at the other side, why should anyone be able to buy at a someone’s perceived ROI? Maybe if you are talking about a long term staking deal that makes some sense, but for a single or small number of tournaments you’re just hoping to get the good variance of a deep run and big pay day. That carries a premium. There also should be a premium built in based on the fact that the person selling pieces of action is ultimately the person whose play resulted in the profits when they do cash. That player also needs to cover travel expenses in most cases to be able to play the tournament, which should up the markup premium too.
Lol no one on the planet is worth 1.4 in large field <1Ks
Markup is mainly so you can claim to be equally as good as your peers that are charging absurd markup. Lol tournament players always and forever.
Yeah. As mentioned above I really am not up on this stuff, but my instant reaction was LOLWAT?!?
Then people started discussing it at least somewhat seriously and I was beginning to wonder.