[mcgin]

Found this on two plus two, seems 80% payout is a good rule of thumb for the types of staking we do here.........

the most frequent question I see asked about staking is what a standard deal is. It’s hard to say exactly what the standard deal is, based on the quality of player, the stakes he’s playing for, his volume of play, whether he’s doing both online and live, etc. It seems though that the majority of staking deals are either 60-40 in the backers favor with make up or 50-50 with make up. As far as deals with no make up are concerned (often done for a single event situation) the standard seems to be 80-20 in the backers favor, though considering the variance involved there those numbers can fluctuate to a good degree.

We should also discuss make up. For those who aren’t aware make up is similar to debt but not the same thing. Make up is what you are down on your backing arrangement, but not necessarily money owed to your backer. That is to say, if you are in make up for $50,000, and have a net worth of $100,000 and for some reason are no longer able to play poker, you do not owe the backer $50,000 out of your own money. As far as leaving a backing arrangement in make up for no reason goes, unless you are under contract there isn’t necessarily repercussions in the traditional form of something like a lawsuit (or broken legs) but there are factors to consider. First of all if you leave a backer while in make up for no good reason it is very unlikely you’ll ever find another backer since word of your actions will get around. Also, some would consider this unethical, and it is a considerable grey area of morality. While you indeed have the right to opt out of your staking arrangement while in make up for no legitimate reason, the damage it will do to your reputation in the poker community is something you need to weigh it heavily against. A backer and a player need to set the conditions of what happens when a player is in make up but wants to change or leave an arrangement ahead of time.