You said that live cash was okay to play off the stake, but you weren't clear about Stars.

You also mention that you had some volume targets. Were these self-imposed or were they part of the deal?

Could you lay out every specific term you had on the deal (that your backer agrees with)?

That way I could give you an informed opinion on what is fair.

One very important lesson I've learned: In any arrangement like this, terms should be written out and very clear. They should cover any possible circumstance you can think of.

Even if you don't write up and sign a contract, have your terms in a saved email with both people responding "I agree."

People tend to think they'd never need this, especially with friends, but in reality it's even more important when making deals with friends so that you  avoid the potential for any tension or for anyone to feel resentment about something being unfair.  This way you don't risk what's most important (your friendship).

of course phil is dead on with needing clear written agreements

since that doesn't seem to be the case with you - do all stakers expect to get paid payed back MU when things go bad?  if so they are really freerolling all profit share with no downside risk?  and paying a what sounds like an agreed to penalty on future profits while playing on your own sounds crazy to me?  he has the right to ask for whatever but that doesn't mean you have to agree

i also suspect there is another side to this story?

not sure there is a "standard" as i have seen/heard of all kinds of deals

Thanks for the response Phil.

There was a contract that was agreed to. This involved the volume targets that I mentioned before. So the contract was breached for the few months after Vegas by me not hitting these targets. But as I said, he was pretty relaxed about this.

The contract said that I couldn't play online outside of the deal (although we had agreed it was fine for me to grind Sunday majors etc if I wanted to). It didn't mention anything about consequences if I did.

And the contract also said, that if I wanted to leave the deal in MU, then the MU would have to be paid back before I did so. I initially thought that that would become a little more relaxed after a year or so of good results, and was hoping that we could settle on me paying off some of it. But this may have been naivety on my part as he insisted on full payment.

I totally agree that screwing up a friendship over this sort of thing would suck, but in this case we've never actually met in person. It was an offer on 2+2 that I applied to. Having said that though, I do want to end on good terms with him and his partner, all the while trying to protect myself against having to pay significant sums of money out of my pocket.

Just to make sure, so you want to leave the deal while in MU and they wanted you to pay it back, right?  Unless I am missing something, I don't think your backer is being unreasonable about this at all, nor do I think you can say "you aren't willing to do that."  As far as I understand, in most staking deals backers are allowed to end the deal whenever they want to, but stakee/horse usually don't have that option for obvious reasons, especially when he/she is in MU, unless otherwise stated.  In this case, it seems like you were suggesting you want to end the deal while in MU, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to ask you make up for it before leaving the deal.

Now about the penalty part though, I don't think you are responsible for any of that.  Technically speaking, you don't owe him anything but the MU amount.  Things would have been different if an agreement was made upon this when the deal started off, but it doesn't seem like the case.  That said, I'll just grind hard to make up for it and then quit the deal.  

Stupidest question ever ~ but i got to ask~ wanna know ~ what a MU amount stands for exactly

Ugh ~ still don't understand it ~ debt i understand, not size of it

√overdrawn bank account balance and you need to raise money just to get back to zero - 

does that mean for example someone gives u 10 k to play, u use it to play and u share profits in certain prearranged percentage, but u re withdrawing profits and share it in said percentage, but meanwhile use depleting initial 10 k investment for play, so in end you actually have to fulfill that 10 k, or not withdraw first place before u re over that amount, meaning if backing was 100 k , you started withdrawing profits.. but playing with depleted  account, u end up ..for example with - 50 k that you owe to get out?

Let's see...

So I give you $10,000 and tell you to play 200 MTT's. Let's say you make $5,000 profit so now you have $15,000.

We split $5,000 based on our agreement either 50% each or 60% backer and 40% player usually.

Then we start over again with $10,000 and do 200 more MTT's etc.

But, if you go from $10,000 to $5,000 you get nothing. You are in debit $5,000 so you need to now win $5,000 just to get back to 0 and then try to make profit. That's make up.

I think this is what you said, but it's easier for me to type it out this way. 

If you do badly enough, the backer may just say forget it and cancel the deal. You would owe zero to the backer if this happened.

But, you cannot be the one to say forget it and walk away because you are tired of playing "for free".

Hopefully I got it right and that makes sense :)

Got it ~ thanks

I have taken full acceptance of the fact that my staker was in his right to ask for me to pay back the make-up I was in. That's why I chose my only other alternative to that, which was to grind it back. This is more a matter of whether he lays claim to any share of the profit I made grinding outside of the deal, which involved no financial risk to him.

It really depends what you agreed on ( written or said ) Also matters very much, what account did you use to grind aside ( if it wasn't specified very much when u discussed deal ) . If you used same account as 1 u re backed on, it is really problematic to divide what money is whose and in such case you did make a huge mistake.

If you didn't and it wasn't specified during deal, i think you can make an argument for yourself

PS ~ This was just common sense , Im not a lawyer

~ Maybe ask acquaintance that has lot of contracts to deal with for advise

Don't see why you should have to pay/work off more than MU(unless stated somewhere in contract).. !

Setting the specifics of the staking deal to one side, it seems that the way this has gone is: fairly relaxed deal agreed and operates ok > not very professional horse starts mucking about > not very professional backer doesn't do much and assumes it'll be ok (nothing unusual so far the poker world is riddled with people with money/earning ability and no business sense). Next horse thinks he can just walk away and backer goes "FU that's not right you must pay me penalties". 

Neither of these thoughts are sensible and now we are in the kind of escalation that starts wars. 

To be honest, most stakers have been shafted on a regular basis, to insist on non-documented penalties is nonsense - at least you are still talking to them.

Try talking to the backers about just completing the original deal and everyone agreeing to be happy about that. Before you start that, tell yourself that getting agreement is more important than being seen to be right - you were both wrong anyway - who cares?