[bustedromo]

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FTP Pros may or may not be paying tournament buy-ins with their own money (I've heard different stories on this) Effectively, their buy-ins to the big online tournies are free.

You can't have it both ways. If they're great players, then they're reducing the average player's tournament $EV. If they're lousy players, they're dis-educating the average player.
Who wants to play with shills ?

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They are playing with their own money. If they weren't, I promise you I and everyone else would be playing in every single 1k buyin tournament, SNG, and sitting in the 1k/2k games all day.
While it is true that playing against good players does reduce your EV in a tournament, there is nothing anyone can do about good players playing in tournaments that you also choose to play in. I assure you that there are tons of highly skilled players playing in every tournament you enter that aren't coded in red. Your argument seems to be "I don't like playing against them because they are better than me".
You once again use the word shill incorrectly. I don't know if you are trying to use hyperbole to get your point across or if you just don't know what the word means, but either way you are wrong. The word you are looking for it "prop", but using that would be wrong as well since FTP doesn't tell us when, where, or how long to play.

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You just don't get it, do you? The exact method of compensation for the FTP Pros doesn't matter. What's important is that if they are receiving compensation at least equal to the tournament buyin then they are essentially free-rolling. And if they're free-rolling and they're better than the average player then they're reducing tournament $EV for the average player.

Let's say they're getting $/hr. Let's go on the low side of what my various sources tell me = $40/hr. So, by the beginning of the 6th hour of the $500K Guaranteed, the FTP Pro has earned his buy-in back. If you're going to cash at all you need to make it into the 6th hour, so any cashing FTP Pro effectively has had his buy-in paid for by FTP, just as if their buy-in was paid for upfront.

I believe that a $/hr rate is just the beginning of their compensation package.

And yes, if the average player is not aware that the FTP Pros are being payed to play then these pros effectively function as shills. That's the definition of shill: a player whose gaming costs are paid for by the house where the other players are unaware of this fact.