Chris Ferguson times 64

John Rwanda · #1 10-27-2006, 11:49 AM

you move to India or ThailanD. you look for high IQ 14 year old Magic the Gathering honor student computer whiz kids who have to beg for food in the streets to help feed their familieS. i don't know what the child labor laws are in those places but if 14 year olds are allowed to work then you probably would have no problemS.

you teach them the method that Chris Ferguson claims he used to turn $1 into 20 Grand (or as an alternative Ed Miller's shortstack strategy in his GSIH booK). you open accounts in 8 poker siteS. you assign two of these kids to each of these sites and make them play 4 tables a piece (two monitors per site, two "employees" per site) in a 24/7 non-stop marathon rotatioN.

let's take a look at the matH: 8 sites times 8 tables equals 64 tableS. you add the fact that you are playing 24/7 nonstop and you have a moneymachine on your handS.

i'm sure rent is cheap in those placeS. what you want to have is a poker "trading flooR". you pay the kids $30 a month which I'm sure is a fortune for them and their familieS.

i'm surprised that with some 80,000 members that this idea has never been floated here in two plus twO. there is a serious lack of creativity here, imO.

Thremp · #2 10-27-2006, 11:53 AM

There is a serious lack of stupidity until this thread.

Fraud would be so easy. I have a friend make a site or find someone to facilitate. Spew 10k to them in one day and disappear. Boom, 28 years of work for a little fraud.

Nato76 · #3 10-27-2006, 11:55 AM

Poker sweatshop?

maxtower · #4 10-27-2006, 01:01 PM

I think I have seen this idea before. Its awful. If these kids are smart enough to beat poker, then they are going to be smart enough to leave you as soon as they know they are winning players.

maxtower · #5 10-27-2006, 01:02 PM

A better idea is one of those MMORPGs where if you get a bunch of gamers to play on your accounts they will accumulate a ton of crap for you to sell. I think I read somewhere that minimum wage in one of those virtual worlds was somewhere around $3 - $4/hour.

elus2 · #6 10-27-2006, 01:15 PM

max,

there are some barriers for these kids to bypass. things like setting up bank accounts and/or credit cards to deposit with. then while they're making a wage from you, how many of them will actually save up their wages just so they can risk their own capital to play poker. A $50 deposit can be anywhere between a week to a month's worth of wages to some of these people.

the idea has merit but only if the owner is able to datamine the hand histories to spot cheating. this has to be done by a competent manager with the help of the database software.

another concern is bandwidth and power. if the enterprise is big enough then having running a UPS and a backup generator might be valuable. you'll probably need to pay for a security guard too round the clock to safeguard against theft and whatnot. but luckily that's not terribly expensive since labor is v. cheap.

even at some very low stakes games ($25nl) you can probably make it work paying someone $5/hr for 8 hour shift and do 3 shifts/day.

mbb · #7 10-27-2006, 02:19 PM

Skip the slave labor, and just write a bot. Ed Miller says he's seen a bot successfully execute his strategy.

Assuming you use live labor, you're going to have a ton of up-front cost. You have to hire a bunch of kids, train them, filter out the ones who aren't capable of executing, pay them enough that the smart ones don't quit, and etc.

Assuming any are able to play profitably (90% will fail, if they're like the broad base of players worldwide) then you have to pay them enough that they don't quit and go out on their own once they realize that they have the skills to play profitably.

Who's going to manage this moneymachine of yours that's running 24/7? You, I assume, need to sleep sometimes.

elus2 · #8 10-27-2006, 02:30 PM

i'd go straight to hiring recent statistics/math graduates at countries like india or the philippines versus hiring 'some kids'

John Rwanda · #9 10-27-2006, 02:43 PM

but the "barriers" that you mentioned to maxtower won't be therE. how about ex-professors of math and statistics who may need extra income in addition to their retirement incomE? aren't they unemployable beyond a certain age in these countrieS? take a professor friend of my Dad's in the philippineS. he said he only made 300 USD per month as a professoR. i assume he makes less on his pensioN.

elus2 · #10 10-27-2006, 03:03 PM

the barriers are still there for say some 19 yr old filipino kid with no savings spending all his wages on just his living expenses such as car/rent/food/entertainment/clothes/etc. he might not have a reliable connection at home or even have access to a computer. if he can go to an internet cafe then he incurs an hourly cost plus he has to make sure he can install programs on computers he doesn't own. a lot of what we take for granted here isn't very easy to procure in some areas of the world. if you can provide a good work environment (free food, good office equipment, frequent breaks, air conditioning, etc.) then you can increase employee loyalty even further.