Markup is the premium a player charges when selling a piece of their action in a tournament. If a player is staked at "face value" (a 1.0 markup), a backer pays exactly their share of the buy-in and nothing more. Any number above 1.0 means the backer is paying extra, and that extra amount compensates the player for the edge they're expected to have in that specific field.
The concept only applies to sold action, meaning a player fronting their own buy-in and selling a percentage of their potential winnings to investors. It shows up constantly in high buy-in MTTs, series like the WSOP or the Americas Cardroom OSS and Venom festivals, and any tournament where a winning player wants to reduce variance without giving away value for free.
The formula is simple: the buyer pays their percentage of the buy-in, multiplied by the markup.
Percentage bought × buy-in × markup = price paid
Say a player enters a $10,000 buy-in event and sells 10% of their action at 1.2 markup. The math looks like this:
$10,000 × 0.10 × 1.2 = $1,200
The backer pays $1,200 for a 10% share of whatever the player wins, not $1,000. The extra $200 is the markup.
A smaller example makes the same point at a level most online grinders actually play. A player enters a $100 tournament and sells 50% of their action at 1.3x. The backer pays:
$100 × 0.50 × 1.3 = $65
Not $50. That extra $15 is the price of the player's expected edge in that field, according to sources like Upswing Poker's staking glossary and multiple threads on the 2+2 tournament poker forum.
These two terms get confused constantly, but they describe opposite sides of a backing deal.
Markup is a one-time premium paid on top of the buy-in when action is sold. If the player busts, the deal is over. No debt, no carryover.
Makeup is what happens in a longer-term backing arrangement, where a backer covers a player's losses over a stretch of sessions or events, and the player has to earn that deficit back (plus their share of profit) before they see a cut of future winnings. Makeup can accumulate across many tournaments; markup is settled per event.
Selling action with markup does not create makeup. That distinction matters because backers sometimes assume a high-markup sale comes with some kind of ongoing obligation from the player. It doesn't. Once that tournament is over, the deal is closed either way.
Fair markup is a function of expected ROI in the specific field being played, not the player's reputation in general. The inputs that actually move the number:
| Situation | Typical markup | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Unproven player, small sample | 1.0 to 1.05 | No verifiable edge yet |
| Solid winning reg, mid-stakes MTTs | 1.10 to 1.20 | Established ROI, moderate field softness |
| Proven winner, soft small buy-in field | 1.30 to 1.40+ | Track record plus a field known to be beatable |
| Strong player, tough high roller field | 1.05 to 1.15 | Real edge exists but the field is sharper, margins are thinner |
These bands line up with what's discussed across staking guides from 888poker's staking explainer and long-running 2+2 threads on fair markup: most sold action in practice trades somewhere between 1.05 and 1.3, with anything meaningfully above that reserved for players who can show real numbers.
The honest way to price markup is to estimate the player's real ROI in that field and translate it into a fair split. That means a backer (or a player pricing their own action) should be thinking about every lever that changes expected ROI, not just headline results.
One of those levers is registration timing, and it's one most backing deals never mention. GTO Wizard's ICM research on late registration shows that in a standard MTT, a seat taken through late registration carries roughly 10.9% more ICM seat equity than the buy-in paid for it, because late entrants skip the highest-variance early levels while the prize pool and field composition are already mostly set. In a flat-payout satellite, that ICM equity edge grows to roughly 29.76%. That's not ROI in the profit-and-loss sense, it's seat equity, but it's a real, measurable input into how good a spot a player is actually sitting in when the stake was sold. (Source: GTO Wizard, The ICM Benefits of Late Registration.)
PKOs run the other way. GTO Wizard's separate analysis found a late-registering stack in a bounty tournament loses roughly 14% of its value compared to starting on time, because bounties accumulate from hand one and a shorter stack means fewer bounty opportunities. (Source: GTO Wizard, The Hidden Cost of Late Reg in PKOs.) A backed player who blindly late regs every PKO the same way they late reg every regular MTT is quietly giving away edge that markup was priced to capture.
Staking groups managing a stable of players have a version of this problem multiplied across every horse. If one player is grinding six tables and physically can't watch every lobby for the exact moment to register, or which specific tournaments are running under-subscribed against their guarantee, the group's real edge is smaller than the markup on the sheet assumes.
This is the same gap Profitmaxxer's alerts are built to close. The scanner checks 12 poker networks every 30 seconds and, as of this writing, has logged $52,481,218 in tournament overlay across 82,325 instances over 197 days of scanning, an average of $266,402 a day. The largest single overlay caught so far was $52,500 on an Americas Cardroom OSSXL Super High Roller. (More examples in Biggest Poker Tournament Overlays: The Real Numbers.) Overlay alerts flag tournaments where the guaranteed prize pool exceeds collected buy-ins, which is measurable free equity independent of anyone's skill edge, and Max Late Reg alerts tell a player exactly how many minutes are left before registration closes, so the ICM-equity gain described above isn't left to guesswork or a distracted glance at the lobby.
For a staked player, stacking a real skill edge on top of consistently caught overlay and disciplined late reg timing is what actually justifies the markup a backer is paying. For a backer or staking group operator, the same alerts (see How to Find Poker Tournament Overlays and Best Time to Late Register Poker Tournaments for the mechanics) are a way to sanity-check whether a stable's results are edge or just variance in soft fields.
Markup is simply the price of a player's expected edge in a given field, expressed as a multiple on top of the buy-in. A fair number comes from real ROI data, honestly adjusted for field softness, buy-in level, and format-specific quirks like the PKO late reg penalty. Anyone selling or buying action is better served checking those inputs directly, whether that's tournament history, GTO Wizard's ICM figures, or which spots a player is actually catching in terms of overlay and late reg timing, than trusting a round number because it sounds reasonable.
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