YouStake, one of the hottest tech companies in the poker realm, has anted up. This week, they moved some of their chips by acquiring TastyStakes.com, which is a poker staking platform. TastyStakes.com describes themselves as a “LinkedIn for tournament poker players”, which essentially allows premier players to keep track of all of their poker accounting and most importantly, the staking.
The two companies will somewhat fuse together as YouStake acquires TastyStakes.com, and as a result TastyStakes.com founder Andrew Welch will change positions. He’ll now become the Chief Technical Officer at YouStake.
TastyStakes’ main function is to make bookkeeping simple for professional poker players. They participate in all sorts of events across the world and have different buy-ins, payouts and much more.
A player may have multiple stakers who help get him into the tournament, but calculating how much he has to pay out to everyone has always been a headache. With TastyStakes, members can input the tournaments with all of the key details (dates, vitals, etc.) and then as they play the tournaments, TastyStakes will calculate the refunds to the stakers automatically. The reason they were scooped up by YouStake is because the two companies have similar visions.
If you’re not familiar with YouStake, it’s a company that is revolutionizing the way fans watch and play poker. We’ve seen a huge growth in online betting marketplaces where fans can get closer to the game and have multiple interests based on their wagering. We’ve seen that with the massive growth of FanDuel and DraftKings in the sports sector as fans now play Daily Fantasy opposed to just the season-long version.
YouStake is looking to get in on the trend as their product allows fans to bet on their favorite poker players. As the players do well, they get rewarded. It’s a way to share the success and make it that much more interesting for fans to get excited about poker tournaments. How it works is YouStake members can back a player to help them get into the tournament, and then if they win, they share the spoils.
YouStake has generated a lot of buzz in the startup community this year. In January, they announced that they have been accepted into a global venture capital seed fund known as 500 Startups. It’s a company that helps kickstart startups and YouStake’s entry marks the first poker product to be drafted into the program.
The next step for YouStake is to get more players into their system. As of right now, they have Anthony Zinno, the 2015 Player of the Year, Allen Kessler, a WSOP and WPT Winner, and former WSOP World Champion Greg Raymer. They are currently taking submissions to add professional players to their listings for the 2016 World Series of Poker. Backers have already been signing up from all over the world in hopes of investing and cashing in along with their favorite player.
YouStake will be attending the 500 Startups Demo Day on May 13. It will take place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.