Firstly, good steaks should always be cooked rare - if not blue. Had a lovely Argentinian steak in London a few weeks ago, if I knew the name of the restaurant I"d recommend it.
As for staking, it can make sense on a number of levels.
For a one-off staking for a tournament outside the player"s usual buy-in it can give the player a chance to "have a punt" and limits the cost of this. It gives the backer a chance of a "sweat", and the outside possibility of a return on their investment. I"ve both backed other players and been backed myself for this sort of situation.
I recently backed a very good online tournament player who was going to Vegas to play a dozen or so $1,000-$3,000 tournaments. To off-set the risk, he sold 50% of himself to people who could buy anything from 1% upwards. He didn"t cash in any tournament until the last one where he came 5th for $120,000 in a WSOP event! So the backers got a nice return, but could have very easily got nothing back. The player could have probably just bought himself in to the events without the backing, but until the last event was probably very happy he"d off-set the cost.
I know of a number of players who I play with at DTD who are staked. Some for cash, some for tournaments, and some for both. The staked cash players don"t have the bankroll for the £1/2 game, but are very decent players who are looking to build their roll and reduce the chance of going bust. It takes a lot of trust and understanding between the backers and the stakers, and isn"t something either should enter into lightly. As far as I know, the two players who are staked for cash are doing pretty well off the back of the staking (as of course, are their backers).
Someone mentioned "make-up" in the staking arrangements. If you"re backed in a long-term agreement, you"re pretty much in make-up all the time. If you win a decent amount, you split that winnings between you and the staker, and then continue to play on the staker"s money - which means you"re instantly in make-up again (but this doesn"t mean that you"re in a deficit over the whole staking period). Obviously there will be a cut-off point where the agreement ends if you"re up to a certain point of make-up at any point. This will be agreed beforehand.
More players are staked than you might think. I reached the final table of a tournament not too long ago (blatant brag), and out of those on the final table I think only two of us had 100% of ourselves (I"d managed to bink a seat in a satellite, otherwise I"d have had to be staked to play it). I don"t know if it makes people play better/worse than they would if they were just playing for themselves. I guess a staked player is less interested in a min-cash than say a player who has satellited in and looks at the min-cash as a decent return, but that"s a dynamic that"s there between different players with different sized bankrolls anyway.
Not everyone is a fan of staking. I know Dracula wasn"t too keen on it...
