Full Tilt bonuses

[2Fast2Furious]

I play on Party but am just wondering if anyone plays on Full Tilt or Poker Stars and what the consensus is on either of these vs. Party (level of play, do they have lots of colluders etc.) Reason I'm asking is bc on Party I seem to get these 20% redeposit bonuses from time to time which are helpful but on Full Tilt they have a first time bonus of up to 100% now. I'm breakeven on Party 11s and 22s to date so need to have all the help I can get!

Also, I play a bit (say 2-3 SnGs per day) but am not in college and have a full time job that pays pretty well so I don't do rakeback bc from what I've heard it doesn't make sense unless you're playing a lot on a weekly basis.

Thx.

[playersare]

the full tilt bonus is worth 42% of rebate on your tourney fees, which is better than affiliate rakeback anyway.

however, the best bonuses for SNG play are probably at Poker Stars and Bodog, which both give back 100% of the fees (and Bodog's bonus is unlimited too). Pokerroom is also good at 71% (w/7x points structure).

[2Fast2Furious]

thx - just to clarify, sounds like on Pstart and Full Tilt you can play SnGs to clear your # of raked hands needed to get the bonus (on Party you gotta play ring games - SnG hands don't count)

[playersare]

if you play SNG's, it's not "raked hands" which clear the bonus, it's the tourney fees taken when you register. for example, if you enter a $20 + $2, then you would a $2 bonus rebate on Poker Stars and Bodog (essentially making it vig-free), while Full Tilt would give you about 84 cents back.

you're correct that you cannot play SNG's on Party to clear bonus, however the fees do count as MGR for rakeback purposes (provided you can manage to get rakeback there).

[2Fast2Furious]

thx - sorry to keep pestering but with regard to my other question on rakeback, is it really worth doing it if you're only playing 20-30 or so SnGs per week? To give you more color I'm not playing for a living but would like to clear as much cash as I can like everyone else.

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thx - sorry to keep pestering but with regard to my other question on rakeback, is it really worth doing it if you're only playing 20-30 or so SnGs per week? To give you more color I'm not playing for a living but would like to clear as much cash as I can like everyone else.

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It's free money back. So, it may not be much for a low volume player, but I still would take it if I had the option. But, if you won't miss it, send it on to me!!

/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[playersare]

a low volume SNG player would make more money overall on the bonuses than rakeback. as already mentioned, bonuses on certain sites rebate as much as 100% of your fees. the most you could get with rakeback is 30%.

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a low volume SNG player would make more money overall on the bonuses than rakeback. as already mentioned, bonuses on certain sites rebate as much as 100% of your fees. the most you could get with rakeback is 30%.

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But they aren't mutually exclusive and the two in combination are going to be greater than either separately.

[2Fast2Furious]

Right, so I'm basically throwing money away by not having rakeback and using this Full Tilt bonus?

[playersare]

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Right, so I'm basically throwing money away by not having rakeback and using this Full Tilt bonus?

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wrong. even with rakeback factored in, the bonus is worth more, since most of the time it will be deducted from your MGR anyway.

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a low volume SNG player would make more money overall on the bonuses than rakeback. as already mentioned, bonuses on certain sites rebate as much as 100% of your fees. the most you could get with rakeback is 30%.

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This is true of Party, and others. But aren't the bonuses at Full Tilt notoriously slow to clear?

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Right, so I'm basically throwing money away by not having rakeback and using this Full Tilt bonus?

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Yes.

I'm going to use a ten handed table (to make the math easy) and make some illustrations about how it works to make it clear.

You get credit for paying a share of the rake even if you don't put money in the pot. If there are ten people at the table and there is one dollar in rake taken, each person gets credit for paying ten cents of rake.

Now imagine you're at a table long enough for them to take ten thousand dollars in rake giving you credit for a thousand dollars of rake. At 27% rakeback you would get $270.

You get ten thousand points. Each point is worth six cents of bonus so with bonus alone you would get $600.

With bonus and rakeback you would get your $600 bonus. The bonus is ten subtracted from the $1000 rake you get credit for paying and you get rakeback on the remaining $400 which my calculator tells me is $108.

Bonus gives you $600
Rakeback gives you $270
Bonus + rakeback gives you $708

Now I'm not an affiliate and I couldn't care less about your bottom line but it's pretty clear to me that you're a fool not to do the bonus + rakeback.

[playersare]

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This is true of Party, and others. But aren't the bonuses at Full Tilt notoriously slow to clear?

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for low limit ring games, yes. but this thread is pertaining only to tourney play, where FT's 42% rate is somewhere around average in the industry. Party, Crypto, Prima, UB, Paradise, Absolute, Boss/IPN...none of these places give ANY direct rebate back for SNG/MTT fees unless you go through an affiliate (if even).

Now redoing the numbers based on $1500 in SnG fees.

You get seven points per dollar of tournament fees paid.

1500 * 7 = 10500 points which is enough to clear the entire bonus plus 500.

Rakeback would take your $1500 in fees, subtract the $600 in bonus and give you 27% of the remaining $900 which comes to $243.

Bonus alone $600
Rakeback alone $405 (1500*.27)
Bonus + Rakeback $843

Hmm...guess I should work off my next bonus with SnGs eh?

Oh, and if you deposit the full $600 the bonus is paid out in $20 increments so there's no real pressure to clear the whole thing.

And now some calculations just to show that it works even if you don't clear the whole bonus. Aren't you glad I'm bored and don't want to work?

Say you play $200 worth of SnGs. (that's $200 in fees or 200 $10+1 SnGs)

Rakeback would give you 200*.27 = $54
You would earn 1400 points which is worth $84 in bonus. They pay in $20 increments so you'd be paid $80 of it. You would then get rakeback on (200 - 80 = 120 ) which comes out to $32.4.

Bonus $80
Rakeback $54
Bonus + Rakeback $112.40

Bottom line is that there is no way in hell that bonus + rakeback is not your best option.

[playersare]

the only other detail I'll add is that your calculations show how mediocre the Full Tilt bonus is, even with rakeback added in. if you paid $1500 in SNG fees a bodog or poker stars (presuming bonus is running at all times), you'd get $1500 back, even without rakeback. or $1065 at Pokerroom with a 7x clearance rate.

the best overall option is to play where you get the highest percentage of action back, regardless of how it's coordinated.

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for low limit ring games, yes. but this thread is pertaining only to tourney play, where FT's 42% rate is somewhere around average in the industry. Party, Crypto, Prima, UB, Paradise, Absolute, Boss/IPN...none of these places give ANY direct rebate back for SNG/MTT fees unless you go through an affiliate (if even).

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Ah, yes, you're right, OP is an SNG'er.

I'm interested in this thread, because I am probably going to signup with Full Tilt this week. And, although it may take a while, I want one of those sweet custom jerseys (football). I like them, anyway.

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the only other detail I'll add is that your calculations show how mediocre the Full Tilt bonus is, even with rakeback added in. if you paid $1500 in SNG fees a bodog or poker stars (presuming bonus is running at all times), you'd get $1500 back, even without rakeback. or $1065 at Pokerroom with a 7x clearance rate.

the best overall option is to play where you get the highest percentage of action back, regardless of how it's coordinated.

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Yeah, I can't really disagree with either statement.

FullTilt bonuses are pretty much there for when you don't have a bonus elsewhere that's a better deal. They have a long expiration date and they clear in increments so it's no big deal if you only clear a third of it between Stars bonuses and so forth.

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for low limit ring games, yes. but this thread is pertaining only to tourney play, where FT's 42% rate is somewhere around average in the industry. Party, Crypto, Prima, UB, Paradise, Absolute, Boss/IPN...none of these places give ANY direct rebate back for SNG/MTT fees unless you go through an affiliate (if even).

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Ah, yes, you're right, OP is an SNG'er.

I'm interested in this thread, because I am probably going to signup with Full Tilt this week. And, although it may take a while, I want one of those sweet custom jerseys (football). I like them, anyway.

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Be warned. You've heard all the stories about how hard it is to clear the bonus? Well to get a jersey you need to play enough to clear the initial deposit bonus two and a half times.

[primetime32]

i started on full tilt recently to see how there bonus is. After about 2 weeks of playing there (along with playing at party and absolute) i have accumulated 5,000 points. So its about 10 weeks or 2.5 months of play for me to get a jersey. I am not playing for a jersey and i probably won't get one, but that still isnt bad on top of the bonuses and rakeback.

Compared to the crap you get some of the other sites the jersey's there are pretty decent.

[2Fast2Furious]

Thanks everyone - very helpful. If I might now divert this thread to rakeback - what is the best one to use and how does it work? Also, on another thread a 2+2'er said it's best to sign up to Full Tilt using www.pokersourceonline.com (http://www.pokersourceonline.com) so you can get pokertracker for free...while doing this should I set up my rakeback as well? Thx and sorry for the dumb questions

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Thanks everyone - very helpful. If I might now divert this thread to rakeback - what is the best one to use and how does it work? Also, on another thread a 2+2'er said it's best to sign up to Full Tilt using www.pokersourceonline.com (http://www.pokersourceonline.com) so you can get pokertracker for free...while doing this should I set up my rakeback as well? Thx and sorry for the dumb questions

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For rakeback, I use rakebreak and they have been good and reliable.

You can't do PSO and rakeback both so it doesn't make sense to do PSO on Full Tilt. PSO is doing a promotion this month on PokerRoom (I think) which I don't believe allows rakeback so it makes sense to do this promotion with them, get pokertracker, and get rakeback and bonuses with FullTilt

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Compared to the crap you get some of the other sites the jersey's there are pretty decent.

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If everything else I owned was drenched in the blood of my victims I might considering wearing one of those jerseys.

I think a much better buy would be a bunch of the 2+2 books which you could at least sell on ebay or something.

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Be warned. You've heard all the stories about how hard it is to clear the bonus? Well to get a jersey you need to play enough to clear the initial deposit bonus two and a half times.

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http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/8091/wtf8yu.jpg (http://Say wah???

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Be warned. You've heard all the stories about how hard it is to clear the bonus? Well to get a jersey you need to play enough to clear the initial deposit bonus two and a half times.

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http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/8091/wtf8yu.jpg (http://Say wah???

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The initial $600 deposit bonus requires you to earn 10,000 points to clear it. The jerseys cost 25,000 points.

Guess I'll be playing there for a while, then! /images/graemlins/wink.gif

I just like the jerseys. While there seems to be a slant towards the hockey jersey, I like the football style one. (and I'm from Canada)