The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

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However, we do plan to introduce a VIP program (soon) which will give substantial awards to high volume players. For instance, how'd you like to trade your FPPs for a WSOP, PokerStars Caribbean Adventure or European Poker Tour package?

[/ QUOTE ]

Kill some time with me. Going off this statement and the small dead end link in the cashier box, let's throw out guesses on what you believe the Stars VIP will consist of. I'll start it off.

ETA:

New announcements will be posted on Stars Jan 2 stating that the VIP program will be established later in the month.

Bonuses:

I doubt they will offer a "# Hands = $ Bonus" like Party offers varying from player to player. I think they will offer maybe an extra deposit bonus every month or so for VIP members, nothing too elaborate.

FPP's:

Basing the fact that TOP costs 2000 FPP's in their store and the selling price is $30 (rounding for ease) making it $0.015 a point. Following that math, a $12000 package for a WSOP seat should cost 800,000 FPP. Anyone have that many in their account? I think they increase the distribution of FPP's for VIP players.


Your turn. Take a shot. Have fun.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

----- Original Message -----
From:
Sent: 2005/12/21 15:57:04
To: support@pokerstars.com
Subject: VIP question

Hey, I was wondering when your VIP program would be put into action?

Thanks alot!

--Mike


Hello Michael,

Thank you for asking!

In the next week, we will be announcing a very exciting new PokerStars
VIP Club which will award our players with many new and exciting gifts
and opportunities for our frequent players.

While we can't give out any of the details yet, it won't be a secret!
We will announce in the News, on the website, and by email.

We look forward to having you as a member of our VIP Club!


Regards,

Marlene
PokerStars Support Team

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

And yes, according to there 3600 FPP 9 player single table satellite for a $530 tournament entry, thats about 61.13 FPP for $1 of value. So thats around 733,585 FPP for $12,000.

Obviously, that is way too many FPP's to earn, so the question is going to be this:

Will it be a trade of all FPP's for a package? I mean, they have tournies where you can buy in for 300,600,1000 FPP's and win 3000,6000,10000 FPPs, I dont think they are going to want people to get FPP's to buy $12,000 packages this way.

So that means that the VIP program will be set up in a way in which the newly earned FPP's will be credited in a different manner.

I don't think you are going to get to use your FPP's you have now to buy anything new they will be offering in a week, it's possible that they will set up some new system, (like Party) in which higher volume players will earn FPP's at a faster rate, thus being able to acheive higher totals.

I dunno, but I am super excited to see what they say, however, I think I am probably going to be slightly disappointed.

I hope it does come in the next week, my first thought was that they were either going to wait until the Carribean adventure was over, or possibly make the grand announcement at the event in the bahamas.

--LoO

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

I strongly suspect it won't be cash and thus I even more strongly suspect it's going to suck....

Here's hoping I'm wrong.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
I strongly suspect it won't be cash and thus I even more strongly suspect it's going to suck....

Here's hoping I'm wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, it definitely will NOT be cash for points, you can forget about that.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

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Yeah, it definitely will NOT be cash for points, you can forget about that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then what's all the fuss about??

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Yeah, it definitely will NOT be cash for points, you can forget about that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then what's all the fuss about??

[/ QUOTE ]

Cause they will be giving away free entries into the WSOP and WPT Carribean Adventure!!

That means you can play your regular games and not have to worry about taking time out to qualify for these events. You can qualify just by playing.

That is, unless, its 750,000 FPPs to qualify..lol.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

would it be too much to give the VIPs a continuous deposit bonus?

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

this is a good idea, why not something like earn x amount of points and earn a 20-30% up to y deposit bonus?

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

they should put a running counter of MGR and spit out depsoit bonuses at tiered levels. we aren't children, we know MGR is their bottom line. no need to mask it with FPP that never adequetely represent this, if I put in $100 of rake and some SNGer pays $100 in fees we should get equal bonuses

maybe something like:
at $500 MGR you unlock a X% deposit bonus up to $100
$1000, another bonus up to $125
$1500, another bonus up to $150

free entries into tournaments are nice, but i don't play NL tournies. i just need $$$ to pay rent, i'd like something i can rely on each month

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
they should put a running counter of MGR and spit out depsoit bonuses at tiered levels. we aren't children, we know MGR is their bottom line. no need to mask it with FPP that never adequetely represent this, if I put in $100 of rake and some SNGer pays $100 in fees we should get equal bonuses

maybe something like:
at $500 MGR you unlock a X% deposit bonus up to $100
$1000, another bonus up to $125
$1500, another bonus up to $150

free entries into tournaments are nice, but i don't play NL tournies. i just need $$$ to pay rent, i'd like something i can rely on each month

[/ QUOTE ]

This would be nice.

I think it'll be tourney entries though. PS, prove me wrong! Please!

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
free entries into tournaments are nice, but i don't play NL tournies. i just need $$$ to pay rent, i'd like something i can rely on each month

[/ QUOTE ]

bam. well put.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

I don't have much information, but I do have it on good authority that Dell gift certificates will be available.

Scott

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

I'd prefer Stars certificates. Anything that can end up as cash in my pocket.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

bah. dell sucks..i want stars cash as well. just something ot put into my bankroll.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

vip sports allows players to use player points for cash or merchandise, and guess what. 90% ask for cash.

When are the sites going to "get it"

they spend money having people organize all these promotions, and that takes away from the money they could be returning to players. all these free roll tourneys take people away from the tables where they could be paying rake. i just don't understand!

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

I guess that the VIP program will let you earn FPPs at a multiplied rate depending on how much you play. You'll be able to spend FPPs on a lot of more stuff, like ipods, lcds, and well known offline tournies like EPT and WSOP. There will probably be VIP freerolls and different tiers of VIPs.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

Well Lee said that this VIP program would be so good as to lay the issue of non-availability of rake-back at Stars to bed..

LOL - I'll believe that when I see it...

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
Well Lee said that this VIP program would be so good as to lay the issue of non-availability of rake-back at Stars to bed..

LOL - I'll believe that when I see it...

[/ QUOTE ]Oh, come on. We can do math too Lee.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
Well Lee said that this VIP program would be so good as to lay the issue of non-availability of rake-back at Stars to bed..

LOL - I'll believe that when I see it...

[/ QUOTE ]

This from the same man who said he didn't understand the fuss about rakeback!!! C'mon Lee!

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

I still think the best compromise here is for Stars to allow players to buy bonus dollars with FPPs. The players ultimately get cash but by making it bonus dollars the site ensures that the player continues to play there to get that cash.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

Unfortunately until he does something that equates to rakeback in $$/hands played terms, Stars is always going to be a 2nd tier site for serious ring players...

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
Well Lee said that this VIP program would be so good as to lay the issue of non-availability of rake-back at Stars to bed..

LOL - I'll believe that when I see it...

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah, but lee doesn't seem to understand how much money we lose by coming to stars if we're playing, say, 60k hands of 5/10 6max every month

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

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yeah, but lee doesn't seem to understand how much money we lose by coming to stars if we're playing, say, 60k hands of 5/10 6max every month

[/ QUOTE ]

I think he might have an inkling of an idea, in the form of some small smudges on the left side of star's ledger.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

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I still think the best compromise here is for Stars to allow players to buy bonus dollars with FPPs. The players ultimately get cash but by making it bonus dollars the site ensures that the player continues to play there to get that cash.

[/ QUOTE ]

It cant be any type of bonus dollar scheme, that too close to what they already have.

Everyone knows you can take your 3600 FPP over to the 1-table sit-n-go to get into the $530 every month. You could unregister from that and take the 530 T$.

There are already ways to turn your FPP's into cash that involve playing on the site. I want things where my play/FPPs gets me items/trips where I don't have to play in another tourny to win them.

I want reward for my normal play, not incentives to waste my time playing other tournies seperate from what I normally play.

I played in a few of the 1,000/10,000 FPP tournies to get to Atlantis (unsuccessfully), all that happened is that I wasted a crap load of my FPPs and many hours of my time. My reward = 0, plus stars got ZERO rake from me while I wasted my time in these FPP events as opposed to playing my regular games.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

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Everyone knows you can take your 3600 FPP over to the 1-table sit-n-go to get into the $530 every month. You could unregister from that and take the 530 T$.


[/ QUOTE ]

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

You can use T$ to play sitngos, turning FPP into $ in 3 difficult and time consuming steps!. It's a good idea for SNG and MTT players, but for a ring game player 1) They'll likely be underskilled at the T$ satellite(meaning more FPP and more hours per win) and 2) They'll likely be bad at the actual SNGs or MTTs you can enter with $T, which means fewer real $ per T$.
It's possible it's still worth it from an hourly rate consideration, even an atrocious SNG player playing $5 SNGs would make a decent amount if they got to play for essentially free. Say 8 hours per T$ sat win, breakeven SNGery at the $6turbos playing 6 an hour= $22/hr. So you can turn ~35k FPP into ~$530 with ~20 hours of work, with the possibility of doing better if you can breakeven at a higher SNG level. Yay?

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
It's a good idea for SNG and MTT players, but for a ring game player 1) They'll likely be underskilled at the T$ satellite(meaning more FPP and more hours per win) and 2) They'll likely be bad at the actual SNGs or MTTs you can enter with $T, which means fewer real $ per T$.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, bingo.

I like cool stuff as much as the next guy, and I expect that the FPP store will be vastly improved, but for limit grinders, FPP tourneys are a waste of time.

As are buy-ins to events like the WSOP where we'd pretty much be dead money.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

You really don't have to be that good a tourney player to be slightly-above dead-money in a major tournament.

Top 10% usually cashes.

I made the money in my very first tournament...although this was the party-cruise with an extremely flat pay-out structure (top 180 out of 735 got paid).


Obviously you're not very interested in entries to major tourneys which is fine.
Just disputing the notion that you would be completely dead-money.
anyone who plays SNG's or MTT's online and is half-decent would have a shot of making the money at the WSOP or other major tourneys.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It's a good idea for SNG and MTT players, but for a ring game player 1) They'll likely be underskilled at the T$ satellite(meaning more FPP and more hours per win) and 2) They'll likely be bad at the actual SNGs or MTTs you can enter with $T, which means fewer real $ per T$.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, bingo.

I like cool stuff as much as the next guy, and I expect that the FPP store will be vastly improved, but for limit grinders, FPP tourneys are a waste of time.

As are buy-ins to events like the WSOP where we'd pretty much be dead money.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps they could offer something like free vacations, such as free airfare/hotel to Vegas so that you can go there to play live ring games or just have a blast doing something else.

I would think Stars could send enough people to find a hotel in Vegas that would make a good deal with them.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

I know, I'm just exaggerating to make a point. Stars is just so focused on tournament players that I think they're overlooking straight cash game players a bit.

I'm actually not terrible at tournaments, but I really don't have the patience for them.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

So now comes the really tricky question...

If "Everyone knows that 3600 FPP" is roughly equivalent to $530 (give or take your respective SNG skills)... or roughly 15 cents/FPP...

How does Stars design a VIP program that values 1 FPP at > 15 cents ???

It sounds to me like Stars VIP is destined to be a letdown from the get-go!!!

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

Uh, 3600 FPP isn't worth $530, it's worth $530 / 9 if you're a player of average skill.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

3600 FPP is not equivalent to $530. Not even close. I've heard .07 each and I've heard .05 each...not sure how they did the calculations but they are NOT worth .15 each.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

I suspect there will be other prizes available for purchase that are not major tourney entries.


Since the previous e-mail said it would be announced with the next few days why is everyone speculating on it.

i'm excited too and I hope it is a favorable structure for me to spend a LOT of time there earning FPP's (major-tourney entries are VERY attractive to me). But we'll find out all the details in the next few days (hopefully) and then will decide from there whether it's a program worthy of bringing our play over there...or not.


I'm not going to make a judgement about whether I'm definitely or probably or probably not bringing my ring-game play over to Stars before I know ANY of the details.

Even if the prizes and FPP structure looks favorable that STILL won't be enough to get me to stay there...because if I go in pursuit of FPP's and then all the tables are nothing but you TAG's and I'm getting clobbered (because I suck) then I'll go running back to wherever I can find more fish if that's what I think is best....FPP-prizes be damned, I need the tables to be profitable in my inept little hands too.


my HOPES are that the prizes are realistically attainable AND the games are profitable enough for me.
but I don't know if there's a 20% chance of that happening or an 80% chance.
We'll see.

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

Bob, stop being the voice of reason. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

I emailed Pokerstars a few months back and basically made the argument they should NOT offer rakeback. The reason being that Pokerstars has a very low rake on limit games (relative to the other major players) and I would like to preserve the status quo.

For some confounded reason I suspect there is a 'catch' here of some sort. When I wrote the email mentioned above, they told me I was "definately in the minority" and the only people who agreed with me were management. The vast majority of player remarks were (allegedly) in favor of a rakeback program.

I just hope it isn't rakeback with increased rakes, rakeback with increased sit & go/tournament juice, or (as Microbob pointed out) rakeback with a massive boost in twoplustwo TAG's. As it is, they already slightly adjusted the rake on the microlimits (ex. taking rake in dollar increments on .25/.50 and adding juice on low buy-in tournaments such $3 plus .30).

It seems counterintuitive, but I actually HOPE the VIP plan is geared towards people who play high limits and excludes people like me. I just suspect the profitability of my games could dramatically be reduced. Maybe I'm wrong and it could be the new scheme could be lucrative inspite of attracting more TAG's.

I wrote Pokerstars an email and they wouldn't comment. They just told me I'd be impressed. I won't be impressed if there's a clever attempt to increase rake imbedded in the new plan. Also, I won't be impressed if Pokerstars is inundated with a massive number of savvy 2plus2'ers.

All this being said, I love Pokerstars and hope it continues to deliver the highest quality online poker in the business.

JeffreyREBT "Wherein I don't promise to make you rich without trying, or even trying very hard; I do promise to say things that will make you FEEL rich."

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

Bob,
Dont you ever touch your presents before Christmas eve? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

That's not all I touch!!

Re: The Stars VIP Guessing Game
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, we do plan to introduce a VIP program (soon) which will give substantial awards to high volume players. For instance, how'd you like to trade your FPPs for a WSOP, PokerStars Caribbean Adventure or European Poker Tour package?

[/ QUOTE ]

ETA:

New announcements will be posted on Stars Jan 2 stating that the VIP program will be established later in the month.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'll take the under. Way under. ;-)

The rest, you'll have to watch your inbox for.

Jester