Hopefully you guys don't mind the zillionth thread on Steps on the front page here, but I went ahead and crunched the numbers for the Party Steps. It's frustrating having 50 different people spout off opinions, but nobody do the work to really figure it out.
I used an iterative process in a spreadsheet that started any number of players at a given Step, and looked at Party's payout as the players bounce up and down through the Steps (after enough iterations, the players in Steps 1-4 converge to zero).
Here are my findings:
$100,000 invested in Step 1's will yield <font color="red">$70,532.61</font> back to the players.
$100,000 invested in Step 2's will yield <font color="red">$70,532.61</font> back to the players.
$100,000 invested in Step 3's will yield <font color="red">$78,692.52</font> back to the players.
$100,000 invested in Step 4's will yield <font color="red">$86,950.96</font> back to the players.
$100,000 invested in Step 5's will yield <font color="red">$93,896.71</font> back to the players.
Here is the spreadsheet in which I did my work - it's kind of scratch work (no labels, etc.), but it shouldn't be hard to figure out what everything means:
http://home.comcast.net/~umterp/PartySteps.xls
Notice Steps 1 and 2 have the same yield, because they are both 10% rake on the inital level.
I'm 99% sure these numbers are correct. I'll be away from my computer for a little while, but I can answer any question about what the spreadsheet means in like an hour if anyone doesn't understand it.