PokerStars & FPP's, Getting Screwed?

[Bradyams]

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A lot faster? Any idea how much, because I am almost at 300 BBs for 2/4 and will hopefully make it there by mid to late January. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

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Significantly faster. At 1/2 the pot needs to be $15 (7.5 BB) to get one FPP, at 2/4 and up it needs to be $20 (5 BB for 2/4, 3.333 BB for 3/6, etc.) So obviously you're gonna get a lot more FPPs.

[MicroBob]

trying to earn fpp's at 1/2 limit or NL-$50 is going to be pretty pointless.

not so completely terrible as far as clearing bonuses if you are willing to sit there and grind it out...but you're just not playing very high obviously and therefore don't get many FPP's

[IggyWH]

Anytime now you whores can stop hijacking my thread and answer my question [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

I don't mind, but if possible, can someone analyze the difference between .5/1 NL, 1/2 NL & 1/2 limit as far as earning FPP's. I only have "data" for .5/1 NL and as I said, it would take around 43,000 hands to get 10,000 FPP's.

[Shoe]

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That's 397k raked hands for about $24k (each package worth $12k I think??) which is about 6.04 cents in value per raked-hand.

Obviously this will be better if Stars cuts the Super-novas a break and lets them have the WSOP-ME at a better price than my projections.
Since they are playing there a freaking LOT I don't think it should be too much to ask to get 8-cents or more in value per raked-hand.


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I agree... I think they should give you double the FPP's if the rake hits $2, triple at $3 (for the hand -- similar to how you earn FPP's at Full Tilt). Players who generate $2-$3 rake per hand rewarded faster than those who only generate $1 per hand.

I was really looking forward to this programs but am a little bummed by the enormous amount of FPP's needed. My rakeback programs definitely beat the socks of this VIP program (and there I'm getting pure cash, at Stars they are also getting the publicity of me wearing their logowear and representing their site if I manage to do well in a tourney). If the gap was a little closer I'd definitely switch all of my play to Stars.

I will definitely increase my play at Stars but I was hoping to compeletely move to Stars.

[4thstreetpete]

I wonder if the stars vip offer would be enough to lure a lot of the high volume players away from party. As it stands now it's miles ahead of party (if you're not getting rakeback).

I'm waiting to see how party responds, if at all. If they do nothing than I can't wait to move my all my play over to stars. I've been looking to get away from party a looong time now. Party has bar none the worst customer service experiences I have ever received, their vip program is a joke.

[4thstreetpete]

Ok, going through the numbers again and it looks like the stars vip program is very underwhelming. I should've known because I didn't expect much to be honest.

I can't see how this would be enough to lure the high volume players over. There's better choices out there with rakebacks and it's hard to justify moving all your play over to stars with what they have to offer especially when you can get cash back instead of useless items like TVs and ipods that I don't need. At least it's a step in the right direction, still better than party. Hopefully this will get more ring game action going, we'll see how the next few months transpire.
Sometimes as poker players we get spoiled with all the great offers available. A few years ago I would've jumped all over this vip thing but now with so much competition and better offers out there, it's not even good enough to get me out of bed. This is a great time to be a poker player.

[O Doyle Rules]

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O-Doyle went to the WSOP ME for 120k hands on a different site (didn't even have to be raked-hands as I recall) and I think that's a pretty reasonable value.


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Hey Bob,

That was actually an exceptional value that True Poker offered, 10 cents a hand with no limitation on what limit I had to play. True Poker actually lost money on just my direct hands because probably a good third of my play was .50/1.00 and $ 25 NL. True told me that my rake did not even cover the cost and I totally believe it. There is no way a poker site could offer this again in the future.

However, those hands had to be played in basically a six week time period, and from my memory, I believe it was in the neighborhood of 50 plus hours a week and that was on top of a full time job. The value to True was in the promotional value of what I did. It did drive business to their site and got them alot of attention for a two month period. This made offering such a deal to one player reasonable, but to offer this same deal to 10, 20 or 10,000 players would be a losing proposition for any poker site. I would be stunned that any poker site (other than a start up site would ever offer this again.)



More thoughts about the free rolls:

I think alot of players are missing the value that PokerStars are putting out there in free rolls. I perceive it to be very high.

If your SuperNova you could play in the following free rolls:

12 $ 100,000 free rolls (monthly)

52 $ 2,500 free rolls (weekly)

52 $ 5,000 free rolls (weekly)

52 $ 7,500 free rolls (weekly)

52 $ 10,000 free rolls (weekly)*

(These actually get $ 2,000 added every month which would add another $ 288,000 in prize money.)

This is a total of $ 2,788,000 in free roll money. Now this is an insane amount of tournies to play, so once you hit SuperNova, you may decide to pass on the $ 2,500 &
$ 5,000 free rolls. You are still playing in tournies for
$ 2,398,000 in total prize money if you skip these.

If these tournies pay out alot of places in a flat manner, (what I would prefer) the chances of cashing in these things may be as high as 1 in 3. (Especially the SuperNova tournies which will not have nearly as many players, maybe as good as 1 in 2,1 in a 2.5 chance to cash)

Lets just take this assumption, throwing out the $2,500 & $ 5,000 free rolls, that an average payout on these tournies would be $ 150.00 You would play in a total of 118 tournies, placing in a third of them, (assuming you are just an average player) for a total of approximately 40 cashes for $ 6,000 in tourney free roll cashes.

Farfetched, I don't think so, especially if there is a flat payout system in these tournies.

Far fetched, I don't think so, if they have flat payouts, I think this would be a conservative estimate to be made if you are just an average tourney player.

[MicroBob]

I only saw the $10k weekly and $100k monthly freerolls.

didn't look at all the other freerolls for silver and gold which obviously has some extra value also (although probably not a lot...i can very easily see 2500 players in the $2500 freeroll so that would be only $1 of value).


I doubt they will pay super-flat though (unfortunately).
I expect it to be the same as their typical pay-out structure for all of their other tournaments which would be to the top 10%.

since we don't know what the pay-out structure would be for the freerolls it's probably not worth speculating.

The $10k freerolls for supernova players might be around 100 players or so for $100 in value per entry.
Obviously it's more value if there are fewer players and/or some of the players just don't plain show-up (which strikes me as likely...happens a lot in freerolls).


I think ODoyle makes some good points regarding the value involved here.
Obviously $0.10 per hand (not raked-hand) that he got playing really small levels at times on True was an exceptional value.


However...it is correct as others have indicated that the higher-stakes players don't get nearly as much value out of Stars since a $1 raked-hand is worth the same as a $3 raked-hand.

And it is also true that it's not direct cash which is a bother for some people (not as much for me really...plenty in the store to interest me...including the big events).

Plus...my estimations on the WSOP ME might have been low.
If they charge 700k FPP's or more then there's even less value obviously.


I still haven't fully decided how much I will be participating in this program.
If it was just a LITTLE bit more value that might be enough to do it for me.

As it is, you can certainly get more in direct-cash from other sites of course...and we don't know if this program will attract a ton of fishy players to Stars (to chase after these prizes also) or if it will only make the games tougher.



One other aspect of the Stars program....I expect that they will continue to do their 20% for $120 reloads every 2 mths or so (one can only hope).
This obviously adds extra value as you hanging out clearing away the FPP's.
Not necessary to figure out if the bonus comes out of your MGR or anything like that.


I'm not totally running-away from it yet.
It's still possible that some, or even most/all of my play will head over to Stars based on this program.

But the overall value for the prizes being slightly disappointing means there is also the chance I don't do any of this at all.

[LotsOfOuts69]

One other type of trade that could possibly happen, although not easily done, is of course allowing some player to use your account for a large buy in Pokerstars event (WCOOP or the big weekly tournaments), which you buy using FPPs, in trade for cash/W$/T$ at a discounted rate.

This of course is illegal, but step higher freerolls on Party have been traded in this manner.

You can still use your FPPs to buy into satellites for the weekly events, (and now that you can earn them at a higher rate, they become even more valuble), and then unregister for the T$.

[MicroBob]

we are assuming that the ticket that you get for the higher events allows you to unregister for the T$.
But we don't know if they are giving some sort of a 'different' type of ticket that you can't trade in for T$.
It's uncertain and we shouldn't assume that it is the same as we it always has been