As a cash player(who hates tournaments), you could end up with a ton of un-convertible points. UGH.

I don't know about the math but you can only exchange points at each gear 3 times. So at 10 gear you can exchange 3x2000 = 6000 points. In order to go from 10 gear to J gear you have to earn 40,000 points. Let's say you spent all your points just before you reached 10 gear and your point balance is zero. If you spend the maximum points for cash in 10 gear you will reach J gear with 34,000 points. The max you can spend for cash in J gear is 15,000 points. So now your balance is 19,000 points. Now you cannot buy more cash for points till you earn 50,000 more points to reach Q gear. Total is now 69,000 and you can spend 30,000 = 39,000 balance and you have to earn 100,000 more points till you can again cash some of them in.

So from 10 gear to Q gear you have earned 90,000 points and have been able to spend 51,000 of them for cash = <57% of your points and you now need to earn 100,000 more before you can use them again. So by the time you have reached K gear you have gotten <27% value for cash and when you cash in at K gear you now have gotten 50.5%.

The only thing to spend them on are tournaments so your assumption that tournaments are worthless (and I do not much care for them ) is, how do I say.............

Seth, can you comment on the possibility of adding flexibility with tournament tickets?

(ie at least letting us use the $109 ticket for the daily $5k guaranteed tournament as well)?

for people like me where playing on sundays is not an option

grapefruit tea - I have no idea what you just did there and am not about to try to figure it out.


waq - I'm not positive but I think you might have a misunderstanding of some of the VIP thing.

You can only spend them three times PER MONTH.

And when you get to J gear you can continue to spend points at the T gear level if you want. I'm going to try to save them up though and not spend any on the lower gears. It's not mandatory.

But yeah, if you go all the way to 300k lifetime points without have spent any then it's going to take awhile to wait for each new calendar month to roll around for you to be able to spend them all.

Hey, I liked your analysis of the VIP System in the other thread.

I did forget about the 3 times per month limit. But if you make more than 6000 VIP a month at Gear T, then wouldn't the VIP points just be saved until you move up to the next gear where you could cash them in at an even better rate? So the excess VIP points that go over the maximum you are allowed to trade in would actually be worth more than the VIP points that you did trade in.

As long as you don't pay more than $6000 in rake a month ($72000 a year), which corresponds to Gear A, VIP points wouldn't depreciate.

You can cash in more than 3 times at a given gear. It's just that you can't cash in at a gear's rate more than 3 times per month. So in 12 months, the most you can cash in at a single rate, say Gear T's rate, is 36 times.

The tournament tickets are definitely not worthless to many, but I don't play tournaments so I left them out. I didn't look too much into it, but if those under the VIP System earn tournament tickets faster than 35% RB players, then this would further increase the value of the VIP System.

But you were my inspiration for creating this mess.

So what is everyone's estimate on Gear T being at least better than 35% RB thus far?

I'd like to hear more thoughts so that we can further analyze the value of the VIP System, which is looking good.

Well Bob I have been having some memory issues lately. Yes it is per month. But at least I got the three correct.

My oldest cat turns 19 years and 8 months today. It is time for the 2 of us to go to the summer house for some R&R. We will take the GF, he really likes her.

Good point. It feels like it's going pretty freaking slow...because it is. But the percentage isn't bad and you can keep getting them occasionally via the different promotions.

I do believe that is the case for many players. You would have to purposefully avoid the better promos for it to not be that way for you.
If you are exclusively playing cash games on Saturday and Sunday only then it wouldn't be 35% for you. Those days are tournament promo days so you're not getting ANY of the promotional value at all.

But assuming a roughly linear amount per day (so 2/7 of your play is on Mon and Fri) then those double-points obviously are worth quite a bit. If you are going out of your way to hit Monday and Friday even harder...and assuming RPM continues with those double-point days in future months...and you can hold onto your points and aren't cashing them out at 8 level or something...then I think T gear would pretty much get you there or come reasonably close.

Just FYI--this glitch has not been fixed. I just bought a $50 bonus three seconds ago as a rakeback player in 10th gear.

That's a really old cat.

Disregard. It appears to be fixed after all.

Oh yeah, assuming you play the same number of hands each day of the week.

A few years back I inherited a cat that was 20 years old and she lived for 2 more years. I inherited the 3 I have now as well. The oldest started having some medical issues over 2 years ago so I don't leave him behind. He is doing fine and he says fu doj. I did not inherit any money, just cats.

Pretty shocked that I was not aware of how the points would be used differently.
I do find this bad as I was near completing a significant limit and to do that without warning is really not good.

If the s / w can alert you to say they will reverse the points for cash and do so then they can easily warn you of any impending change.

And it is not easy to spend points on tournys, not that straight-forward. As far as I can see you need to click register 1 by 1 on each tourny and see if it has a points option.
Seems not that friendly.

Any timeline on when RB players will know what happens with their points if they switch over to VIP? Timeline on RB players new options for using points? \

Im not looking for a specific date here, just is it days, weeks, months?

Also, you missed one of my questions seth.

Will RB players signed up through an outside affiliate be able to switch to VIP if they so choose?

Thanks for getting back to us on most of our questions Seth!

I haven't seen what the plan is for RB players that may want to switch to VIP at some point in the future. For example, say I am a RB player and I have earned enough for Level Q and decide I want to be a RB player. Do I start at Q? I know right now they are going to allow players to start at the proper level, but what about in the future?

I can't see Merge allowing RB players to do this in the future because then it would allow players to earn RB while accumulating points. Then they could switch to VIP and Cash in all the points they earned.

On the other hand, it wouldn't seem fair to have them start at the beginning either in the future. Just because RB is better value now for some, in the future they may decide VIP is better value. If that's happens, what level would they start? If they are forced to start at 0 and the points aren't eligible to be converted, it would seem better for the player to keep RB and start at 0 on another Merge skin.

Seth, can you confirm if RB players will be eligible to switch to VIP in the future?

If RB players will be allowed to switch to VIP in the future, what will the protocol be for the points they've accumulated up to that point and the level they will be moved too?

Was there a reason that Merge ended the Skins ability for RakeChases and changed the Affiliate rules for RakeChases?

If this has been covered and I missed it, someone please point me in the right direction.

Sorry if this has been answered:

Do we maintain the same VIP level if we switch from RB to VIP or do we start over?

Totally agree...this needs a solid and very clear answer on before I can decide where/when to play and what rewards to keep or change.

When you switch over from RB to VIP you will not be able to use your stockpiled points that you have accumulated under the rakeback scheme to buy cash bonuses under the VIP scheme. So for example, if you have 60,000 points stockpiled as a rakeback player and switch over, then you will be put into the J gear, but you won't be able to buy the J gear cash bonuses with that 60,000 points, only the points you accrue going forward would be able to be used to buy cash bonuses.

I don't think they have the software ready to go yet to implement this, which is why it may be a bit before RB players are able to be switched over to the VIP scheme.

I currently have 20,000 or so points stockpiled under the RB scheme and have requested to switch over. I expect when they switch me, I will be able to use those 20,000 points to still buy into tournies, etc, but I will not be able to buy T Gear cash bonuses with those stockpiled points.

FWIW, as a player who has only ever used points for tourneys, you can def buy into all bounty tournaments with points. Some even give you the option to use a combination of points and cash.

Wow this is a bit confusing I'm a T gear rake back with bonus, playing more on Sat / Sun but some on Mon / Fri. With all this in combination ... what is the best plan. Not going to ask anyone, but will try to figure it out on my home but good lord it's worse that NLHE with 2 pair facing an all in from a LAG. Glad I cashed my points the week before it changed. Rungood there for sure.

I did the calcs and it would take J gear to break even w/rakeback, but only if your clearing a bonus and can play mon/fri with double points. Since, I can't and mon/fri might go away ... I'll stay rakeback for the future. I assume we will all be converted at some point. J gear is 30 weeks away so I'll just have fun and collect my 35% daily, plus bonus and I figure tourney points at .5/$1.00 ... I'm not so good at the tourneys. If I can do a bit better I'll profit even more, but it is tough to find the tourney's with best value and there is opportunity cost to playing a tournament when there are fish at the tables.

This is a good question and the kind of feedback we're looking for. I don't have a problem issuing you an entry into the daily $5k guaranteed instead of the $100k guaranteed if that is what you prefer. You can contact me directly on days that you qualify for a $109 ticket if you'd like to swap it for the $5k guaranteed ticket.

This is awesome imo.