Thanks for the info. I'm downloading it now to give it a try. Don't know how I'm going to deposit though, but I'll figure that out later if the software is decent.

Awful to multitable, layout of the cards is beyond idiotic. Rb is poop. Games are decent.

i would like to see the major tournament times moved forward to make them more Euro friendly. They were moved a bit after the American players were banned from playing but they still start and end too late for the European players. I will not play the Sunday Million as it ends at stupid o'clock for me. I think it would be a money spinner for Pokerstars if it started at an optimal time for more of the players.

If you run so deep in Sunday Million, you won't need to go to work on Monday - you'll win enough money to survive while seeking a new one or, in the top-3 finish case, to just retire.

The problem is that it's hard to keep everyone satisfied when running a major. If it starts earlier, there will be fewer entrants and probably an overlay. If it's made turbo, regs will start complaining that majors are unbeatable. If it's made two-day like The Weekender, there will be fewer entrants too. Perhaps it's still viable to make it a phase tourney.

Thank you for adding 2 of the mini's after our weeks of begging. If you can add other 2 after this week even more thank you. You will see both smash the gtd today w main one being rebuy that was missed but thank you nonetheless.

"Yeehaw" , one week into this new month and I have already earned 17% of my first step... gee I am sure glad that I made it to GoldStar to get an extra 5%-10% rakeback...

Maybe I should just change my BRM rule to 3 buyins instead of ten times that...

Could you change the ability to access the hand history in the replayer function?

So for the part 2 of the '100M Celebration' that starts on Monday, the 'Milestone Challenges' - have these details been up the whole time, or are they new?

It looks like the promo's only for Silver and Gold star - strange that there'd be nothing for Bronze and Chrome? Not that there's much for Silver and Gold either - it looks like we'll have to jump through hoops, just for a chance mostly at a shootout ..






Guess if the shootouts have about 20k entries or less, then maybe $0.50 for the Silver one isn't as small as sometimes these have been in the past ...

PS. Wasn't sure about the wording for the Silver one for Monday - is it only heads up (regular and zoom) that's excluded, or zoom (all types) and heads up?

PPS. Goodness, is it ever cold out today ... brrr!!!

Pretty sure those Silver Challenge and Gold Challenge is open to all players and have nothing to do with players vip level. Just they are named Silver and Gold which makes little confusing

Correct, and they're great value too for anyone. For the first challenge you play just 100 hands of regular cash games for a reward valued at around $1.50 and 1000 zoom hands for a reward valued at $8. And there's going to be challenges like that each day! Superb promotion, it almost seems too good to be true

Omg, bwahaha!! Guess it was a bit confusing - although I seem to misread stuff an awful lot as well

This thread's been a great resource for finding out the latest on all the promos - thanks for starting it anuj!!


Wonder if there'll be more or less people who might tend to go for the Gold or the Silver - guess the 'cost'/benefit (long-term EV) of the challenge would be about the same in terms of rake ... have been paying about $0.68 of rake for every 100 hands ($6.80 of rake for every 1000 hands) ... but there's different prize distributions?

Not sure yet if will bother with this one

The good news is that players don't have to choose either the silver or gold challenge, they can do both! Also these challenges are almost certainly beneficial for a 10nl player even in terms of rake/rewards. If you're paying $0.68 rake for 100 hands but win a reward with an average value of $1.50 then you're making a profit so long as you're as good as the average player in the field, and if you're better than average then you'll make even more at the tables! And if you're concerned about rake then you can minimise the cost by playing tighter or playing full ring instead of 6 max. So yea, lots of good things about this promo!

This should be the best one

--> Stars Satellite Suggestion/Request Thread

Hey, PocketDucks - got about the same amounts with my EV calculations ($1.37 for the Silver, and $7.55 for the Gold, based on 100k participants, and a bit more/less for fewer, depending on whether the top prize is hit or not). It's funny because guess the EV of this promo is more than it was for the Cash Quest promo that was running in January (where everybody who participated was guaranteed a cash prize, with 90% of people having equal chance of receiving $1 or $2.50)? Saw on a previous page that you calculated that the EV for the January promo was $80 (for 30 days). For me, the promo took 20k hands, so if that was about average, guess the EV for 1k hands was about $2 ... and here it's $7.55? So the promo that starts on Monday has an EV that's almost 4x more ... is that right?

Wonder if maybe when prize payouts are top-heavy (with most people winding up with nothing), and an event is only running in the short-term and there's no long-term, if maybe EV isn't the best measure to use on an event? Like say 1 million people decided to put $1 into a pool, to draw for a winner take all $1mil, but the event was only going to happen once ... guess the EV would technically be $1 so people 'should' be indifferent to participating. But guess maybe lots of people might find participating worth it, because the $1 loss would mean little, but a $1mil win would mean a lot?

In the short-term, maybe the expected result for this February promo might actually be closer to the lottery scenario (of $0) - if 60% to 77% of participants will get a shootout ticket ... and generally about 80% of those people won't cash? So doesn't that mean about 48% of people who complete the Gold, and about 60% of the people who complete the Silver won't wind up with any cash?

So that's interesting, that the EV is greater for the Challenges, but fewer people will wind up with cash. Am sure some people will like the chance at $100k - but guess as the saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush ... think I prefer the promos with the guaranteed cash, even if it's just $1 on some days (when it's $2.50 on others). Will have to see how soft the tables are during this promo - am not the greatest player, so need for the tables to be super soft to make playing without a guaranteed cash bonus worth the while But for people who were going to grind anyways, guess this is a nice little bonus - GL with your grind PocketDucks!!

PS. Didn't realize we could do both the Silver and the Gold

Thanks! Yea thing is there are different types of average. There's the mean, which is the most commonly used and is the same as the EV. But there's also the median, which is the value of the middle prize (if they're arranged in order from smallest to largest). So out of $5, $10 and $75, the median would be $10 (the middle amount) even though the mean is $30. It sounds like you'd prefer to use the median here as an estimate of how much money you can make from the challenges.

In these kind of lottery-style promos the median is usually lower than the mean. For instance if you just did one silver challenge, your median would probably be $0 (winning an all-in shootout ticket and then not winning anything in it). But the more challenges you do, the closer the median becomes to the mean. If you were to play all 15 of the silver challenges, then I'd estimate the total median profit you can make to be roughly half the EV. You're right that the variance in the prize distribution is definitely higher than the cash game quests. In the cash game quests, I ran some simulations and found the median amount to be roughly 80% of the mean, compared to about 50% in the milestone challenges.

To complicate things even further, there's yet another type of average called the mode, which is the most common total rewards you can win. In a single go, the most common is obviously the all-in shootout ticket. But calculating the mode amount across the 15 challenges is quite difficult so I'm not going to bother lol.

Hope this gives you a better idea anyway, or have I just confused you more?

how you do the math to calculate EV promo ?

multiply the value of each prize by the corresponding percentage chance of winning it, then add them together.

So if I have a 75% chance of winning $1 and a 25% chance of winning $5, then my EV is 0.75*1+0.25*5=$2

I estimated 40k fields in each of the all-in shootouts, so from that you can calculate the EV of each shootout by dividing the prizepool by the number of entries.

thanks donald

Still have my scribbles of stuff - will post it ... also then if there's any mistakes, here's a chance for them to get corrected

It's worthwhile and easy to make a special Excel or LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet for Stars promo EV calculation

are you a mathematician? how can a normal guy come up with all these calculations?

Hey PocketDucks - think I understand what you're saying ... you're acknowledging that the prize distribution is skewed. But that while the EV figure might arguably be a bit too high an approximation of the amount each of us might be expected to earn/win from this promo, the $0 approximation that I was using might be a bit too low, because there's 15 separate challenges?

Then guess you were trying to find a way to measure the amount that maybe the most people might be able to expect to win, on average, for the 15 challenges, and thought maybe half of the EV might be a good measure?

So for 15 challenges, at an EV of $1.67 for Silver, and $7.55 for gold, you're estimating that most people will tend to maybe win about ...

PD Approximation of Value of the Milestone Challenge Promo

Silver = ($1.67 x 15) / 2 = $12.53
Gold = ($7.55 x 15) / 2 = $56.63

Guess you were relying on the Central Limit Theorem, of the median approaching the mean to come up with this formula? Gosh, wasn't a math major or anything, so maybe if someone who was can help us out - guess these are 15 independent events, with a random distribution of prizes, but a non-random (skewed) distribution of prize payouts. Not sure I've ever seen the median and mode applied across 15 independent events quite like that ... maybe it might be more accurate to look at each of the 15 events, but as a group, to see what sorts of prizes the average person can expect when participating 15 times, and then add them together?


So like a batch of sample outcomes might tend to be ...

Silver

1. Shootout - no win
2. Shootout - no win
3. Shootout - no win
4. Shootout - no win
5. Shootout - min-cash ... $0.35
6. Shootout - no win
7. Shootout - no win
8. $2
9. Shootout - no win
10. Shootout - no win
11. Shootout - deep run ... $0.55
12. Shootout - no win
13. Shootout - no win
14. Shootout - no win
15. $5 cash

So that gives $7.90?


And for Gold

1. Shootout - no win
2. Shootout - no win
3. Shootout - no win
4. $5 cash
5. Shootout - no win
6. Shootout - min-cash ... $1
7. Shootout - no win
8. Shootout - no win
9. $10
10. $5
11. Shootout - no win
12. Shootout - no win
13. Shootout - deep run ... $2
13. Shootout - no win
14. Shootout - no win
15. $5

So maybe $28?


Guess the Silver might not be bad, depending on how much it'll cost in rake to participate every day (the cash game one is $0.67 for about 100 hands, so that'd be about $10 of rake over 15 days) ... and if one doesn't run bad with the prize payouts. Guess everybody can come up with their own formula, and then decide for themselves if they think it's worth it. Am not feeling in too lucky a mood, after winning the min-prize of 100 coins for completing the 3 steps of Silver though, but good luck to everybody who's giving this promo a shot. GL GL PocketDucks - hope you pick up some nice prizes!!

Oh, that's fancy!! Why didn't i think of that hehe?

Cheers c00n

Boy, that was more time than I expected to spend on this promo - my head hurts a little now lol ..