...or I just need to double-check my Excel file

Edit: indeed, I had a gross misprint in the formulas, I'll post the correct values in a few moments.

Type	Approx EV	Exact EV
Red	$0.15	$0.147293
Blue	$0.46	$0.455779
Bronze	$1.17	$1.170647
Silver	$2.97	$2.968565
Gold	$7.50	$7.501556
Platinum	$22.52	$22.519063

Yes, am showing that as well - that's an interesting tip for anybody who places sports bets, if the odds they offer are good

There's no sports betting or casino in my area, so guess the progress bar can only be filled up with poker - does the progress bar reset at the end of the day, instead of the end of the month now ... is that how it works?


PS. Gosh, quite steamy out today!

..

Just seen it in my client now, so will have to wait until tomorrow evening before opening my first mystery box.
*fingers crossed for a boat*

No it only resets after a couple of months if you don't play at all. If it takes you 4 days to open one chest then you will be bumped down to the next lower chest level.

Oh, okay thanks so much for stopping by to post that Flying Player - a dollar or two of rake doesn't sound like much, but at the rate of my play guess it can oftentimes take more than a day to reach that amount!

For some reason, had the idea that it reset after a day - guess will have to wait and see what pops out of my chest once it opens up ... perhaps sometime later this month!

Outside of Ignition is there really sites with lower than 4% rakeback now? If there are they definitely aren't the majority.

The 888poker Club pays less than 4% to those high volume poker grinders who neither bet on sports / in the casino nor stop raking much until the 'Be Active for N days' task is done - a level usually can't be completed by just paying poker rake on a single day.

However, to those who do 'grind' slots for the purpose of completing club levels, and to those whose poker volume is so low that it takes them a few days to pay enough rake to level up, even the 888 Club is suddenly more lucrative than Stars Rewards.

But anyway, when the rakeback is so low, it doesn't matter nearly as much as the lineups of the games.

For those unfamiliar with 888, a typical club level looks like this:

It's required to earn 5000 points to get $6 worth of loyalty store tokens.

There are several ways to earn points:

1. Play poker - 100 points per $1 of rake, however, the maximum number of points that can be earned in this task is 4000.

2. Be active for 5 days (on 5 calendar days, not necessarily in a row, gamble on any of 888's real money products) - this gives 1000 points regardless of the rake paid.

3. Play in the casino - 100 pts per $20 wagered on slots, fewer pts for table games; this task can award up to, say, 4500 pts if the user has been playing in the casino recently but less frequently than poker.

4. Bet on sports - 100 pts per $16 of total bets - this can earn maybe even up to the full 5000 pts if the user hasn't bet on sports recently.

So it's possible to complete the level by combining two tasks, or by gambling on the product where the customer is least active, but it's impossible to complete the level by doing one task for the user's main game, without doing the 'Be Active for N days' task (which, to a high volume poker reg, is more like 'Play elsewhere on N-1 day while raking $0.01 to 888 on those days').

And I'm glad that Stars allows to unlock a chest by just playing a poker session.

Where can you see your history of what you have received from the chests you've opened? Looked in the my stars tab and elsewhere and couldn't find it



Raked over $1300 today and this is what I got in my 5 chests lulz

23 stars coins
3 cash
2 $Ts

318 scs
3 cash

80 stars coins
1 $Ts
3 cash

243 scs
1 Ts


951 scs
5 Ts

I need a lot of points to clear a chest

you got 2,25% rb

congrats

LOL sorry man thats absurd

lol that's disgusting

yeah im withdrawing. no realistic softening of the game can justify this level of travesty

Isn't that exciting and fun? Just the adrenaline of opening the chest knowing how great of a prize you can won is worth everything!

I looked at JDawg's post 15 minutes ago and my jaw is still on the ground. Stars is just being totally contemptuous of the biggest rake generators, innit?

Yes, it is

Thanks to Stars for not banning grinders but merely stripping them of most of their rakeback, which wasn't big since last year anyway.

i had 560 points to get for a blue chest, received 27 starcoins and 20 points towards next chest.

feels like a pathetic reward system

Played 3200 hands of poker at zoom NLHE200$ today, one 22$ sattelite, one 215$ mtt. Got 4 chests, opened them got whopping 500 coins, 1$ of cash, 600 points of progress towards what it seems a gold chest (need like 22000 points to get it). So unless this golden chest has like 2000$ of rakeback (which I am sure it hasn't), I am going to be looking for other places to play.

As pointed out by another poster, 888 which is my 2nd choice after Stars has no significant rb for poker. Really as far as new s***y vip systems go Stars is the follower instead of the industry leader they once were. Which makes the "we should all leave" crown all the more laughable. Yes I know Party is bucking the industry trend but seriously first of all it's Party for one and what do you think it's going to be like after a bunch of breakeven grinder nit Stars refugees move there. I think I would rather gouge out my eyes then play in that environment.

lol, wow!

Guess this thread must now be showing pretty much the entire range of possibilities, from the lowest stakes occasional recreational player like me, to this end of the spectrum, and everything in between

The changes must be doubly bad - if much lower rewards may mean much harder tables for some people ... or no tables at all, even?

Hope they still offer promos moving forward - maybe the tables might be a bit more full today with the new chests, but probably by the end of the week things might go back to being more quiet, until Micro Millions starts up? The promos seem to offer better value for fun players like me that the rewards system has for a while now ...

Whether the tables will be harder will depend on how the majority of regs respond to this adversity. If they start studying the game harder or move down, then they'll make life tougher for their opponents. If they withdraw and take their action to other sites, then Stars games will become somewhat softer, compensating for the lost rakeback. There will be both types of regs, the question is which of the types will be more numerous and by how much.

Hehe, funnily enough I just laughed when I opened my chests at the end of my grind. I guess I've been preparing for this day for a long time or am just a bit sick in the head



And yes of course this is correct. It's kind of ****ed up, before last year, I'd rarely reg any SNG below $100. And I remember distinctly in like 2013 pretty much playing all $200+, during COOPs even up til 2015 basically never even sitting below $181s etc etc, and now here I am battling in tons and tons of $11 sngs every single day. As you can see, I just sit the whole lobby all the way up to the highest stakes.

I posted a ridic graph in my PG&C a few years ago...it was the profit of all the other regs in all their games played against me all year long (at 6max hyper turbo sats). The pool of regs as a whole was actually losing POST SNE RB in games played vs me .

So by me now having to sit lower and lower to keep up my action, it's going to keep pushing lower stake regs down and that really hurts a lot of semi regs who probably win at a small clip (and now will be losing players). So this situation does really suck for everyone. Will be interesting to see how it all plays out.


Edit: Went and found that post and the data

link to the post: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=855

It was 2015 results of the reg pool with what 2016 'SNE' RB was going to be (45%)

"Also went back through that set of data vs the other hyper sat regs and put in 45% RB this time, which is what SNEs will get in 2016. Pretty absurd, over the ~270k game sample of games, the regpool is -145k post RB...just wtf."

Any chance you tracked how much points/rake you paid for the chests for the day then added up rewards?

Hey guys i havent clicked the start button yet. What happens if u dont do that, you dont get any chests?


Also so you dont earn any starcoins at all from now on? Or only if you click that start button?


So basically anyone with starcoins now, just cash them out in the vip rebate right?