(I know the easy answer : to give incencitive to play more, but I think it's unfair.)

It doesn't make sense to me that someone who grinded microstakes for a couple of years and made 250k FPP shouldn't have the same privilege than someone who made the 250k FPP in less time.

In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the microstaker paid even more in rake for these FPPs (less multiplier)... So he pays more and gets less? Not sure how it makes sense.

If you can grind 250k, even if it takes you 10 years, you should be able to get the 4k even if you are a bronze star. It's only right.

I agree, especially as lower level VIP already has a lower VPP multiplier to begin with.

Feels kind of unfair actually. But I guess Stars would lose too much money from it since people would buy less crap and more 4k bonuses.

As in everything Stars does it favors the high volume, mass tabling players and tries to bully recreational players to play higher volume or levels out of their comfort zone if they want the "good stuff", which is a vicious circle they created there really.

Cause Stars loves creating rake slaves.

because if everyone had big then big wouldn't be big any more

The basic premise of the PokerStars VIP Club is "the more you play, the more you're rewarded". Higher level VIPs are rewarded better in two ways:
1. They earn points faster
2. They have more and better options to redeem their points.

The goal is to encourage loyalty so that players play all of their poker at PokerStars. A player who splits his play across several sites and thus takes three times as long to earn 250,000 FPPs will not earn the points as efficiently not will he be able to redeem them for as good a rate.

Note that we do have Supernova VIPs who play microstakes; it is possible to earn the highest redemption rate playing with small buy-ins.

Another thing to point out is that every player stars out at bronze level and there are some good freerolls and promotions. Some sites you do not get anything starting out.

Or they do like me because they are annoyed at the low rakeback.

Get a RB deal on ipoker. Then I play all I can on Ipoker and tableselect on pokerstars for an increased ROI to compensate the lower RB due to lower volume. This is very easy since the RB on stars only increase like 3-4% for each level up to SN. So any tableselection at all regain what you lose from losing a VIP level.
+ the supernova ELITE comparative RB on ipoker with no requirement to play anything at all.



/still disappointed SNG players got nothing at all from the last meeting and the rake increase in SNG which were introduced in May.

FTFY

With the switch to WC, good luck making Supernova at the micro.

I disagree with your definition of loyalty. I've been with stars for 5 years, playing 30 hours a month, and a guy playing midstakes will have better conditions than me in one month.

Is that what you call compensating loyalty? If I can get to 250 000 FPP getting 50 FPP an hour, wouldn't you call this very loyal? I play more hours and pay more rake for those 250 000 FPP, yet I'm less loyal?

Good way of thinking.

Letting the bonus to silverstars is only good for pokerstars, because someone like me will have to play a long time to reach these 250,000FPP. He will keep coming back for many years, if not he can get the lesser bonus with lesser FPPs. What does pokerstars lose? Nothing. The SNE can buy 4 bonus in 1 year, the silverstars will buy 1 in 10 years, no one is losing anything.

For those who play the smallest stakes, $0.01/$0.02 through $0.05/$0.10 big bet, there are increased VPP multipliers to reward players such as yourself.

I think its great that you are answering these questions Steve.
Leo has a point though. What would Stars loose by letting everyone get the highest bonus?
They will play for years in some cases, always with the dangling carrot that is the 1.5k or 4k bonus, thus it isn't unlikely that they will be much more loyal to stars than before, because now they really have a long term goal. Yeah, some guys will cash out their bonus, which would lose you some money, but a lot of players will at least leave a good part of it on Stars, possibly playing higher than before and in turn creating much more rake.

It took me quite a while to reach SN last year, and unlocking that 4k bonus was the highlight of my poker year. Don't you think that a horde of micro grinders will chase that dream, even if it means playing on stars for months or years? I don't see how that could hurt Stars bottom line, quite the opposite I expect.

If you could give me your input on these thoughts, I'd appreciate it.

I think there are a lot of other things to motivate players at microstakes, including VIP Stellar Rewards and the higher VPP multipliers at the smallest stakes NL/PL Big Bet tables. As in your case, the $4,000 bonus does a good job of motivating players to earn Supernova status and of rewarding them when they achieve it. Making the requested change would eliminate that motivation.

We're happy with the way the VIP Reward Bonuses are functioning right now.

Rsrs0303 got like 400k VPPs playing 1 dollar DONs iirc. Games got too tough at the end though, he had to quit .

As I've pointed out to Dylan in the thread at FTR , what you consider to be a good deal for microstakes players , i think is pathetic reward for the rake i pay. I left stars and started december 22nd at Titan through cardrunners , got first deposit bonus , and they ran promos in January which effectively tripled the first deposit bonus rate (total bonus cleared so far ~250$), got a free copy of HEM2 (90$)a month + 2 weeks cardrunners ~(45$) and have cleared 10500 points out of the 14000 required for a 100$ cash back (75$).

I cleared 10nl in a month and now playing 20nl , whereas at stars i was pretty much break even at 10nl and typically earning 1200 VPPs per month at silver star.so using your ever so generous VIP package I would have got ~20$ of steller and 25$ of fpp bonus for a grand total of 45$. At ipoker I have more than doubled my deposit and have had bonuses,kickbacks worth nearly 500$. Now persuade me why the hell i'd be stupid enough to come back and play at stars at all?. Once this deposit bonus finished is i can just bonus whore my way round and i already have 55% and 45% rakeback deals signed on other networks..

You have lost me as a customer , and when all your other micro stakes players realise the rewards on offer at other sites you will lose them too.