This sucks.

They will probably last longer this way...

fu pokerstars !!

I play the 235FPP sats to Sunday Storm and the various 70fpp sats for a lot of the 3.30 tournaments. Once I have tournament dollars I then play 180s or whatever to convert the tournament dollars into cash. No, I won't play those sats anymore.

most players will now spend their fpps on gift certificates and take money off the site because they offer much more value then the vip reward bonus.
pls change it back or lower the price for the vip reward bonus

I can understand Stars reasoning etc, but their FPP sng/mtt schedule is so soo weak. Ppl, and especially fish, bust their bankroll all the time. You need to give em an easy way to spin it back up. Just look at ps.fr, they have 4-5 very nice fpp sats to their daily 100fo, some to the 250 etc. You need to add good scheduled and sng fpp satelittes for games running THAT day. Have the structure as turbo insteed of 10bb hypers so ppl actully wanna play it. Get some 5-10seat GTD turbo scheduled satelittes to the Bigs, the Hots, maybe even the 109-215turbos. why havnt you done this alrdy??how could this possible fail any1?

Mate, does pokerstars.fr also have this unreg problem ? I'm guessing us UKers can sign up ?

The fpp megapaths to the big 109 every day, and the super tuesday, wed 320 and sunday million every week are great ways to use fpps and there should be more of these structures if stars are determined to make people play the games they win into. It's important to remember that the players hit hardest by the new restrictions are the low-stakes grinders with low cash and fpp balances. It's in everyone's interest to keep these players interested, and giving them a shot at a showcase tournament for a few points is not only attractive to them but also beneficial to the liquidity of the target tournaments.

Run 50>200>500>1500 (or whatever) fpp steps to the Big and Hot 55s every day, and do similar for the $215 turbos and the big 162 etc.

You need people to be motivated to spend their FPPs (or more accurately, you need people to want to acquire FPPs), and you want to maximise the interest in your flagship tournaments, so you need to have an attractive range of options for the use of the points that directs players towards these games.

All you need for a Stars.fr account is a European bank account and the usual verification stuff. Pretty sure any UK bank will suffice for the bank part.

Well worth it. Great site and the MTT structures are better in most cases.

+1 million.

Great change Stars. This will mean weaker fields in MTTs with the microstakes cashgame players being forced to play. Also reasonable, satties are there to qualify for the target tournament, not to grind T$.

Signed up last night. Unfortunately I registered for a tournament before I was verified - although they took my money, they sat me out and wouldn't let me play - I had to watch my hole cards and my stack dwindle away! Thankfully support have said they will reimburse me once verified.

Love the step hypers tho - they look like they could be a goldmine.

Good stuff. You'll enjoy it.

[ ] The French are great players

Posting a post I made in the Stars discussion thread here also as it is relevant.





I'm really bored so I thought I would do some calculations to show the relative profitability for grinding a large sample of FPP satellites in one week under the new and old system.

I'm going to use the 250 FPP hyper turbo 6maxes to the sunday storm. They pay out one $11 ticket for every 700fpp's in the prizepool. For simplicity's sake I will assume that exactly 50 of these are played in 1 week. This is a total of 12500 FPPs which converts to $162.34 (if converted in the 2014 VIP store and purchasing $200 packets for 15400 FPPs).

Break-even players
Old system
A break-even player would expect to win 1 ticket for every 2.8 tournaments played. Over a sample of 50, a break-even player would expect to win 17.86 tickets which is valued at $11 each. A return of $196.43 for a total investment of 12500FPPs.

New system
A break-even player would expect to win 1 ticket for every 2.8 tournaments played. Over a sample of 50, a break-even player would expect to win 17.86 tickets which is valued at $11 each, however the first ticket is a MUST PLAY and cannot be converted to cash. Therefore we get a return of $196.43-$11 = $185.43 for our 12500 FPPs.

I'm not sure what kind of ROI would be sustainable longterm for the players in the games, but i'll try 5% 10% and 20%.

old system
5% roi $196.43*1.05 = $206.25
10% roi $196.43*1.1 = $216.07
20% roi $194.43 * 1.2 = $235.72

New system
5% roi $185.43 * 1.05 = $194.70 (+$11 storm ticket)
10% roi $185.43 * 1.1 = $203.97 (+$11 storm ticket)
20% roi $185.43 * 1.2 = $222.52 (+$11 storm ticket)

An alternative system would be to first convert your FPPs into dollars and then register for a satellite of your choosing. Using this system we can play as many satellites in a session/week/whatever and can unregister from the target at will. For our 12500 FPPs we would get $162.34. The equivalent kind of satellite to the sunday storm is a $3 + $0.06 hyper turbo which pays out one ticket for every $11 in the prizepool. For our $162.34, we can play 53.05 of these satellites.

Alternate system
Total investment = $162.34

5% roi $162.34 * 1.05 = $170.46
10% roi $162.34 * 1.1 = $178.57
20% roi $162.34 * 1.2 = $194.81

This system is significantly worse value than playing the FPP buy-in sattelites, however it removes some of the problems arising with the recent changes of not being able to unregister from the target at will.

Summary

Straight up buying cash in FPP store: $162.34

old system:
breakeven: $196.43
5% roi: $206.25
10% roi: $216.07
20% roi: $235.72

new system:
breakeven: $185.43 (+$11 storm ticket)
5% roi: $194.70 (+$11 storm ticket)
10% roi: $203.97 (+$11 storm ticket)
20% roi: $222.52 (+$11 storm ticket)

Alternate system:
breakeven: $162.34
5% roi: $170.46
10% roi: $178.57
20% roi: $194.81

I'm sure that these differences will fluctuate slightly if we use differing sample sizes and ROI combinations (or if we change other factors such as target tournament because the satellites may have differing FPP-$ ratios), but I don't really have the time to make a cool spreadsheet or something of the sorts to look at all of the possible combinations. I'm also thinking of some pretty cool graphs that could be used to look at some cool relationships now hahaha.

Anyway, I just wanted to take a quick look at a control-ish type of situation with a realistic sample size. Probably not everybody who wishes to grind these earns 12500 FPPs every week, but I assume at least some of you will save up X fpps before you decide to grind them out, and 50 a week is very easy to manage in terms of play-time.

Also note that I'm not 100% sure whether you earn additional FPPs when you play a target tournament won from a satellite. This would favour the "new" system slightly relative to these numbers, as we would be forced to pay $1 of rake each week (i did not account at all for the 6cents*52.05 of rake paid in the alternate system in terms of rakeback)

Anyway, hope this shows that the new system is not so bad for FPP grinders! (If I made any math mistakes or false assumptions, apologies and please feel free to correct me! )

edit: well ****, just by glancing at this, I noticed the difference between the old and new figures is exactly "$11*%roi + $11". Maybe I made a false assumption somewhere, or maybe this means that our eventual ROI in the target tournament needs to be accounted for (which is quite obvious tbh)

Aren't those 235FPP actually? And how come breakeven player wins 1/2,8? 6 players, 2 tickets = 1/3. That 10FPP 3rd prize doesn't change that much.

I was referring to the MTT FPP satellites that run throughout the day, not the 6 man SNGs.

235fpp 6max hypers have been the best way (with 70fpp's) to use those points. Why wouldn't you make the calculations with that, as it's what most of us have been using.

............................................... you are completely missing the point dude

The arithmetic is all there written for you, if you want to know the exact value of your specific FPP satellite format then calculate it yourself. It shouldnt make much of a difference, and IF IT DOES, that difference existed BEFORE the change.

Just attempted to reg for the 235fpps and the 70fpp sats and I'm no longer getting the warning message up telling me I won't be able to unregister from the target tournament. This is either because the rule is now permanent across the board and they are not going to warn people anymore or they have reversed the decision.

How is this really that bad? I mean you could play these and win one ticket then play it and then you could earn as much T as you like until that tournament starts. So basically you dont want to play 1 tournametn or it something im looking at here wrong?

anybody confirm this? I was a willing guinnea pig and entered two but didn't win any

I can confirm that the decision has not been reversed. They just don't warn people all the time now. Source - support.

I just did unreg (text in danish):