Truth,

You sound jealous that you can't put in that kind of volume yourself. Certainly the SNE promo makes Stars money, or why else would they do it? To say that people are being "manipulated" by Stars though is laughable.

For me, SNE is something of a college fund + poker dream chase. I'm hopefully going to make enough money to pay for my remaining years of school, assisted greatly by the milestone bonuses along the way, plus earn a shot at one or two major tournament packages that should be a ton of fun, and I otherwise would probably never play in them. Not to mention the fact that poker becomes more profitable in 2009 for me with the increased FPP multiplier.

Maybe I'll fall short, certainly many people will. Some will go broke trying. And Pokerstars will make more money as a result, for sure. But those who do make SNE are certainly not fish being manipulated, they are just taking advantage of a unique opportunity.

I also enjoy your personal message to Scotty, where you try to speak a level above everyone else, as if only Scotty and the geniuses at PStars will understand what you're saying.

This is the SNE Pursuit thread. Most of us are enjoying the chase. If you don't have anything more worthwhile to add, please take it somewhere else

1.) No one is forcing anyone to overextend themselves.

2.) If you get half way to elite, you still get a crap load of additional bonuses.

3.) Out of the goodness of their hearts or not...Stars is doing more than any other site is

I thought all the rake was going to fight world hunger.

boc4life,

very well put

Sandviper chase = 41k+

Wow. Zinger! you really got me. Not hard to see why someone such as yourself is so easily pacified.

well, it seems you fail to realize how good this is for many of us
--lots of $$$$$$$ over typical rakeback
--no-talent grinder whores burn themselves out


win-win

Boc- fair enough. I'm just trying to provide a voice of reason. It's just sad to see people who will actually cost themselves money because they are fooled by this "pot of gold".

For all of you who need me to dumb this down for you:

If you give me $20,000, I'll give you back $5,000 as a bonus.

But if you give me $100,000, I'll give you back $35,000 !!!!! It's a great deal for you.


Ok, I don't want to derail any further and squash you hopes and dreams

Good luck everyone on your great "chase"

PS- Bob, I really enjoy your posts and none of this is directed at you

You are going to pay rake no matter where you play

Yeah, seriously, you can't get rakeBACK without paying rake. You're not so bright, are you?

Its all good though, he wished us luck

So yeah, how many SNE's do you think there will be in 2008?

22k - slightly behind schedule. But I was sick most of the first week, so hopefully we can fire that up...

Can u get cash instead of the tourneys?

So if you broke even over the year you were essentially paid a salary of $108,500 to log X amount of hours playing poker on PS. Any idea how many hours per month it typically takes to be able to achieve SPE

CharlieDontSurf,

I make $25 an hour with just the regular supernova $1,500 bonuses.

-that doesn't include all of the milestone bonuses or my earn rate per 100/bbs

Ya just curious like if you played the same amount of hours at FTP with the 27% and you break even at both sites how much more do u make at PS than at FTP etc

charlie - for many people who end up making it to Elite it will work out to roughly 50%-ish. So you'll make somewhere around double in RB what you would have made at FT.
This is all a very rough approximation and doesn't consider the fact that the games on FT might be better or that you're getting an additional 'savings' on Stars with a better rake-structure in the first place.


Truth - I don't think anyone thinks Stars is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. Of course they are making a profit at it.
They put together a program to attempt to entice high-volume customers by giving something back to them. The more super-high-volume players they entice the better their profits obviously. I would never play this much there if it weren't for this program and I suspect most Elite-chasers are the same.

This isn't unlike the frequent-flyer miles programs on airlines. The more you fly with them the more you get back. They want to entice the highest-volume customers because the more customers they have, the better their profits. This doesn't mean that the customer doesn't end up doing better by that deal either though.

Obviously there is a huge difference between stupidly falling 1 point shy of 1-million and actually making it to a mil. But at 850k-ish or so you get around $70k-$75k worth of bonuses and milestones. At 1-mil you get an extra $30k0ish plus 5x reward for th enext year. Yeah, it's a pretty significant difference. But it's not like you get NOTHING if you fall short.

It ends up probably being somewhere around:
850k points = 40% RB
1-mil points = 50%+ RB plus the increase in your FPP's for a few months the following year.

Again, I think this is a significant difference. But it's nowhere near "1-mil points = 50% and anything less than that = 0%."


Also - there is almost no way that there are thousands of people going for Elite.
If 100 people make it to Elite this year then I suspect they came from a group of 200 or less who were SERIOUSLY giving it a try. And those who didn't make it either made the decision in Jan or Feb that it's way too much for them so they dropped out and spread their play around to other sites perhaps....and many of those who don't make it just decide that they are satisfied going for a goal of 500k or 600k or so and still ending up doing pretty well on the rakeback-value machine.

I'm not even to 20k VPP's yet but I had several days in there where I couldn't play at all because we were moving.
17k VPP's away from being awarded the $7.5k bonus from last year.

Pfffff ~15k. Had a binge weekend and played >2k hands over 3 days. I'm dumb.

Siiiigh, time to grind. On the upside this thread is awesome.

Yeah I just find it interesting given I'm a part time poker player due to 50 hour a week job. But essentially say you were a good 200NL player who mainly played weekends and had a fulltime job that say paid 45-65K working 40-50 hours a week at some office 9-5,9-6 etc.

It would make far more sense to quit your job and play steady enough to gain SNE(as long as you could at minimum break even-though assuming u were good u would make a significant profit) because you would be doubling your salary...and not have to wake up early in the morning etc and work at ****ty job etc.

But I guess it depends on how many hours a day one would have to play at say 200NL to reach SNE.

Charlie - Before I went to internet-poker full-time my previous job in 2003-2004 paid somewhere around $14/hr.
So for someone like me it's REALLY a no-brainer. Work when I want and make pretty much 5x or more what I did previously.

Obviously if you already have a decent job then you have to consider the stability that gives you plus the adverse effects of a resume gap if you dropped out for poker and it didn't work out for some reason or if the games all suddenly dried up somehow.

But your general point is correct in that $100k in bonus stuff...mostly cash...just for playing break-even poker ain't exactly something to sneeze at for most average-income folks.

Is this for the new 8k/6k bonuses?

Yes...that's if you count each bonus as 'costing' you $750 in FPP's which is correct if you usually/always take the $1500/100kFPP's thing.
If you usually get concierge at about the 1.6c/FPP rate instead then each bonus is 'costing' you $50 more and the total is only 23200.

1250 + 2250 + 3250 + 4250 + 5250 + 7250 = 23500

Not going for Elite but I have 20,520 VPP as of tonight.

Games are quite a bit tougher than December and I'm running really crappy to boot.

How does concierge work ?
Should I be using this option instead of the regular 1500 ?
Do you have to clear the bonus as the regular 1500? Does it clear at the same rate ?

Sry for all the questions.
Thanks 4 the replies

this seems to be real good for me as I do best in a game verse other HUDbot grinders

Ok, please tell me all the sites where I can get a better deal on net rake (ie: rake - rakeback - bonuses - other promotions) that have traffic comparable to Stars.