And I've considered going for 8M next year but decided in the name of sanity to only go for 7.5M.

I mean, really, 8M. If you play all the High stakes sng's that go off, you can get aobut 2k vpps per hour and at 12 hours a day for 350 days, thats about 8.4M vpps, so what's so hard? at 0.129$ per vpp, thats an annual of $1.032M, who's up for it?

That's great news. How much FPP will they cost?

+1. And how would you compare them to the Vipers? People here seem to like the Gunnars but I don't think anyone has tried both of them.

i have to agree with overdose. so many people i meet have no idea that stars has RB, so sooo many players chose FTP over stars for that reason. of those players i have met not one was a pro or anyone who actually made money either.

as a matter of fact every story i have had to listen to was a sob story either starting and finishing with "OMG online poker is so rigged i need to be able to look my opponenets in the eye so i can read why they just over pot barrel value towned my ass with top set turned into quads over my Q4 high", ok not the second part but usually a similarly absurd poker hand and 99% of the time my advice is "fold preflop". then they are like "when they raise my raise or...?" me, "no i mean definitely before you ever put anything in the pot". if i didnt want them playing in the games so bad i would be more honest with them and say "take up checkers".

the second story i heard was "i deposited $100. i started at 50 max and ran it up to like $1246. by then i figured i should be playing 3-6 so i was in this SH game and these guys who just never lost a pot, it was so sick how hot they all ran and how bad i run. now i am waiting til friday for my RB payment."

these players IMO are super good for a game. the "healthier" the game the much happier everyone is, especially long term.

everyone says FTPs game is much softer, their RB even though it is so much crappier than stars is a main reason for this. some players even know that stars has stellars but they love the instant and guaranteed gratification of that weekly RB deposit and it goes directly into play. even good players i know prefer this because they are impatient and feel because if it is instant and guranteed it is more or something.

with all that being said, now that bonus's are instant it is a huge step in the right direction. maybe if like every friday you let people exchange all of their FPPs at the rate that is in the store for their amount. like if they have 5600, they can have all of them at the $50 rate.

now if you are thinking what i am thinking: they could have already bought the $50 and been saving up for another. FTP has 3 different RB programs and they are all worthless (compared with stars) esp when combined, they are gimmick based to make low volume players feel cool like a pro. the players who love that are in general pretty good to keep a game healthy and dont do mathematical equations to see which path will be more RB.

Are the majority of poker players higher volume or lower volume, IYO? I.e. what percentage of the entire player pool across all sites are capable of achieving Supernova?

i have no idea percentages or even a guess as to what percentage of players play a high volume, but i would guess that as for percentages stars percentage of high volume players is much higher than on FTP.

as for who would be capable of earning SN, capable or do play that level of volume? either way i have no idea.

Congrats! How much did u make outside of vips? I see your name at the top of fr every month

I totaly agree I wasted a whole year of grinding on ftp because I had guaranteed money every friday. Next year wont make that mistake.

I agree that stars > ftp reward program for high volume players. Before the shift to weighted though, ftp was the better deal for the 2-3 session a month casual players. They weren't going to get past bronze and the stellars would be very slow for them, so 27% dealt was significant. Now with weighted the biggest difference is education, so its on us to teach these casual donks how to use the stars system and bring them to the light

The live players feel they are getting cheated online, and its easy to understand when you think about the information gap they are working against. They don't have poker tracker, holdem manager, ptr, shark scope, etc. its an uphill battle for them and I'm not suggesting you educate them on these aspects.

I recommend focusing on how the ftp low volume system encourages multi accounting by allowing regs to add new accounts without any real penalty to rakeback. Tell the live players how they are getting cheated by a flawed ftp system and they should move to stars where they get the same rewards with a better system and better security. This approach should be a lot easier than trying to compare and contrast the two reward systems.

Making tentative plans to hit between 3-5M...very, very tentative

70k More to go, see you guys there in 20 days

I think there's a disconnect ITT with where the line is (what type of players in terms of volume/stakes can and cannot achieve Supernova) and hence, who is better served at what site from a "Rakeback/Rewards program" perspective.

IMO, you can break the entire player pool down by skill level and site awareness, ending up with fish-beginner/unaware, learning-decent/semi-aware, and pro-winner/fully aware.

I think you'd be surprised at the number of people in the 2nd category for which Stars isn't the best option in their opinion. The impact of this on the microstakes/smallstakes frontier is pretty significant IMO.

i know that my recent posts are probably going to come off as Trolling ITT but those are not my intentions. it is to brainstorm on how to bring new players to stars and to improve their game.

weighted is the more fair way to divide up RB and is also actually good for the game where dealt is terrible for the game. what do you think is going to have a healthier game, a bunch of knits stacking a ton of tables? or by encouraging those knits to contribute to the game to earn their RB? i will add that i am pretty certain that contributed has a negative affect on my RB but everyone ITT forgets there are other ways to make money in a poker game than RB, and it isnt by mass tabling tables filled with regs.

the only point i would take from that would be stars security is above and beyond any other site.


these are really good points i forgot or whatever but i think there are more categories and the lower the awareness of that category the more likely the player in that category will be on FTP or another website because it is more appealing to them due to game "health" and RB system (even though even their smaller volume may be more at stars they may not have that commitment.)

edit: FTP is also adding happy hour to SH games as an encouragement to start new games, at least temporarily. all the changes FTP has made lately is directly to encourage action (good for the game) and starting new tables (more games).

How are "unaware" players making site choices based on things they're not aware of? The lowstakes fish/beginner/recreational player (whatever you want to call them) just plays wherever he wants to play or whatever site he comes to first. Being the biggest, that's more than likely going to be PS. And maybe they deposit and bust their roll and are gone forever or maybe they donk around once a week and are happy with that or maybe they do the depost/bust/deposit/bust dance perpetually and all of those are fine (from an "I want what's best for me" POV - us, not them, LDO).

But the majority of these players don't get past the microstakes for the most part, other than maybe one off flings that likely busto them fairly quickly. Enter the microstakes reg improving his/her game and taking shots at small stakes games. These are the players that I think are likely to look elsewhere and decide that PS may not be the best option for them.

The majority of fishy or rec players go to the site where they feel the cards run best for them. I was just talking to a recreational player who plays on AP because he just couldn't take the beats he was getting on FT and Stars anymore...and he's seemed to do better and take not as many beats on AP.

We kind of have different levels of fish of course because there are more aware guys who do know about rakeback as a general concept who don't know much more than that. And then we go down to the guy I was talking to who has never heard of stats programs that display the opponents' stuff on the screen like HEM and probably doesn't know what rakeback is either. But he "loves poker" (according to him) and plays live or online pretty regularly...albeit not very well.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think that there's a place at most limits of most games where RB% > FPP and that FPP doesn't get back above RB until the aware player either improves his game enough to move up to limits where he can achieve SN or can add enough tables to achieve SN (or some combination of both).

So at this theoretical point, it's not a gradual progression in skill level, but more cliff-y. Players get to this limit, move sites for RB, and then come back for SN improved and playing more tables making both the barriers to entry and becoming a regular in the game for the average player that much tougher.

It's just about what they call it and how they market it. With the change to instant bonuses they've created an opportunity to market the bonuses in another way. Stars has a really good bonus system in place for themselves, but they need to market it in a way that lets people know that not only will they clear their $50-$600 bonus, but they'll get cash for FPPs, so while they clear the bonus they're working towards another free $25 bucks.

They should try to get the word out that not only will you get your bonus amount, but you'll also get (say they're clearing the $600 bonus) enough points to exchange for another $150 in stellar rewards, and $150 in instant bonuses. This makes them feel that by joining pokerstars they get $600 + $300 for depositing $600, and it sells the VIP program as bonus money. Rakeback is a stupid word compared to a number like that (to fish).

something always sways someone and i believe that other factors besides RB sway the lowest "cliffs". those cliffs have probably seen adds for both FTP and stars, you think they would rather play with Lederer, Ivey, Ferguson, and Lindgren "learn, chat, play with the pros" or dan N "find the pokerstar in you"? they look alike but are completely different campaigns after different player types. stars probably makes more money targeting higher volume players.

i would bet that there is a larger monetary value headed to the site in $50 increments than $1k+.

agree

stars thinks this too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey-VLijPZC0

If you're talking about smallstakes as defined by the forums (100NL & 200NL for no limit) then those levels are more than enough to get Supernova. Hell, some regs even made SNE playing 100NL.

Can someone help me here.

I always thought it was possible to have 20 000$ USD instead of 2 packages going SNE. Am I wrong ?

I could take Option B: Any one of the above packages plus $10,000.

And by choosing WSOP ME they are supposedly going to give me 10 000 USD and I just don't go right?

omg omg omg

More than 1 model i hope ? i can't wait, getting them in europe seemed too silly until now.

@mig

Thanks jspill.

I have been emailing PS vip people and William has been responding to me saying it was impossible to take the 20k cash and is being very anal about it so I guess I have to say the 10k + WSOP and has they should not be able to register me that's the workaround isn't it ?

Pretty lame of them to handle that **** like that. Any big tournament is 15~17k total (PCA and MonteCarlo) and I'm actually saving them money by wanting 20k instead of 30k worth of package. ******s.

@ Mig

Sell the package for cash?