That's the very reason why I made sure I got Supernova before the end of last year (although I would have been platinum otherwise).

Still, 2.5x and 3.5x is a 40% difference for most of the year when going for Supernova.

I'm sorry I dont quite understand this. You are saying you get $21,709.70 in bonus if you start at Bronze and reach Supernova?

I see:
$1500 VIP Rewards Bonus
$1000 Stellar Rewards
$1000 Milestone

So $3500 in bonus.

I know you would have some FPPs leftover but I don't know exactly how to calculate its worth. I'm guessing somewhere around $1200 range.

Considering that if you started the year at platinum when you hit Supernova you would have 250k FPPs, I'm assuming starting at Bronze you would have just a little less. Meaning you wouldn't have enough for $4k VIP Rewards bonus.

Not just reach SN but this:

ahh ok thanks.

Are my calculations more or less correct of what you would earn going from Bronze to Supernova? (Not including freerolls and deposit bonus)

Calculations usually are made assuming the standard max rate (a best case scenario).

Imagine that you play a bit more (eventually in 2011) and finally reach FPPs enough so you could buy the $4000 cash bonus.

You would get $5109.70 bonus for $18,181.82 rake - that's 28.10% rakeback.

The bonus consists of:

- $1000 Stellar Rewards
- $1000 Milestone Bonus
- 194,356 FPP worth $3109.70 (assuming $0.016 per FPP)

To get the maximum rakeback, you would need to accumulate another 50,000 FPP to buy the $4000 bonus.

If you just settle for 2 x $1500 bonuses, each FPP would only be worth $0.015 - or $2915.34 for 194k FPP. That's equivalent to 27.03% rakeback.

$4,000 Supernova bonus is xP. 250,000 fpp then another 28,000 vpp to clear, would take months. Gives a value to each fpp at 1.6 cents. On the other hand, 13,500 fpp to purchase a $215 ticket gives a value of 1.592 cents per fpp which is way more prefferred. Can you run figures for each at 1.592 cent fpp's?

But yeah thanks so much for your figures, will definately save me some posts in these forums lol. I'll add this thread to my faves.

Seriously, Good job!

Here my table updated with the kind input of everybody.



Bonus earned assumes that the highest possible bonus is bought (i.e. $0.016 per FPP which means buying Sunday Million entry at low level, or $4k for 250,000 FPPs at SN)
All level take into account the Stellar Rewards.
SuperNova and Elite take into account the milestones (bought for 50k FPPs)
The supernova numbers assume that you are already SN at the beginning of the year. That is, you already win 3.5 FPPs per 1 VPP.
SNE package is taken into account for approx. $25k value.
Freerolls and other promotions are not taken into account (like the re-deposit bonus).

The SNE assume that you start SN. Next year its value will be ~69% .

Basically anybody aiming for SNE or higher should make his own calculations (that is, don't bug me for that part )

So if you can maintain Platinum Star for the rest of the year, it's actually worth it to play on PokerStars over FTP?

I'm not sure what this comment means, but if you are saying the Ironman promo is confusing then I would disagree. I don't need charts for it.

No. Full Tilt points and Iron Man increase your rakeback by ~5%+. Unless you reach Supernova, you're probably better off at Full Tilt.

If you reach the 200,000 milestone on Stars, you're certainly better off at Stars.

What seems like close to a wash is if you hit only Supernova, but no milestones. In such a case, you are probably better at Stars because your overall rakeback is at least equal to FTP (and is probably slightly higher), the rake charged in certain games at Stars is slightly less, and most importantly the Customer Service at Stars is excellent while the Customer Service at Full Tilt is horrid.

Hmm. This is what I've been trying to figure out and its kinda tough. I would not expect to hit 200k milestone, but would expect to easily hit Supernova. Figure soon after I hit Supernova I could probably get the $4k VIP Bonus.

You make a good point though about the Stars rake and CS.

stars' charts here are no more confusing than iron man was exactly what my comment meant

No way!

Full-Tilt Iron Man is very simple and straight forward. If you dont believe me then check it here:

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/promotions/ironman

If you dont know exactly your RB% by the end of the page you shouldnt be playing poker at all...

So finally how many percent rakeback i get? I'm supernova and i buy only cash bonuses (i use all reload also) and assume that i reach only the first milestone. So how many % ??

Its 37.4% for a 100K Supernova (without other bonus) and 39% if included reload bonus and january sale bonus discount price (there may be other extras throughout the year), assuming that you started as SN.

This for 6max, HU or tourney players. Its a bit more if you play Full-Ring...

Avicenna, thanks so much for making this chart!

+ 1

If you are able to maintan platinum for the rest of the year, you would be stupid not to shoot for supernova.

12*7.5k = 90k vpps, leaving you only 10k vpps short of hitting supernova.

Tinkerman:

I agree with you, to some extent. Full Tilt Rakeback % drops as you do more volume. So getting just what is needed would improve your %. Let's hope that Full Tilt does something to improve the top end this year, we wil see.
My guess is if my game type where on Poker Stars, with my volume I would be better off on that site. Or maybe as you suggest it is not either or.

Below are my projected numbers @ Full Tilt for 2010. I hope it may help with the comparisions.

$40K Rake (Super Turbo SNG's 20K games $28 plus $2 rake)
$10,800 Rakeback
$1,200 Ironman year end bonus
$700 Ironman Medals (400 medal/Month * 20 cents * .73 (rackback hit))
$715 FTP (280K FTP * 3.5/1000 * .73 (rackback hit))

Bottom Line Numbers:
33.53% Rakeback
6.67% Rake
4.43% Effective Rake

Isn't there a mid-year iron man bonus aswell?

thanks for taking the time to respond, but it's still hard to walk away from this without the impression that poker stars enjoys/benefits from the overall ambiguity surrounding the value of the vpp program

the industry standard is to state rakeback in terms of a percentage of rake paid, either contributed or dealt. stars not only does not feature this model, it seems to decline requests to state its model in these terms.

steved notes that stars gives players additional value beyond FPPs, but nearly all sites have additional incentives such as reload bonuses, point accumulation that can purchases items in a store, etc. i cannot claim to speak with authority on the frequency of bonuses offered at various sites, but a rough recollection of the last year suggests stars wasn't really far above or behind the industry in this measurement.

as far as the store, full tilt et al have these in addition to rakeback, whereas on stars the store is the only outlet to achieve some rakeback equivalency.

stars also has some freerolls and whatnot, but i don't believe the value is great enough to make them a solid time investment for many people who have achieved supernova.

thus it is somewhat disingenuous to claim that the OP's model, meant to compare stars VIP program to FTP, AP, etc., is not a somewhat complete effort.

also without doing any math, the numbers OP produced look roughly in line with what i had seen before under a CONTRIBUTED model, which will produce a higher rakeback number than a DEALT model, which is what full tilt uses

this does not mean you are making more - it only means it LOOKS like you are. you pay less rake on average than the table, since your VPIP is lower than the table if you are a TAG regular

for a fair comparison to FTP, numbers should be done using a dealt model

I dont know what you mean by industry standard but lets look at the 3 or 4 major sites of the past couple years:

Stars - Elaborated VIP system where all players are eligible and RB% must be calculated accordingly to volume of play, to put it simple.

FTP - Rakeback of 27% for some players, a special bonus issued at the end of the year to others that werent able to get it plus a eleborated iron man system. RB% must be calculated accordingly to volume of play and daily schedule. Moreover isnt a straight forward add-up system since iron man and other bonus hits the MGR. By some reason that escapes me completly there are people around arguing that this is simplier... right!

IPoker - The third major site is a network of skins where the "rakeback" word is prohibited but they have elaborated VIP systems similar to Stars/Iron Man and once again true RB% must be calculated accordingly to volume of play and schedule. Its not exactly the same at every skin but the major ones have similar VIP systems (even if with different RB% figures for the same play).

Party Poker - The other "third" major site (its somewhat a tie with ipoker, they are disputing the third place in terms of traffic) is the one less known by me (never played there in fact even if I started playing poker 6 years ago when Party Poker was the major site then). But as far as I know they workjed out recently a VIP system that resembles the one that Stars had already. Although maybe simpler (or at least seems so at first glance) and they explicity talk about % of rakeback at the related web pages. But, in essence, is the same think: you got the money from redeem bonus and from converting points in cash at different rates depending on your level, basically the same thing that happens at stars.



Now, back to that so spoken industry standard...

Stars system is a dealt model, all the math presented here and on other similar topics are dealt model based. What are you talking about?