Bob, that I will guarantee. There will be no limbo.

You'll be able to use the value of unused tickets very shortly after the PCA promo ends, most likely in WSOP steps. After all, a PCA package and a WSOP package have the same $12,000 value....

Best Regards,

Jeff
PokerStars Game Security

I don't know that I would necessarily want my money "locked up" in a promotion this way, especially if I don't know when I can use them again or for what it is going to be for.

I'm gonna pass on this one but good luck to the rest of you guys.

I wish they would have super sats at $210 or something instead of/in addition to the very highest levels. I mean it's hard to want to play one of these when I know that my reward for running hot and cashing a few in a row is getting to play in a hugely -ev SNG with the top players in the world. It's just like the double shootouts but worse.

I think if Stars is going to commit to having some sort of ongoing Steps promotion (basically) year round (be it PCA, APT, EPT, WSOP, WCOOP, whatever) and the tickets are always usable in any Steps series then I think this is very promissing. However, I think it would be a really good idea to try and lay out the Steps "schedule" for the next 6 months or year so people know what they're getting into.

And if I were you, I wouldn't limit it to just poker packages - If you want to stick to $12K value you kind of handcuff yourself a little bit, but you can still do a lot with that - Dream vacations, cars (particularly leases), apt in Vegas (etc) for a year, home theater/electronics packages, motorcycles, boats & pwc, etc.

hmmmm me likes cry me a river's idea, a pseudo $12k conceirge thingy !

Note that Step 6 is 18 entries for 3 Atlantis spots, all of the other steps are 9 entries. Its not mentioned in the diagram, but obvious if you add up the direct entry $$$'s

Yeah, I thought that was kind of weird.
Curious how tough it's going to be to fill up those $2100 buy-in 2-table SNG's.

Please Please Please make turbo versions of these!

Please explain why one would have so many tickets leftover when the promo ends, thanks.

Multi-tabling.

This is an awesome, awesome idea. I swear if I could win a $12k vacation (or even 3K one) I'd grind like 8 hours a night at that, year round. Love this idea.

I'm curious too, this could probably be done mathematically since the tickets aren't cashable for anything other than the next step. Like if you count (or estimate) the number of the $7.50s will go off each day, and make an assumption that whenever anyone wins a ticket to the next step they use it within 24 (or pick another number) hours, you can probably figure out a baseline number of 2100s that will run (plus some extras because of people buying in directly).

That's the 1st thing I noticed. I wonder if they will make a 9 player table, where winner gets the package, 2nd gets 4K and 3rd gets 2K.

feeeding off of what some have said in this thread and another...offerng turbos as well and being able to interchange between turbo and regular steps, plus having the 2 table AND 1 table choice for your final step, annnd $12K choices like vacation, ok Stars get to work and roll it all out

Well it took them like 4 years to put in steps at all, so don't hold your breath haha.

But really, I have a feeling if they throw in TOO many options, they will dilute it and there were be 2 or 3 tracks that don't get enough traffic each, so none of the higher steps will fill. This is what happened on Party with WSOP steps last summer, they had the fast steps and the normal steps for WSOP, and neither did well.

not everyone will run their way up all the way from the 7's.
You might even have a couple of high-stakes SNG pro's who just camp-out in the $2100's looking to win W$ from softish fields.

even if that weren't the case, it's not like you're going to get one to go off the instant that 18 people acquire a ticket.
you could have 50 people hanging onto a $2100 ticket but still have a tough time getting 18 of them together at the same time.

going the other way:
using them within 24 hours is a bold assumption. I had a couple of $215 party-steps that I hung onto for a few wks just because I didn't feel very inspired to play them at that time.

What they could do is make some of the lower steps turbos, since these fill up pretty quickly anyway...And keep the 215$++ regular so they can fill up in a reasonable time.

I wouldn't mind turbo's as an option or as a default, epecially at the lower levels.
Man, you can get down to 4 or 5 handed and from there it's going to take forever.

Up to an hour or even longer isn't uncommon for even the $7.50's and that just feels too darned long to me...although I'm used to the turbo-SNG's I guess.

ToT

Kinda OT, but now that Stars has implemented steps, will they make step SNG's for cash too?

I obv am a huge fan of the Steps and tore them up on Party when I could play there.

Took them long enough to get these going.
I'm assuming they will be considered at some point but they want to see how these bad-boys go first.

After thinking about it more these really suck, because the money never gets out unless it goes through a table at the very highest stakes on stars, meaning the fish and even above average players are going to be totally crushed. Say I play one of these and start at step 2, my EV would be as follows (note that this could easily be wrong but is reasonable if someone had 20% ROI at the 27's, but without highstakes experience):
$27 ROI 20% - +5
$70 ROI 10% - +7
$215 ROI 5% - +11
$700 ROI -5% - -35
$2100 ROI -10% - -210
Now obviously I would end up playing a lot more at the lower two buyins through steps back, the fact I would have to win several in a row to get to the top, etc, but the fact is there is no way these could ever be profitable for anyone other than top highstakes SNG pros who will buyin at the higher levels anyway.
Compare this to a normal satellite or super sat, where even if there are lots of pros there are tons of donkeys that make it +EV, plus you can cash out the $W or use it on other sats, and you see why it sucks, because fish are going to enter these and lose their money to the top pros instead of to above average low/midstakes players, the players who are already crushed by the disproportionally higher rake at their stakes.

At first thought, this system seemed cool - but I agree with the posters who have written about the money not coming out of the system.

Of course, someone can luckbox their way through the system, and I'm sure a few casual players who aren't all that good at SNGs might make it through the gauntlet and win a seat.

However, I agree that the high stakes SNG pros will just be waiting for the 2100's to fill up - then enter then and have an edge over the field.

This is a very cool idea, but I think there needs to be a way to get the money out along the way - credit w$ or a regular tournament ticket of that buy-in level instead of forcing people to play up to the sharks - then get mauled.

I seem to recall Party's steps tournaments being widely bashed because of this scenario - and I could never understand why people would play them... It surprises me that the introduction of these from Stars has been so well received, so far.

It is surely better to do a "create your own steps" using normal SNGs, wherein you can pull the winnings at any point, no?