Why is my challenge for today showing expired?

Today's advent challenge : do I have to win 25 hands postflop ?

I think 25 hands win include both without showdown and with showdown.

No response from support other than asking me to take screen capture.

I think the reason its showing expired is because I started the challenge in the morning itself in case I forget to start the challenge before starting my session like when it happened before :/

Any win counts - preflop, flop, turn, river, showdown. A win is counted as "any time you end the hand with more money than you start".

The challenge is to win 25 hands in one hour from the time you press "start". Once that hour has elapsed, the challenge expires.

are they really give $2M in promo ? cuz all i see is ****tty 20K shootout freeroll.

already 39K players in today's one. so happy to get that ****tty 50 cents value..........

stop giving me pocket changes.

Ante boost. Play ante cash tables or ZOOM and get double VPP points.

^ Keep dreaming

Today's Win 25 Hands Challenge
The good: I like the idea behind it. I didn't feel like playing poker tonight (was deciding between Hearthstone and Pokemon Platinum), but the challenge convinced me. So for that, kudos to PS. It was short enough that I will also get to play something else afterwards.

The bad: I started the challenge 279 hands and 15 minutes ago. I'm already finished. While I'm glad I get to play some Pokemon (the decision was made), I would have liked if the challenge lasted a little longer. Why not make it tiered, win 25 hands get in a $20k shootout, win 50 hands and get entry into a $50k shootout or a second $20k shootout, win 100 hands, and so on.

The Holiday Calendar in General
Some of the challenges work really well as a single day promotion. Today's (minus the points above), win a hand with XY, and some of the MTT giveaways work great. Some of the other ones, such as golden SNGs, milestone hands, and other special MTTs work better if they were multiple days in duration. Not everyone can play every day, and while I understand PS wants to encourage players to play more often, it is not always possible when life gets in the way.

A logical continuation to today's Straight Challenge would be a Gay Bet Challenge - to win a hand without showdown such that the last bet/raise is 1/3 of the pot or less.

Yes I figured that out. Lesson learnt: Start the challenge only before playing.

^Sick December 17 challenge

I think grinding $1 hyper 180-mans on Dec 17 will be better in terms of the hourly winrate than sitting in $0.50 turbo 180-mans.

On a second thought, the time to act is smaller in hypers, so it's possible to stack fewer of them than $0.50 turbos. It must be a fun day either way.

I don't play tournaments I play cash (i'm a winning microstakes player). But do you think even for someone with very little understanding of icm or push/fold like me these very low stakes 180 man sngs could be still profitable because of the promo?

Yes, of course. The expected value of the prize is at least $325 (= 5%*$5000 + 55% * $100 + 40% * $50). Let's say that a newb needs 400 tourneys on average to win 2. Then s/he'll spend only $200 on buy-ins to win $325+.

Even if Luke made a misprint and meant a 0.5% chance of getting $5K, then the prize EV is at least $100 (= 5%*$5000 + 55% * $100 + 40% * $50) and it suffices to lose less than $0.25 per game, i.e. attain an ROI better than -50%, to remain in profit, which is more or less bound to happen because the two wins themselves will bring ~$49. Easy game.

I'm not sure if the server will be able to spawn $0.50 180-mans as fast as people will be trying to fill them up. The lobby will surely be exploding.

Sounds epic, will definitely give them a go! i wouldn't be surprised if i have an edge in them either given they'll be pretty soft and i have a basic understanding of push/fold. How many do you reckon i could fit in per hour (max) if i really went for it and mass grinded them? is it possible to play 400 in a day?

It's not a misprint. In fact, the EV of completing this challenge is significantly higher than your $325 estimation.

Quick suggestion, you babbys at pokerstars take a big long nap and let grown ups run the company? <3

Just played a session for 1 hr. Was playing $0.05/0.10 NL 6 max zoom, I definitely remember hitting straight, I had 10 J and my opponent had 10 J or Q J something and we both hit straight on turn and pot was tied, but cant find that hand in my hand history How is this possible? And also the challenge is not completed even though I hit the straight.

Tied pot not considered as a win in this situation?

Edit: Found the hand #145373193108

Board [Ks 9s Jc Qd 9h]
Seat 1: anuj22 (button) showed [Tc Jh] and won ($2.36) with a straight, Nine to King
Seat 2: C-bangs55 (small blind) showed [Ts Js] and won ($2.36) with a straight, Nine to King

Based on one of Stars' recent posts (and I remember it being brought up in the past), they define a "win" as "ending the hand with more money than you started the hand with." It's possible you lost money due to the rake, in which case the hand would not count as a "win." I don't agree with it, but that might be what happened.

Thanks a lot for the generosity!

Honestly, it sounds too good to be true.

Yea it's definitely a great promo, probably the best they've done so far in the calendar! One thing that's worth noting is that the chances of winning 2 go up significantly the more you play them. To illustrate, let's suppose that you're a winning player who can expect to win them about 0.6% on average. Then if you play the following number of tournaments, here are the corresponding chances of getting the prize in the promo:

2 tournaments: 0.0036%

20 tournaments: 0.63%

200 tournaments: 34%

2000 tournaments: 99.99%

So if we can all play 2000 of them then basically everyone can get a prize

I'm not going to play for a chance to win. I'm going to keep loading tables until I win, which may take 200, 400, 600 or maybe even 1000 games in a rare (~5%) case, whatever.

what is this generous promo you talking about ?

fair enough! but is playing 1000 games in a day even possible with the $0.50 turbos? I thought you could only get in about 20 games/hr if you 12 tabled...

Upcoming Dec 17 challenge

I think you're correct

Look at the 'Registered in Tournaments' window... Note that she grinds for pure profit (plus a bit of Supernova rakeback), whereas you're not required to make a profit at all from the tourneys themselves - the promotion prize will most likely cover your losses anyway...