Well I'm taking a maths major at uni atm so yea, maths has always quite a strong subject for me.

Thanks, I'll do my best!

Regarding your question about median, well I think what it gives you is a good indication of what your average Joe can expect to win. Calculating median across multiple trials like this is kinda tricky, would probably take me a whole day to figure out an exact answer. What I've done is use a little estimation trick which I can explain to you.

So for the silver challenge, 77% win an all-in shootout ticket valued at around 25c. Since you can do the silver challenge up to 15 times, 77% of 15 is 11.55 which rounds up to 12. Next prize is 12% chance of $2. 12% of 15 is 1.8 which rounds up to 2. $5 has 7.5% chance, 7.5% of 15 is 1.1 which rounds down to 1. $10 has 3%, 3% of 15 is 0.45 which rounds down to 0.

So from 15 goes the average Joe can expect to win 12*$0.25+2*$2+1*$5=$12.

You can then do the same for the gold challenge using a similar process. As a very rough estimate, it should come to about half the EV in both cases, give or take. Hope that makes sense

Hey PocketDucks

It sounds like you were starting with the idea that:

Limit (of expected prize per individual challenge) -> approaches EV ... as the number of individual challenges ran approaches 100k

Here there's only 15 individual challenges though, so one would expect most peoples prizes to be far less than EV for a top-heavy prize pool distribution after only 15 challenges. Since only a select few will run lucky, with that few runs ... so it does seem like most people should be making less than even half of EV over just 15 challenges?

It looks like with your last post you're assuming a 100% ITM rate for people who win shoot-out tickets. But usually the shoot-outs have been a second step of a short-run of top-heavy prize awards, with most people not winning any money. There'd be nothing to shoot out for, if everybody was just being awarded an equal percent of the prize pool.


Think these promos are targeted at people who overestimate the potential payout and underestimate the potential cost. But guess that's poker, so ...


PS. Didn't add enough $5 prizes to the Gold payout - it looks like most people should be averaging about $32, with average luck? And you can include an extra $2 in the Silver if you wish ... so that would bring it up to $9.90. Anyways, guess was just noticing that EV measure might tend to overestimate the mostly likely outcome for most people, when distributions are heavily skewed, with limited runs, or something like that? It seems like we both agree on that?


Anyways, looks like it's back to one-tabling tourneys for me

Yea you're right I did oversimplify the all-in shootout expected winnings as that would require another calculation and without any information on the prize structure/number of entries it's hard to estimate that.

Well I'm not sure Pokerstars intended it that way. Whether they have a top-heavy prize structure, or a fixed prize equal for everyone, it's gonna cost them the same if the EV is the same. It's not like they're "saving money" by spreading out the prizes. The purpose behind the prize structure is that it attracts the gamblers (mostly rec players), in the same way the lottery has its appeal.

Yea I think we do

Ok then! Remember, the milestone challenges cater not only to cash game players but also to tourney players. There should be quite a few tourney challenges so you won't miss out entirely!

Guess we also have in common an enthusiasm for poker! That would be lovely if the tourney challenges feel more my speed

Cheers PD!!


Going to go watch a bit of the NBA All-Star Game that's happening in Toronto now, and maybe watch the Bachelor special during commercials lol ... will be nice to relax tonight, since tomorrow's a holiday in some parts of Canada. Happy Family Day everybody!

PS. Also, happy President's Day!

hey all. is there a way to know how much starcoins or winnings one has made through these daily/weekly stars promotions? For example, i seen me getting some starcoins i believe because usually its always 2000 starcoins added to my acct when i earn enough vpp. But i notice i received different starcoin amts where it wasn't multiples of 2000 anymore so im sure this might have been one of those starcoin promotions?


I also register in those freerolls with a free ticket as i got many of them. Of course those are all ins. Is there a way to know if i ever cashed in those or win a ticket for something else?

FML. I grinded about 10 hours today trying to complete my last steps in the goldstar 10 steps challenge, and only got 250 starscoins for my effort I got 1000 for the first 3 steps, which was alright, but still. Let's hope the milestone challenges are a bit nicer to me

So for the 100m celebration challenge playing 10 standard hold'em and 1000 zoom hands. It'd be nice to see what we win, I havr no pop up telling me anything and the challenge page just gives an unhelpful "Completed".
Gee, thanks, now what's my prize?

After a challenge is finished, the amount of coins won is shown under its description in the 'Completed' tab of the challenge window (click on the 'Your Prize' button to view it).

E.g.

For this one it's on the top once you finish both challenges

in 1 hour i won 10$ and 20K freeroll + 9.60$ cuz i'm a beast at poker.

not bad, not bad

i like this challenge.

Nope, All mine says is Completed minus what is is I win

Underneath the "Completed Feb 15 14:05" (For me of course).

There's nothing, zilch. Just says I completed it.

thats because you win freeroll tickets on both.

Nice beginning, one ticket (silver) and 100 bucks (gold).

I have the same issue. I have this:



So I have no idea what it means. When I click on information it says I should go to "Registered in Tournaments" which I can't no find. Maybe someone can help me out. And the one on the right isn't even showing anything. Ticket is pending, so maybe I should wait.

CTRL+R will show you in which tournaments you are registered.

Thanks mate. I'm registered to the free-roll. Hopefully the silver challenge will bring more luck.

Ah I see, it auto regs you, I was expecting a ticket.
Would still be nice to mention it.
Also if this promotion is on every day and the freeroll isn't till the 19th, what happens if I win more tickets?

ticket and 2.00. underwhelming to say the least, but a ton of action at zoom

`zoom session is full`
looks like it is helping the zoom traffic for sure, well done stars

A zoom only promo, with a 10nl minimum, and 1000 hand requirement has been so dreamy Wound up playing, and thankfully my double-dipper downswing seems to have subsided for the moment - wound up getting the shootout ticket, but there seems to only be about 6k others auto-registered so far? So maybe the chance of cashing won't be too bad ...



Yeah, could be. Also maybe, guess if like maybe only 20k people wind up participating in this challenge today, then odds are against the 1/100,000 $100k prize being won today ... and if the number of people who participate in the Gold promo each day is about the same, then maybe the top prize might only be won 2 or 3 times over the 15 days of the promo? So 'win up to $100k each day' might be a way to draw interest in a big prize, but maybe the promo doesn't cost as much if the top prize isn't hit every day, or something?


It's worked out nicely though - pretty happy with this promo Wonder what the challenge'll be for tomorrow ...


PS. Can't wait for the Grammys on tonight!

Me too Nice words. After 1 day of work i thought that PS has new promo starting today and i start to read the ps site coz i wasnt knew if plo is ok to play so at ps.bg i didnt find anything that helps me, then i reread that ps promo page on the software and start thinking wtf one time its written that u can play zoom, other - u cant lol so i start to play some zoom ad sow taht 1k hands bar is counting and i am like fu stars i want to play 100h chalange, not 1k. And the i decided rereread that promo page at ps software and finally understand that u can play both chalanges (ty ps) and played some cash games and boom

I write that text coz i think that some players would have made that mistake like me

Nice promo PS so keep it coming every day (every promo is more ev then zero promos).

Yea it looks like it's gonna be much fewer entries than we first thought which is cool! Good job for giving it a go, I knew you could do it


The bolded part isn't really accurate. Yes it will draw interest to the big prize, but giving a 1 in 100k chance for each person winning $100k is exactly the same EV as giving everyone who takes part an extra free $1. Some days nobody will win the $100k, but other days people will, so overall it will average out to costing Pokerstars the same on average as the $1 EV per participant that it's worth.

Thanks to this promo, 16nl full ring zoom is actually running for once haha

Oh dear, here we go again


Thought we calculated that the cost for stars per 100k participants was $755k? So the EV per participant for the Gold promo is $7.55.

Was just noticing that although the promo is billed as 'win up to $100k each day', if there's only 20k participants each day, then they'll only be awarding the $100k on average about once every 5 days. And the cost of the promo won't be $755k per day, it'll be $755k/5 ... is that about $151k?

It does cost about $6.70 in rake to play 1000 hands though, so technically guess this is a collective reprieve from paying rake for 1000 hands ... with softer tables, and those have been really nice


PS. Yeah, was bummed to see the Silver was non-zoom ... but happy that the Gold was zoom only - but totally wasn't sure except for the progress bar

I see what you mean now. It's definitely gonna cost Stars less than if they'd said "$100k guaranteed to be won each day". EV per participant is still around $8 though (probably higher given the number of gold shootout entries is lower than we thought they'd be)

Oh ya, sorry PD ... my writing's oftentimes not very clear

The shootout's looking nice - am hopeful maybe will get lucky with the shootout tomorrow ... who knows