Now that I see the % in the CardHunt prizes, the fun is gone. Not doing it with those ridiculous odds.

Had trouble transfering to Full Tilt the other day as apparently the Cardhunt bonuses count as a "deposit" and the 48-hour delay before being able to cash out/transfer applies.

Stars email support claim that bonuses have always counted as deposits and always meant a 48-hour wait before cashing out, but I'd always previously successfully transfered the Cardhunt and similar bonuses over to FTP straight away.

Anyone else experienced this ever?

Manual account credits do sometimes count as a deposit in that way (shows in history as creditadjust purchase).

Promotional credits never have so if you're not mistaken that's disappointing. You'd have to forego 2 days of promotions to cash out!

Actually, sounds about right.

Hmm. The only bonuses on my account appear in history as "Challenge Reward". I'd always previously been able to cash them straight out (virtually every day of the promo), so it's weird to suddently not be able to do so, especially with Stars claiming I should never have been able to.

Thanks for the answer, anyway. (And apologies to mods if this has derailed the thread a bit.)

Full email exchange (except my details are redacted) below. It was difficult trying to get a proper answer.

Can someone explain that daily stars card hunt? Is it basically the same challenge everyday?


Also have no idea what is meant by matching 1 or 2 cards. All of the cards are Aces to 10s for each suit. So if you get Ac8d.... and win the hand... that means you got the Ac and now have to get the other 19 cards? But its only if you win the hand? Or you need to get 2 broadway cards and up every single time and win the hand? This promo is very confusing.

https://www.pokerstars.com/poker/promotions/card-hunt/

Seems well explained here to me....but maybe that's only me

I play on pokerstars.es. I am Latvian but because most of the year I live in Spain, I can only play on pokerstars.es.

They run a promotion during their SCOOP where there is a leaderboard for the low and for the high events. Like a week before this the events ended, I noticed this leaderboard and started to grind every event. Its really hard to play everyday and stuff, especially if you loose money everyday playing those MTT's.

Well but thats fine, thats poker, you win some and you lose some. But in the end i could at least get half of the money back which I lost chasing this stupid leaderboard in which I finished top 10. The events ended on 11th of april. But on their web-page they state - all prizes will be paid out on 15th of April. Im like ok cool. The 15th of april comes and nothing. No emails or no money. On 16th I send an email asking whats up, for which I get Diego from pokerstars to tell me that they will answer in 24-48 hours time. The next day I send an other email asking whats up with that promotion. This time they say the same thing and I dont get my answer. Then on 18th I sent another email. No answer. Today is 19th and those people just dont answer to me.

I dont know if to play there anymore. I dont play too much, but in Spain I cant play any other sites, because there isnt anything to play on. I dont know what else to do now.

Now I only recieve spam emails about their new promotions and how I should play some spin and goes and what not. **** that. If a multi billion dollar company cant answer to emails for 5 days. I guess im off to the casino to play 20% raked games. At least they answer if asked any questions.

My problem was solved today. Sorry.

It turns out that Pokerstars has started being selective about who gets the best promotions. My friend who's a rec player and hardly ever plays, got treated with this mega bonus this month. He gets to do it 4 times, with a minimum reward of $20 each time, and it says he was "specially selected". No wonder we seem to have been missing out on good promotions recently.

Isn't that good news PD?

Well yes and no. Yes, it's kind of good for the ecosystem - think of Daniel Negreanu's analogy of how if he ran the site he'd ideally give all the bonuses to rec players and nothing to the regs.

At the same time, it kinda sucks for everyone else who doesn't get the bonus, and that includes some rec players (cos I'm a rec player now that I've quit playing regularly). I think the requirements for these "specially selected" for the promo must be net depositors only (my rec friend hasn't cashed out at all since he opened his account). I wouldn't mind so much if we at least had some other decent promotion running this month. But all we get is the cardhunt which has been running for ages now and is getting boring.

So basically you now feel what everyone else on here felt with the VIP changes. When it could serve you "it's good for the ecosystem"... when it serves people further down the line it's only sort of good for the ecosystem but you're not willing to keep playing poker because there's nothing out there that helps your immediate bottom line.

^lol! so true

this guy "xXPocketDucksXx" is the most hilarious person from this threat.

Selecting groups to get offered juicier promotions is fine in my book. Fraud by reneging on SNE rewards after paying all the rake is not.

Well I admit, obviously there's always going to be a certain amount of self-interest in one's views. Just like how the SN/SNEs are the ones arguing the most about the SN/SNE cuts, whereas the chromestars are the ones complaining the most about the privilege freerolls being replaced. It's human nature to argue most passionately about the aspects which are most relevant to us individually, and I'm not excluding myself from human nature.

PokerStars blog on Card Hunt promotion

"For one thing we've given away more than half a million prizes so far. To put a number on that it amounts to more than $1.1 million in prize money. Who knows what that figure will be by the end of the month, but you've got two weeks more to win your share. "

New promotion starting from today:

https://www.pokerstars.com/poker/promotions/ko-poker/

Knock out the competition for a share of $120,000 every week

Looks alright. It's not showing up in my news feed though. Also I tried to deposit with the code and it didn't let me. Anyone else tried this?

I noticed in the link at one point it says it's running from April 24th to May 14th instead of 22nd to 12th

I found that link on PokerStars blog.

ah ok that makes sense, probably hasn't been officially released yet then

edit: also my mistake - the 24th til 14th dates were not actually incorrect, i think those are just dates for the all-in shootouts.

Interesting that they've backtracked, openly bragging now that this year's promos cos them less than previous years.

In a KO poker week you play to KO players in KO sng's to qualify for a tournamant that's a regular freeze out.

Those $1 hyper 36 6m sng are .44 + .44 + .12 that's some heavy rake

Some interesting finds!


Yeah, aren't the SNG knockouts the games that just had their rake increased? Also 4 to 12 knockouts is a lot for a one-tabler like me - may have to pass on this promo ... maybe a nice chance to take a break and go outside and enjoy some fresh air though?

They did the same with Spins - promote the hell out of them, funnel new players into them, get called out on rake, shrug with some variation of "these games have proven popular" as if it was organic growth.

It's a shame they never had the same motivation towards promoting/saving some classic games like fixed limit, Stud, O8 etc. They used to give a canned response of not promoting one game above another when asked why they don't help niche games more.

Just tried the deposit code and worked fine for me!