I frequently post in support of you and respect everything you have accomplished through poker but this comment is pure rubbish. It has a lot of things in it that sound right but overall it's just plain wrong and probably a mistake for you to post it as the main face of the site.

I'm not going to cover all the points but here are some of the big ones.

First of all it's a bit hypocritical of you to go against poker players that are trying to make a living playing poker on Stars and have a **** winning players mentality. You yourself, and many people you know, made a living player poker before you got your sponsorship.

Winning players don't get the most bonuses because they win more, they get the most bonuses because they play more. The rewards system is set up to encourage more people to play more. Back when PTR was still around for Stars I remember many of the SNE's that were making a living player poker had losing graphs but made their money from bonuses. Winning players are obviously going to play more so will get more bonuses.

Poker sites get more of the fish money through rake than the most winningest player on the site. Wouldn't be surprised if it was more than all the winningest players put together.

PokerStars offers a service. People who use that service pay fees as a percentage ofthe pots their involved in (rake). The money players deposit isn't PokerStars money. It's money that people put on the site to play with. As they play some of that money goes to the winning players and some of that money goes to the site as rake.

Think of PokerStars like eBay or PayPal. Maybe you're not familiar with these sites Mr. Moneybags but for us non millionaires, they're sites that facilitate the sale of used (mainly) merchandise and handle the online transactions respectively. So basically we can buy expensive stuff we need used at a better price as well as sell off old crap we no longer need to buy more crap we don't need. In exchange these sites get a small portion of the transaction. Maybe something like 7%.

When you mock how the winning players get so much money from the lowers compared to how much the site gets (which is likely wrong by the way especially so in lower stakes where the rake is insane) it's like eBay/PayPal complaining that they handle billions of dollars in transactions but only get a small fraction of it because most of the money goes to the sellers.

Regular players help the site convert deposits into revenue for the site. Withoug them it rake would accumulate more slowly just like ebay would earn less revenue without some of it's power sellers.

And remember... The bonuses aren't just free money the top players get.It's basically a refund on some of the rake they paid the site. You want to get rid of bonuses that favor high volume players? Fine. But it should have a corresponding reduction in rake and I don't think many players would have a problem with that. If you took the top 25% of winning players at each stake level with a significant sample and averaged out their win rates, the site's rake should be structured in a way that they site doesn't earn significantly more bb/100 than that average. At least that's what I thought would be an interesting concept.

Winning players are concerned about how much they win so they can keep making withdrawals to pay their bills. Losing players should lose at a slow enough rate that they get a good bit of enjoyment for their money and don't lose so quickly that they're hesitant to redeposit. That's a healthy ecosystem.

Lol at players who think they have any right to tell Stars what games to offer. (double lol at them when they see the changes to the VIP program next year)

i think spins was the best chance for amaya to reanimate full tilt (the game still could be moved there along with exited recs) but on pokerstars its total disaster

Sorry for not being as willing as you and rest to just bend over and let stars pound everybody in ass

It's not the idea of a Spin & Go that is the problem. The 1,000 multiplier is too high (causing insane variance for all) and the rake is too high (causing fish to be bled dry faster than at other games).

Huh?

Haven't the last ten promotions been challenges for tickets to flippaments? I don't consider myself a reg anymore, maybe a fish reg, but flippaments are just tailored for casuals and recreationals.

Gone are the days of deposit bonuses, where you grind to unlock actual $ at a not unfair rate, those promos were for regs. The last one of those I remember was TCOOP a couple of years ago.

Stars is now heading totally towards catering for the casino clientele.

Lol at thinking that the mere fact of being SNE says anything about your poker skill.

I´d be surprised if the majority of those guys (SNG grinders especially) actually make money pre RB

Having a chance of winning a big price in 10 minutes of spare time obviously attracts a lot of players. If you dont like them play something else and let Stars worry about their ecosystem.

It definitely does attract a lot of them and we can all she why.

I think plenty of those players though will soon be disappointed that instead of having a shot at the jackpot they're constantly playing for just a couple of buy-ins and not even winning those in majority of cases, steadily losing money due to bad payout structure and high rake.

So, after all, these games will be, in the long run, bad for both regs AND recs.

If I get time later, was hoping to try and use the Kelly Criterion to compare just how different the bankroll management requirement are for Spin & Go vs 3-handed winner take all SNG.

(1) Is this the correct distribution for the prizes:
(2) Are these all 3-handed winner take all (apart from the top 3 prize-levels, which are 80%/10%/10%)?

(3) What is a good estimate of a decent players' winning percentage for this $7/$15/$30 level (or finish distribution if they're not winner take all)?

Juk

(1) This is correct for $7+ (top 3 tiers are technically 120x, 240x, 1200x but with the 80/10/10 as you noted it's 100x, 200x, 1000x for 1st place).
(2) Yes.
(3) I don't know. I assume something like 36% win is very good because it yields 3.6% pre-rakeback ROI. (2nd and 3rd place distribution will not matter.)

Pretty sure the BRM will be very sensitive to ROI so it might be worthwhile looking at several potential win rates.

Thanks, I'll start off just treating it at though top tiers are winner take all and 120x, 240x, 1200x then.

Once I get the formula sussed it should be very easy to try different ROIs - hopefully it should be possible to plot the ratio of the Kelly Fraction between the two types of games.

Juk

As you probably already figured out, the split is then 83.33/8.33/8.33 of the total prize pool at those tiers.

Nice. Should be interesting.

Do you really think someone can play high enough stakes enough to get SNE against some of the best players in the format, win enough to support themselves solely through poker year after year, and still be bad at poker? If you think that you're delusional.

If it's so easy to get SNE, and you can be bad at poker and still make 6 figures a year by doing it, funny how there's so few people that are SNE.
All you have to do is be b/e year after year and you get a free 130k. Surely everyone can do that right?

bit late to teh party but fcuk stars for pulling this **** and fcuk dnegs for being such a fukn tool, how does such a clueless mong have a say on what goes on.

because NVG.

VanPersik

Yeah, I'm just gonna ignore that for time being.

Not 100% sure I've got the formulas correct (will make a post in the Probability forum later and ask), but I think this is it:

3-handed "Winner Take All" format


P(1st) = 0.36, then optimal bet fraction is 0.04 = 4% of bankroll.
P(1st) = 0.35, then optimal bet fraction is 0.025 = 2.5% of bankroll.
P(1st) = 0.37, then optimal bet fraction is 0.055 = 5.5% of bankroll.

* This agrees exactly with the standard Kelly Criterion formula.

So, using the same idea (ie: find the bet fraction that maximizes exponential bankroll growth):

Simplified "Spin and Go" SNG (ie: assumes winner take all for top 3 prize-levels)


P(1st) = 0.36, then optimal bet fraction is ~0.0045 = 0.45% of bankroll.
P(1st) = 0.35, then optimal bet fraction is ~0.0035 = 0.035% of bankroll.
P(1st) = 0.37, then optimal bet fraction is ~0.013 = 1.3% of bankroll.

Juk

PS: I've also posted this in the Probability forum here, so if what I've tried is wrong somebody there will probably be able to derive the correct values for us...

Exactly, it's unsurprising Dnegs conveniently ignores this though as it directly contributes to his monthly pay cheque. Its not about a sense of entitlement to earn a living from pokerstars, it's about value for money in games we choose to play. Unfortunately just like progressive super KO tournaments the popularity allows pokerstars to get away with the ridiculous rake.

Demanding AND sensitive.

The trend agrees with simulation results, as expected.

I'd take these values with a pinch of salt until somebody from the Probability forum confirms it's the right method... If it is then I'll refine the results so that they both have the same rake (currently WTA result above assumes no rake) and the top 3 prize levels of the "Spin and Go" are handled correctly, etc.

If it is correct though, then it looks pretty dire as you're gonna be needing (at the very least) 10x the bankroll requirements for these as for normal SNGs!!!

Juk

Can you translate those results into layman's speak please?

If you have an expected 1st rate of 36% (as suggested above might be representative of a good reg's in these levels) then you need approximately 10x the bankroll requirements to safely play "Spin and Go" SNGs as you would to to play "3-handed winner take all" SNGs. Also, it appears that the lower your ROI is, the bigger the ratio between bankroll requirements for the two game types (eg: playing "Spin and Go" SNGs as a close to 0% ROI "rakeback pro" will be next to impossible).

Again, take these values with a pinch of salt until method is confirmed as correct and rake fractions have been properly matched between the game types (trying to keep it as simple as possible atm).

Juk

Poster heehaww has kindly confirmed my method is correct, so I'll try and re-do it for an exact comparison between the game types either later tonight or tomorrow (I doubt results will be hugely different though).

Juk

Excellent post. Pokerstars/Dnegs should respond to this.