Can any 10NL/25NL players tell me what's the average rewards that you get from the chests?

Party.com used to rb up to 40%, but the ES client is up to 25% so that's kind of rude.

Any speculations?
Are the chest a polite way of saying F rakeback by pokerstars?

Your rewards on Stars aren't really based on the stakes you play. It's more to do with whether you deposit and how often you do so.
I haven't deposited more than $100 in the last five years, as I'm more of a withdrawer than a donator. I've been getting approximately 1% rakeback for the last month.
The chests/coffins are clearly a FU to winning players. And I haven't even been winning recently!

Damn, that's awful.

Thanks Arty!1

I'd say the only thing the PS chests has going for it "pizazz"... Occasionally you get a nice chuck of starscoins and insta cash but only if you keep playing plenty of hands, midstakes to high stakes AND daily or it just starts to reset...
The previous VIP program from stars was waaaay better.

I think 10% is the lowest rakeback you'll get from Stars, but it won't be much more than that.

Honestly rakeback doesn't matter for a lowstakes grinder unless you're playing 8+ hours and insane amounts of tables.

It's basically this, rewards on all sites should just be considered a tiny bonus and should be probably fourth or fifth on the things you consider when picking a site after quality/choice of games, quality of support/security, quality of software and ease of getting paid if you win, if not other things as well. It's not 2005 where poker's still booming and sites needed to try to gain new players

Trying to get information on which are the optimal sites to play on is pretty damn hard. I've posed the question more than once and it is not for any lack of research on my part.

(OK, I have not forensically examined every sites TOC, but hey...that's why we join a forum isn't it? )

I have a couple of questions, but I'll give something up to the forum first...based on empirical observation only...

Note UK player...because geography matters!

Stars RB is indeed awful and also, as Arty says, pretty mysterious...but do watch out for and take advantage of their deposit bonuses, which are also clearly targeted through software algorithms.

I've had four such bonuses in the last six months (low volume STT player) and all returned sizeable additions to my roll...and none of them had to be "cleared" in anyway.

I guess it is all part of Star's plan to keep regs away, but whatever...those bonuses and the fishiness of micro stakes STT keep this Rec a happy boy

Now my questions:

Without resorting to VPN tactics, are any US facing sites available to us Brits (I don't mind doing BTC if I have too). From what I can tell from research we cannot play in Ignition ???? Is this correct??

And, anybody venture an opinion of what Euro/UK site offers the best rakeback/bonuses:

In general?
For STT?

Here's hoping

PS I understand and agree the two posts above, but I'm still hoping for an answer, because I think it is still very useful to know. Not least because if everybody accepts Stars rakeback as inevitable and continues to play there, not much inducement to keep them on their toes is there??

it is not, winning players can easily go down to 2-4%, I was at around 4,5% and still wasn't the lowest tier. You can check it out in stars chests thread in Internet Poker (https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...stars-1678823/, they calculated EV for each chest and you can calculate your rb if you know how much rake you need to generate to get a particular chest.

I was at 18k (180$ rake) for gold chest, which is about 4,1% without a boost, and about 4,5 if we count occasional boost. There was a guy with 350$ rake requirement for gold chest in that thread, which is around 2% rb.

Also, big losing whales are reportedly getting SNE-level rb, which itself is a good idea, if they werent screwing everyone else so badly.

e: I quit playing poker for a living (and online poker in general) about a year ago, so that data is from then, there could be some changes since (for worse I imagine)

This just isn't true. It can vary widely. I've already said I've been on 1% for the last month. Prior to that it was about 3% for me.
But today, I'm one of the "specially selected" players to get the "Card Royal" promo, which is like Card Match, but with better rewards (an entire buy-in for playing about 400 hands).
Other people have reported getting $40 in a single chest while playing 25NLz.
The deposit bonuses for people that haven't played for a while have also been very generous. Indeed, someone that makes a fresh deposit might well get very good rakeback for their first month or so. Once you're established as a winning grinder, however, the rewards are automatically reduced by the mysterious algorithms.

^^

Good posts...wp guys

Just as a quick follow-up to the above, I cleared yesterday's "Card Royal" promo in a few hundred hands of 2NL. I paid just 27 cents of rake doing so, and got a $2 reward.



740% rakeback for the win.

The chests/coffins continue to be terrible for me, and the days of fixed rakeback are clearly over (on Stars, at least) but if you hunt down every little promo, there's still some "free money" to be found. There's a whole lot of variance though.

Sounds fair I guess.
I'll hopefully get verified on the Pokerstars.ES platform soon and will check for myself.

Compared to the 5.50% rake and no rakeback on betonline (just some T$ that I won't ever use) seems better.

I expect a lot of bad players on stars as well, but a good mixture of regs I guess.

Another reason of me wanting to play there is that I don't want to buy a hud catcher for $40 in order to get my HM2++ $250 software to work with betonline.

Wrong, I had 1-2% for 2 months and im a recreational player. Not playing on Amyastars ever again.

It does not seem that it is the rewards in the chests that vary based on your "profile" but rather the requirements for the chest.

I have to earn 35,000 points for my next Gold chest instead of like 4,250 or whatever it was just a day ago. Many others reported similiar thing.

I didn't make the calculations as it was too tedious, but a friend of mine that plays 10NL on pokerstars.pt (same zoom pool) receives a bit under 5%. But he doesn't play that much volume. I play almost double and between NL50 and NL25 so I'm guessing in my case 3-4%.

From what I remember even chrome (or bronze?) stars in the past received a higher reward in the old system. In relation to party.ES you should first research its base rake and cap which I think is even higher than pokerstars...

^^

cheers, useful, a little bit of the jigsaw, but it helps.

And...

+1 for sure. That's what I have been doing with some success.