Anyone make Ironman at microstakes? I'm going for silver next month, and while I think it's possible I fully admit that I'll probably fall off the wagon and end up trying for bronze. With my rough calculations I earn 20 FTPs per hour per table of NL25. I generally quad-table, so that's about 2.5 hours of playing a day for 20 days to hit silver.

Are the bonuses even worth it?

And does anyone even play full tilt around here?

well the year end bonus was nice and I would imagine they'll do the same this year, so yea it's definitely worth it. i make iron playing 50 and it's not all that hard but you can't miss many days.

Made gold this month playing 10NL, can easily get the requisite points in <90 minutes 10-tabling

I've made bronze two months in a row playing 6-8 tables for about an hour. (NL10 )I think the year end bonus, if they do it again next year, was worth it. Other than that I think it takes forever if your bronze to get enough medals to do anything with. Meaning Cash Bonuses.

Bronze the last two months playing 15 days at 100 pts. per day.

I recommend before you start for the day write down your starting points. They auto update in your cashier, but the web page sometimes lags behind anywhere from an hour to a day.

It's actually one of the things that motivated me to give cash a try again.

I have made gold every month I've played, starting at 25NL moving to 50, starting 6-tabling moving to 12. If you multi-table and play regularly its not hard to hit the ironman levels.

Regarding the value of the rewards, they are, for the most part, not worth it. I made an excel spreadsheet of the items in the the ironman store, and if i can find it I will post it. But basically each ironman medal is worth about $0.15. They vary from about $0.14 to $0.18, but in general it looks like FTP prices them at 15 cents a piece.

Beyond that, many of the things you buy at the store affect MGR. That is, buying them in the ironman store doesn't affect MGR, but using the item does. The cash bonuses are free to buy, but deduct from MGR when you clear them. The FTP points are free to buy, but hit MGR when you spend them. This effectively reduces their value by 27%. The tourney tokens you have to pay rake on, so this reduces their value ~10%, but then they increase MGR when you use them too, so over hit is ~7-8% under the straight cash value. Across the board, ironman medals are probably worth about $0.12 each. If you earn 100 medals in a month of play, congratulations, that's worth about $12.

For some reason I'm hooked on the chase just the same.

The year-end ironman bonus was REALLY nice, and didn't hit MGR either! Much love to FTP for that one.

Personally I like the penalty they inflict on you for playing less days.

If you play 25 days and make silver (50pts a day) it only takes 1250 pts. whereas if you play 15 days you need 3000 points. More than double, lol

How many points do you need to clear each of the cash bonuses? I've got 800+ medals to use and I'm in two minds as to whether to take the $100 bonus or the 25k points and get a camera

Same as any other 16.67pts/$1.00 of bonus.

I don't know the rate at which the bonuses clear.

But the MGR hit can be easily calculated.

$100 bonus = $73 cash value (100 - 27% MGR hit)
25000 FT points = just under $80 cash value ($125 store value - 27% MGR hit - 10% FTP store markup)

Just divide by the number of medals (I can't access the FTP site from work) to figure out which is a better value.

Remember the FT points are valued at $0.05 each in the store, but the FTP store will be slightly above retail. This can be fairly attributed to S&H you will pay from any other online retailer, but you should keep it in mind for things you could otherwise buy at a store.

Have made Ironman level for 4mo str8 now, 5table 50nl 2hrs a day. Really not tough to do.

The bonuses clear at the normal 6c/ftp like the standard bonuses

Ironman is a joke from a player perspective. It is fantastic from a marketing perspective.

So as discussed above because of the hit to your MGR it really is a very small bonus.

however as also noted it gives you a goal to chase which you can make progress towards regardless of how badly you play.

Unless you cash in the top 10 in the freerolls then the whole Ironman promotion is not a good deal to players at all.

That said I made bronze again this month because I play bad.

Here's the spreadsheet I was talking about.



Red numbers are negative, blue are estimated. Let me know if you see any errors.

So true...and I know it......and yet I was still trying to get in a couple of extra session so I could hit silver this month. Great marketing FTP....I hate you guys.

Very helpful. Thanks for posting. So basically the best bang for your buck is to use medals for tournament tokens.

As long as there is no overlay.

What is MGR?

So if I understand it, there is no rakeback hit on the $26 tourney tokens?

And ****, that money you buy counts as a bonus you have to clear? That's ridiculous, I thought they would at least give it to you straight up for the medal price.

Yeah Ironman kinda blows. Because I don't really feel the medals are worth ****, I figure I'll probably play in the freeroll if I make it. Are there many iron"men" out there? How many frequent the freeroll? 15K for silver huh...

low stakes guys should prob go to the internet gambling forum or PM FTPDoug and ask for a $50 iron man bonus...300 medals...I am pushing hard for it cause iron aint worth **** to players NL25 and lower

Kurt,

In your spreadsheet you forgot that your MGR increases from the rake on tournament entries.

So the 24+2 is actually worth 24.54, the 70+5 = 71.35, etc.

The tourney entries really are the best value if you're decent at tournaments.

K

yeah, I mentioned the MGR increases in my post above, but didn't include them on the spreadsheet. I mean, you have to play to get the EV from the tourney, right. But you also have to play to clear the $$ bonuses, so should I count the MGR increase from the # of hands you have to play to clear to bonus too?

Its kinda a gray area and I guess it kinda depends on if you were going to play those tournies/hands anyway. Meh.

Yeah, if you're a MTT player you'll have more than your share of equity in the tourney, so these are definitely the best use of ironman medals.

Except, of course, I don't know how to play donkaments, so its really a losing proposition for me. I'm just a cash game player, I don't even enroll in the monthly ironman freerolls, instead taking more of the 12 cent medals. lol

Oh, and MGR stands for Monthy Gross Rake, and it is the number your rakeback is calculated from. Say you pay $500 in rake. Your MGR that month is $500. You would get 27% of MGR, or $135 back that month. If you then buy an item for 10,000 FTP points in the store, they deduct $50 from your MGR, so you only get $121.50 in rakeback.

Heck, you can even use the medals for smaller SNGs if you aren't comfortable with big MTTS, and you may even have a higher chance to cash.

Tourney tix are by far the best value IMO.

I know how to change my preferences from Medals to Freerolls, but how do you register for the tourney once you qualify?

You are registered automatically.

but should i take the medals or the freerolls? mostly 500 players or maybe some more join the ironman 40K, this means that whe all get $80 by just joining. its kinda hard to top that with the medals right?

Damn only 500? I would definitely join, regardless of my tournament skill. Probably be WAY more people for silver though...

What does this mean? I can ask some dude for a $50 ironman bonus and he'll give it to me??? Who is this, the owner of Full Tilt?