The myth of PS rakeback

[terrellk11]

MicroBob/Scotty/Sciolist:

Two points for you to consider.

1. The problem with using Mircobob's numbers is that it only answers the question for one particular buyin level. When you change the level you're playing at, the math changes dramatically.

At 2/4 NL (full ring) on FTP, the average rake for a hand is about $1.20 with an average of 8.35 players per hand, which when divided and multipled by .27 ends up with the player getting about 4.14 cents per hand in rakeback.

At 2/4 NL on Stars, the aveage hand nets a player .54 vpp. The value of that varies by level as follows (using 1.6 cents per fpp to determine their value):

Bronze: .864 cents
Silver: 1.296 cents
Gold: 1.728 cents
Platinum: 2.16 cents
Supernova: 3.024 cents

Now the stars player above would have to play about 370k hands to hit the 200k vpp milestone bonus. Having played the first 165k hands at 2.16 cents per hand (assuming platinum) and the following 165k at 3.024 cents per hand after hitting platinum, they'd have averaged 2.592 cents by the time they got to 200k vpp and then would get the additional $1200 in value from the 200k milestone bonus. $1200 divided by 370k hands works out to an additional 0.324 cents per hand for a total of 2.816 cents per hand.

If you add in another 130k hands to get to 500k total (which is about what you'd need to hit the 300k milestone bonus), you'd still be coming in at only ~3.23 cents per hand, nearly 25% lower than you're getting in straight rakeback at Full Tilt.

2. The other primary problem I have with the Stars structure is that it ties to the calendar year. If a new player comes to the site now and aveges 20k points per month, they're not going to hit Supernova by the end of the eyar and will have to wait until the end of May before getting to that point. It's completely arbitrary and just doesn't make any sense to me.