The myth of PS rakeback

[terrellk11]

Josem -

Don't waste your breath. They're not interested in an intelligent discussion - they just want to be right.

[mbpoker]

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Stars know this to be true and they will not offer RB because if they did they would be paying back much more than they are now under the VIP/FPP system. To me that is case proved.


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It might be the opposite. What % of the FTP players have signed up there via some affiliate and are entitled to the rb? Perhaps 10%. On Stars 100% of players are eligible.

[turtle82]

also .. while we're still comparing the benefits of the two sites.. shoudln't we also consider the value of the full tilt points for the store? or did we do that already, i'm pretty lost in all these numbers [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

In one month of playing about 55000 hands, i've earned enough points to buy a canon powershot sd1000, which is worth maybe 220 dollars on ebay..

[MicroBob]

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This forum however is full of Stars supporters who only see through rose tinted glasses. If you question anything you just get dumb replies about how good the service is. And that is never the question at hand.

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QFT and is exactly my point. For the person who does not play a gazillion hands a month FTP is clearly a superior choice as you get 27% RB no matter what AND that RB only impacts points spent not accululated. Plus you get medals which are not entirely useless and as demonstrated have some value.
Yet I see a lot of long convoluted posts about how PS FPP can be stretched into this figure and that figure while they totally ignore some glaring issues like you have to actually spend points to get bonus's wheras you do not at FTP

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Wow.
Other people are constantly asking what their PS RB would be at such-and-such level and I felt like responding and also showing others how to do the calcs since many seem to have no clue on this and it's one of the really really few things I seem to be rather good at.

So I showed people how it works and how they can do it themselves for their own stakes if they so choose and that you need to include value for milestone bonuses of $1200 and $2200, etc and also the freeroll value if you are interested in playing those.

Also should be noted that when I did the calcs I rounded a lot of stuff down. I counted FPP's as 1.5 cents instead of 1.61.
I counted the first milestone as $1200 instead of $1250 or the full $2000 as is a common mistake.

If I wanted to stretch the appearance of higher RB value on Stars I could have used more generous numbers practically all over the place. I used some pretty conservative numbers in there and STILL ended up with some decent percentages even at the games that are not the best for RB-value there.


Anyway, on one hand there are accusations of 'blindly defending' stars and on the other hand there are accusations where it's a bad thing to actually explain the reasoning and how it works.

So I guess I'm blindly defending them AND unblindly defending them at the same time somehow.


For some people and at some stakes, even lowish to mid volume players, you can get up to 40% or higher RB at Stars.
It does not take a zillion hands.
For other people at the stakes and volume they play it is likely they'll be hanging around the 10% range or even lower possibly which obviously sucks compared with the value at FT.

My suggestion is to learn to figure this out for yourself so you can make an informed decision and I even helped show how to do that.

The point is that FTP is not the 'clearly superior' choice for low to mid-volume players. It's a better choice for some and definitely not as good for others.

I think your defense of FT's 'clearly superior' status is far more closed-minded and "blind" than anything I have ever said about Stars.

[MicroBob]

To address the final point: I'm not ignoring the issue of having to 'spend' points to get the cash-bonuses or other items. Most intelligent thinkers rightly consider it to be mostly a non-issue since you are going to continue playing there anyway.
I also ignored the aspect on FT of having to wait until several days into the next month to even get your RB.

Both ways of having to wait for the actual RB money are kind of annoying compared with simply getting the cash paid directly to you every single day or something. But I really didn't think it was that big a deal for either. You eventually get paid at both sites.

Probably not much point to this post since you seem so determined to write-off pretty much anything I might have to say as blindly defending stars.


Look, if I likd the FT software better and felt I was getting a better deal over there I would be there in a heartbeat. No problem. I suggest everyone else play at FT if it's better for their situation. I'm not encouraging anyone to play at Stars at all. I'd rather have more of the very very few super-mega-fish to myself anyway.

[metsfan88]

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fpp's are about 1.5 or 1.6 cents.

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How can fpp's be 1.5 cents if it takes 40 cents in rake (when blinds are lower than 1/2) to equal 1 fpp?

[Josem]

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How can fpp's be 1.5 cents if it takes 40 cents in rake (when blinds are lower than 1/2) to equal 1 fpp?


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The calculation of the value of FPPs is based upon what you redeem them for.

If you have 1 FPP, you can get about 1.6cents of value.

[MicroBob]

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also .. while we're still comparing the benefits of the two sites.. shoudln't we also consider the value of the full tilt points for the store? or did we do that already, i'm pretty lost in all these numbers [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

In one month of playing about 55000 hands, i've earned enough points to buy a canon powershot sd1000, which is worth maybe 220 dollars on ebay..

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Absolutely one should consider the value of the FT points
I don't know much about the FT points but I can try.

I do know that FT point purchases ARE deducted from your MGR. So when you purchase that camera with your points they actually take some of it out of your rake-back.
$220 or whatever they consider the value of it would be taken out of your MGR meaning the 27% of that would be deducted from the rakeback you were going to receive. So they are taking almost $60 out of your RB when you use your points to buy that camera if I'm understanding it correctly.

For the camera at 55k for $220 approximately that works out to about 0.4 cents per point.
I thought I had read 0.3 cents per point in a different thread about it but I really can't remember for sure.
After you account for the deduction from your total-MGR and you would have made 27% of that it seems to me it would work out to the 0.3 I had seen previously.

Anyway, because the points aren't that valuable to begin with and they deduct the purchases from your MGR my very rough estimate is that the points MAYBE add another 1% to your RB. So maybe you are truly getting 28% there.

Really not sure but the I doubt the points would be worth much more than that.

[MicroBob]

Somebody earlier also mentioned that FT offers significantly more reload bonuses than Stars does.

Now this is absolutely a valid point that I had admittedly forgotten about. There is a lot of stuff back and forth at each site obviously.

I believe the bonuses on FT are deducted from your MGR also but they are obviously still worth it.

Stars has the occasional reload too of course and I believe they are much easier to clear as well AND they are not deducted from your MGR.
But usually Stars does not have nearly as many nor offer as much as the reloads at FT.


I don't know what the RB rate during a bonus-clearance at FT is. But if you play slowly enough that a significant percentage of your time is being spent clearing one reload after another then I'm guessing you could practically be in a constant state of 50% or higher at FT.
And as pointed out before, for many players at lower volume you aren't likely to pull that much at Stars.

[metsfan88]

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milestone bonuses of $1200 and $2200

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I couldn't find anything about this on pokerstars do you mind posting what this is?