LHE - Stars VIP Status or FT Rakeback?

[PMR]

I'm trying to decide where to play $2/$4 and $3/$6 6-max LHE: Stars or Full Tilt. I understand that it may be advisable to have money at both sites and look for the best tables, but given a choice:

Which system do you consider to be more profitable for a SSSH player: the FPP-enhancing "VIP Status" offered by Stars, or the 27% rakeback of Full Tilt?

If the decision is close, at what VIP status level (SilverStar, GoldStar, etc.) must a player be at Stars for its system to be preferable to Full Tilt's? How hard is it to maintain this VIP status at the aforementioned limits?

Lastly, the value of FT's "Full Tilt Point Store" should also be taken into consideration, although its inferiority to Stars' VIP FPP store is widely agreed upon. Are there any other major differences between Stars and FT that I am forgetting to take into consideration?

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge and opinions.

[LionelHutz00]

How many hands are you playing per month? There's a thread that gives how many VPPs you get per hand at Stars. Take that number and multiply it by the number of hands per month. Go to the Stars website and figure what your VIP level will be. Then use that to figure how many FPPs you'll make per month. Multiply that by the value of FPPs to get X.
Go into your PokerTracker database and figure out how much rake you'd pay per hand at FTP (they have their rake structure on their website if you want to be exact.) Multiply that number by your rakeback% (27% amirite?), and multiply that by the number of hands you'll play per month to get Y.

If X is bigger than Y, play at Stars.
If Y is bigger than X, play at FTP.

oh yeah, and lol minbet.

[LionelHutz00]

thanks for editing your post and making me look like a smartass.

[Annorax]

[ QUOTE ]
How many hands are you playing per month? There's a thread that gives how many VPPs you get per hand at Stars. Take that number and multiply it by the number of hands per month. Go to the Stars website and figure what your VIP level will be. Then use that to figure how many FPPs you'll make per month. Multiply that by the value of FPPs to get X.
Go into your PokerTracker database and figure out how much rake you'd pay per hand at FTP (they have their rake structure on their website if you want to be exact.) Multiply that number by your rakeback% (27% amirite?), and multiply that by the number of hands you'll play per month to get Y.

If X is bigger than Y, play at Stars.
If Y is bigger than X, play at FTP.

oh yeah, and lol minbet.

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Doesn't FTP also deduct the value of any store item you purchase from your MGR? If so, that may impact the value of RB+FPP to the point where Stars would be a better value even if he isn't Platinum or Nova.

[PMR]

Thanks very much, LionelHutz00. Sorry to have edited my post before seeing your response, although I only changed the topic.

With your method, the only thing left to determine would be "the value of FPPs," which I suppose I could choose according to my heart's content, or as the division of available gift certificates that I would be willing to spend. Either way, it's not an exact science of determining the dollar value of X.

I am also not sure exactly how many hands I will be playing per month -- I am likely to decide this based largely on what I determine to offer the optimal value for my time (i.e. dollars-per-hour). If I played on Full Tilt, this wouldn't really be an issue. On Stars, however, it may mean playing the minimum amount to reach/maintain a certain VIP status level every month.

I'll start crunching some numbers, using the variables you mention, in hopes of estimating a constant value: the number of hands I would have to play at Stars each month at these limits in order to expect more $/hour than at Full Tilt. If Z is feasible, I'll shoot for it.

I'm hoping that someone might already have a sense of this value from experience, and save me a lot of time by telling me not to even waste time computing it (because it is either ridiculously low or unattainably high).

[PMR]

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Doesn't FTP also deduct the value of any store item you purchase from your MGR? If so, that may impact the value of RB+FPP to the point where Stars would be a better value even if he isn't Platinum or Nova.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yikes -- can anyone confirm this? I'll try to look into it.

[Scary_Tiger]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Doesn't FTP also deduct the value of any store item you purchase from your MGR? If so, that may impact the value of RB+FPP to the point where Stars would be a better value even if he isn't Platinum or Nova.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yikes -- can anyone confirm this? I'll try to look into it.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is what I've heard.

[DMoogle]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Doesn't FTP also deduct the value of any store item you purchase from your MGR? If so, that may impact the value of RB+FPP to the point where Stars would be a better value even if he isn't Platinum or Nova.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yikes -- can anyone confirm this? I'll try to look into it.

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Yes, the points you spend deducts from your MGR. This essentially means that for everything you buy in FTP's store, 27% of what is usually around the retail cost comes out of your own pocket (i.e. rakeback).

[chicken10der]

Say you spend every point you make. For 6-max, that changes the RB from $45/1kpts to $43.65/1kpts in exchange for all the free crap you get from the store. (the rake part of your MGR is roughly your FTP points divided by the number of players in your game).

[MicroBob]

Don't forget that you get a lot of points from the ironman medals thing too or however that works. And/or you can just decide to actually play in the freerolls which also has value. But Stars has VIP freerolls too which contribute to the value.


At SuperNova I suspect Stars is better. Especially if you are going to get 200k or more VPP's per year because the milestone bonuses help your value too.

But if you are starting from scratch and probably won't make it to 200k VPP then that puts you way behind.
you have to consider all that time spent just getting to SuperNova in the first place which will hurt your value.

You should get to Platinum reasonably quickly though so you won't be hurt TOO badly.

But even at Platinum you are only getting 2.5x FPP's instead of 3.5x so you're earning 28% fewer FPP's I believe plus no milestone bonuses which make it close to a 40% or more loss in value compared with SN.

Pretty significant difference.

For a Gold or Platinum level player who obviously will not get the help of 3.5x player-points very soon nor the miestone-bonuses I would suspect that FT is better for the rakeback-type stuff.

But at Platinum on Stars it's probably only a few percentage points. therefore I'm not sure that should make a big difference in your decision.
It should be based more on which games and software you like better and perhaps on stuff like customer-support and ease of getting your money in and out.

Even your willingness and enthusiasm about playing all those Saturday Stars freerolls can be a factor in this. (I believe you can opt-out of the different freerolls on FT now).


It also can make a big difference if you like to play a lot of 2 or 3-handed.
In that case Full Tilt would almost certainly be significantly better as I believe they do dealt-hand rakeback so you are getting back a high percentage of that rake whereas on Stars it remains fixed.

At FT in a hand with 3 players dealt-in when the rake reaches $1 your MGR is $0.33 and you are getting back 27% of that for 8.9 cents.

At Stars if you count each FPP as 1.5 cents then a SN gets back 5.25 cents for a $1 pot no matter how many players were in the hand.
So for a 3-player hand you contributed $0.33 and only got back 5.25 cents for a lousy 16%.

If you are only platinum on Stars for such a 3-player hand then you only got back 3.75 cents even though you still contributed the same 33 cents and that's an even lousier 11.6%.


So as you can see there are a number of different factors in all this stuff and it can vary from player to player which place is better so perhaps some of this info can help you figure it out for your situation.

Summary:
If you are going to get 200k or more VPP's per year than I think Stars is the obvious choice.

If you are only going to barely make it to Platinum and you would be playing a ton of heads-up and 3-handed then you would be getting much better value on FT.

But if you are going to play so little that you would barely make it to Gold on Stars then you will be making so little in RB anyway that it really isn't going to matter very much imo but FT is probably going to be a few dollars better.