Official Census, Stars new Supernova. Good or bad.

[FullyTilted]

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onlinepro has already stated several times that he thinks the game-selection on Stars is really lousy.

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Well, I'll have to agree to disagree with him on this one, though he could at least potentially make a logical case for his position here.

The other points hold, of course, and I'm eager to hear why "better progam" = "play less" to our esteemed pro.

[MicroBob]

He made a super-strong push for SN in the last month of the year in hopes that the reward system in 2007 would blow him away.

The only reason he was playing so much in the first place was due to his expectations for the future.

So, to that end, I'm not surprised that he is deciding to play there less. I don't believe he never thought it was that worthwhile to play there UNTIL he heard that they were going to step it up for next year.

i guess he wanted to be getting 3.5xBB's the whole way through in 2007 if he expected to play there a ton.


I don't know what the difference is if you have to go the whole 100k VPP's at the end of 2006 to do this. Might as well just wait until 2007 to see what they offer and whether you like it.

OnlinePro has also posted a few times that he thinks the cards on Stars are set up to help the fish and keep them winning more while also keeping players like him from winning as much.
I've already expressed a few times to him that I very much disagree with his idea and think it's kind of silly to believe in it.

[KLJ]

i think low level SNs get the rawest end of the deal, giving up some of their previous freeroll EV to the gold/plats (with the abolishment of the SN freeroll).

also, for many SNs, >500k is impossible to reach, so the SNe bonuses are irrelevant past that for them.

i'm not displeased because i dont think it changed my situation much (if at all), but i would have been happier if it turned out to be in my benefit.

i'll seriously consider moving to full tilt and getting a rakeback deal there, but i haven't decided yet. i'm just a small fish (10k MGR/month) so i don't affect either site much though.

[OnlinePro]

What microbob said was true, I put in a lot of work at the end of the year to reach nova due to all the hype surrounding the new vip program and I wanted to start the year earning the max FPP while trying to hit higher milestones. By doing this I was playing games I dont normally play. I like to play full ring limit holdem 10 20 and higher, with good game selection. To reach nova I was 12 tabling the 5 10 full ring game which has to be the worst game on stars, but even though you says stars has the most traffic I rarely see more than 2 , 10 20 games going.

I am definately a winning player online but my winrate has dropped bigtime because I was playing way too many tables at 5 10 with no game selection in games full of other grindgers.

I will not post my nickname on any room because I think it would give you unfair advantage if you saw me on the tables, but I will say that my win rate is at each level on stars

10 20 - 32,000 hands - 1.72

5 10 - 78,000 hands - ( .23 ) thats a losing rate not counting points value

30 60 - 13,000 hands - 1.34

15 30 - 2,900 hands - 8.55


I am not saying the program is worse than last year. There is a reason I wasnt playing there until the doomsday, and it was because I didnt like the way the vip program was, and that the new program gave me no real motivation to continue playing there ( any more than a normal casual rate )

All they needed to do was add an increase in FPP's earned once along the way to elite and I would have probobly went for it. Well this and the fact that even after you hit elite you cannot relax you have to keep up high pace for all of the year after as well. No thanx I would rather enjoy my life and not feel like slave to stars. For some of you who will be playing 5+ hours a day anyways than the new program is great for you. I am merely saying it is bad for me and my personal case.

BTW good luck on your quest microbob.


Ofcourse if stars did a little bit of changing to the program I might hop on the bandwaggon as well, but it would take a mandatory relaxing period for the year to follow. I would not want to play 50k hands almost every month. I would like to enjoy the money that I make and actually feel rich. If I am working 40 plus hours a week I will not feel rich. Even if I make 20-30% more income.

Just my 2 cents.

[NL__Fool]

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I put in a lot of work at the end of the year to reach nova due to all the hype surrounding the new vip program

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The funny thing is, all the Hype was created by a bunch of hopeful 2 + 2's. All Stars did was but up a tiny 3 line paragraph on their website stating that Supernovas will have better rewards for 2007

[Hock_]

FWIW -- some posts in this thread and others have been well-reasoned, but others are pretty whiney and that approach isn't likely to make much headway with the powers that be over at PStars. If you want to effect a change, somebody should work up a comparison of the benefits/incentives/costs at PStars vs. FullTilt (and maybe other major sites). If someone presented good ol' Lee Jones with a spreadsheet showing that variously situated players actually are better off at FT vs PStars then PStars might actually do something about it.

What I have in mind is something that has different rows for various NL and limit levels, and SNGs, and then different rows again for players playing different # of hands. So, e.g., for LHE, you'd have a row for players at 5/10 who play 50,000 hands per year, then another row for 5/10 at 100,000 hands, than another for 5/10 200,000 hands, and so on up to 1,000,000 hands per year, at various limits. You might also break out 6-max vs. 10-max, etc., depending on how exhaustive you want to be. Then columns showing (1) the rake charged by each site; (2) the rakeback (for the sites that have it); (3) the value of FPPs or the equivalent at each site; and then (4) other incentives; leading to (5) a final column which estimates, e.g., total cost per hand played for the player represented by that row of the spreadsheet.

Then publicize the spreadsheet so that all the sites and all the players have access. That will make the "threat" of players shifting sites more credible, against the possible counter-argument that the differences don't make a difference since players aren't that well informed.

This type of apples to apples comparison might have some impact, if you can show that PStars is not competitive with it's rivals. Yes, it will take some work, but in my (admittedly limited) experience negotiating salaries it can be very effective.

I'd do it myself, but I won't have much trouble making Elite, so . . .

[aucu]

It's all good,

Proly won't make SN neve SNE but will go platinum for a couple of months so who knows.

[mbpoker]

Very good idea. That exactly the type of thing that Stars may well react to. There is no need to go and compare with all minor sites, just the main sites, like FTP and Party (and yes, I am sure Stars cares about Party) where the game selection is not very far from Stars.

[MicroBob]

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I would not want to play 50k hands almost every month. I would like to enjoy the money that I make and actually feel rich. If I am working 40 plus hours a week I will not feel rich. Even if I make 20-30% more income.

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Yeah, I agree with this and have said so before.

The 50k a month the following year, especially when you are doing all that travelling, and after you've put in a good 1-million VPP's the year before, is WAY over-the-top.


IF I were to actually get this I already feel like it might be a 1 year thing.
IF I were to somehow go for it again in the 2nd year I've already decided I'm not going to kill myself making sure I stay at 50k VPP's per month.


I think the only way I would change my mind on this is if I somehow go at a ridiculous pace in 2007 and make SNE by October or something.
That way I can take my rest for a few weeks and THEN be a bit more prepared to keep cranking out 50k/mth in 2008.


At first, the SN's benefits were set to expire on Dec 31, 2006.
Then they came up with the 10k/mth for first 6 months thing much later on because people complained that it was silly to make it to SN on Dec 31 and have the benefits for only 1 day.

They listened to reason on this one and made appropriate changes.
So I have hope that perhaps they'll reconsider on the 50k/mth thing for SNE which I think most of us agree is a bit over-the-top and really does make you even more of a Stars-Slave than you already were just for getting the 1-million in the first place.


BTW - 1k down, 999k to go!!!

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I put in a lot of work at the end of the year to reach nova due to all the hype surrounding the new vip program

[/ QUOTE ]

The funny thing is, all the Hype was created by a bunch of hopeful 2 + 2's. All Stars did was but up a tiny 3 line paragraph on their website stating that Supernovas will have better rewards for 2007

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I'm not sure if it was a tiny 3-line paragraph or if they mentioned it more than once or what.
But, in general, I definitely agree that about 99.9% of the hype for this came from 2+2'ers and not from Stars.


Stars says, "We're going to have extra incentives. Including additional stuff at 200k and 300k, etc."

And all the 2+2'ers go, "Oh Wow!!!! 200k and 300k rewards??! I can do that and I just KNOW that they are probably going to be huge!!!!"