FPP % at PokerStars heads up tables?

[Jeffmet3]

Hey,

I'm thinking about switching to heads up at Stars and I was wondering how the rakeback % through FPPS compares to 27% at FTP. Not really a big factor at all for heads up, but I was curious. Would Stars system be more beneficial or worse for heads up?

Thanks,

Jeff

[MicroBob]

heads up really sucks for FPP's at lower stakes.

You do okay at higher stakes but definitely don't make it to 27% I wouldn't think.

If you are a new player there as opposed to being a supernova then you won't even be close to 27%.
Possibly more like 5%-ish or so would be my guess but it still depends on the stakes and your VIP status there.
Also not sure if they have decided yet to do the nice thing and calculate FPP's differently for their heads-up players.

[Jeffmet3]

[ QUOTE ]
heads up really sucks for FPP's at lower stakes.

You do okay at higher stakes but definitely don't make it to 27% I wouldn't think.

If you are a new player there as opposed to being a supernova then you won't even be close to 27%.
Possibly more like 5%-ish or so would be my guess but it still depends on the stakes and your VIP status there.
Also not sure if they have decided yet to do the nice thing and calculate FPP's differently for their heads-up players.

[/ QUOTE ]

would be like nl 600 or 1000 and I haven't really played at Stars at all this year.

[mbpoker]

It's 1 VPP when rake is $0.50. As this is also the maximum rake, then for any mid limit and higher it's exactly $0.50 rake. For supernova you pay 25 cents rake and get 3.5 FPPs. At 1.6 cents per FPP you get 5.6 cents, which is 22.4%.

[MicroBob]

I just checked the page and they did make an adjustment for heads-up tables vs. 6-max tables.
But the RB% still ain't pretty. My estimate appears to have been pretty close though.

About 4% for your purposes. But that will soon get boosted to about 6% after 1,500 raked-hands in a month. And then up to about 8% at 4,000 raked-hands in a month.

Here's more on how I'm estimating this if you're curious:

No play in the past couple months makes you a Bronze Star meaning you get no bonus FPP's for the time-being.

FPP is roughly worth 1.5 to 1.6 cents each.

You get 1 FPP when ANY rake is taken at 2/4 or higher on a heads-up table.

This means that a $0.50 rake for a $20 pot at 2/4 or higher receives 1 FPP (note that if you're playing 1-on-1 on a 6-max or full-ring table you still need a $1 rake for a $40 pot to get an FPP).

So if all your raked hands were pots less than $40 then that means for the $0.50 rake your contribution was $0.25...and you are getting back only 1.5 cents of that for 6%.

But it's going to be significantly worse than that for a 3/6 or 5/10 NL player because a number of pots will be raked the full $1 max for a $40 pot or higher. But you are still only getting 1.5 cents back.

So for the $1 max-rake hands your RB is 3%.
And you should have more max-rake hands playing higher NL as you are.

So for a new player at Stars you will be somewhere in the middle of 3% and 6%.
Roughly in the 4-5% range depending on the percentage of hands that are max-rake $1 as opposed to min-rake $0.50.


The thing is...it won't be THAT long to get your 1,500 VPP's in less than a month and reach SilverStar status.
At SilverStar you receive 1.5x FPP's per VPP. So you are getting 2.2 cents back instead of 1.5

At 4,000 VPP's in one month you are GoldStar and getting 2x FPP's so that's getting 3 cents per raked-hand.

And at 10,000 VPP's you are Platinum and getting 2.5x FPP's so that's 3.7 cents per raked-hand.
And that status carries over to the next month.

So if you can get 10,000 FPP's in a month then that increases your RB by 2.5x which takes you from roughly 4-5% all the way up to 10-12.5%-ish.


Platinum status also includes free entry into the weekly $50k VIP freeroll each Saturday which is roughly a $65 value and a monthly $100k freeroll for Gold and higher which I think is usually a $25 value.
So that's up to an extra $280 in tourney-value per month IF you are able to play in every one of the Saturday tourneys.


100,000 VPP's in a year earn FPP's at 3.5x bonus which takes you to an even higher RB bracket.
You also get money bonuses at 200k, 300k, etc VPP's per year which essentially adds RB value but that's obviously only for the really high-volume players.

[mbpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
So for the $1 max-rake hands your RB is 3%.


[/ QUOTE ]

The max rake is 50 cents for HUT tables.

[MicroBob]

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/rake/


I'm looking at the rake page right now and it says that if there are 2 players in the hand at 2/4 and higher the rake is $0.50 at $20 and then $1 at $40.

Perhaps it's different for the heads-up tables and they didn't update their rake page?
Either that or it appears you are mistaken.

I just saw that on pot-limit and no-limit for 2 players in a hand the rake is $0.05 for each $1 in the pot up to a max of $1.
I didn't know the rake was taken at every $0.05 on NL tables even at higher stakes so this would probably have the effect of making your rakeback even worse than I had previously speculated.

Anytime you get a $35 pot or something then you'll have higher than a $0.50 rake of course.

[mbpoker]

From the page you posted the link to:

Heads-Up: rake will be collected on "1-on-1" tables at a rate of $0.05 rake per $1.00 in the pot, up to a maximum of $0.50 rake per hand.

[MicroBob]

Aha.

Didn't see that at the top.

Sorry about that and thank you for the correction.

So the numbers are going to be a little bit better than what I speculated for a higher-stakes player. But if you have a hand that goes limp-check preflop and then somebody folds post-flop then on those you will be paying rake and not getting any RB for those hands.

Still better overall though. So take my 4% estimation for the OP and up that to 5+%'ish.

For the lower stakes, especially limit, you should have more hands that are raked less than $0.40 and thus do not receive an FPP.
For each of those $0.30 and $0.35 raked hands you ain't gettin' squat.