At what stakes would u say that rakeback becomes pretty insignificant? For example, rb at 3/6 LHE accounts for about 5bbs per hour. But as you go up, yes you'll generate more rake but not to the point where it becomes that significant of a boost.

So what stakes would u say it's good to ditch the sites that offer high rakeback but not as large of a volume of players as FTP and Stars?

Depends on how much you play.

If you only play one table of short handed, you might as well stick to the benefit-heavy sites until 20/40.

If you 6 table+, you're going to need to play on something like stars at about 5/10. But i think that for many, the 6 tabling at absolute or wpx at the 3/6 level is comparable in earnings to the same number of tables at the stars 5/10.

I'm personally making the transition at the 5/10 level mainly to ease my way into the mid limits. I dont expect to play any more than 20k hands or so at 5/10 on stars.

FTP has rakeback.

FTP lies somewhere in between.

Slightly better game selection than absolute, slightly worse than stars.
And their benefits are slightly better than stars, but slightly worse than absolute.

really? FTP has good benefits? I hate their store items. And I hate how they subtract bonuses from rakeback and pretty much anything related to money gets taken out of ur rake.

the 27% also annoys me, if you put in lots of hours at AP, they'll give u a deal and give u a few more pts which actually makes quite a difference if u put in 10k of rakeback, which I plan to when i have time >:D

I usually 4table and am working on 6 tabling

FTP has slightly better game selection vs AP? I think it's way better. There are always games going and lots of loose-passives to punk on, and its' easier to datamine.

I'm currently exploring AP and WPX but eventually I would like to have an easier time finding games w/fishes, I just dunno when I should ditch those sites for the higher volume ones.

I am moving to Stars from Interpoker by the end of this week so i am interested in this question as well.

Since Betfair left there are fewer games on Crypto and i started to doubt rakeback+good bonuses make up for it.

Stars FPP structure is pretty sweet, fwiw. Works out like decent rakeback if you get the best value items.

Vast majority of items = 1.5cents per point.
Some good deals = 1.7cents per point.
Porsche = 2cents per point.
Aston Martin = 2.3cents per point.


Works out to between 25% and 40% rakeback when you're at supernova depending on what stakes you play.

I was under the impression that the rake wasn't that big of a deal at higher stakes, but looking at my PT stats, I'm paying over 1 BB/100 at 15/30 and about 0.5 BB/100 at 30/60. That's pretty significant.

I should make supernova status by about April next year, and I'll be cutting out the 15/30 before too long which will help as well, so I guess it's not worth looking for a new site or anything, but it is kind of surprising how much you lose.

Iggy, you know your points reset on Jan 1? You'll have to do 100k VPPs from Jan 1 on, right? Just makin sure...

Do you lose your points or do they just reset in terms of earning frequent player levels and such? This could be an important distinction as I'd hate to lose the few hundred points I'll have.

wow...mb it's better to stick to AP and WPX until 30/60, haha

No, no... you keep your FPPs.

It's your VPPs that reset, just like they do each month. If you check your VIP status, you'll see what I mean.

Is it worth playing on stars before the beginning of the year, since it is all going to reset?

Well, I'd be pretty indifferent. You'd still be accumulating FPP at whatever rate, say Platinum for 2 months. You wouldn't be making Supernova before Dec 31st unless you played an INSANE amount of hands, but playing there now wouldn't be for nothing. Your non-supernova ranking resets every month, so you aren't like amassing a ton of VPP just to lose them, you would just have to start with 0 in January towards Supernova though, which you'd be doing anyways.

Well, think about what rake is. 15/30+ every hand is capped for rake. $3 a hand. You win roughly 1/10 hands in full ring.

For every hundred hands, that's $30.


But every hand doesnt see a flop, so not all hands are raked - so it's less than that for full ring. And short handed play compensates for that, bumping it back up to roughly 1BB/100.


Or half at 30/60.




Your status is not reset...

You're still a supernova as of january. The exact conditions are on their site.




If they were regularly played and/or were good.

But they arent.

If you are already a supernova at Dec 31st, which is incredibly hard to do in less than 2 months, is the point...

I've never made the push to go platinum or more on Stars, I make andkeep Gold without problem, but I also play sites with RB, it's really nice to get $$ back from WPEX or Abs.

Just might put all my play on stars and make a push for Nova, unless I get a job that is

Can see moving more hands to stars than what I play there now until then.

Yeah, I know it resets. I was thinking I'd get it in April just from playing heavily in 2007. I've only been playing on Stars period for a month or so, and I've only been playing heavily the last two weeks, which is why I have no shot at making it this year.

Oops.


If that's the case,...


if you think it will be close, email them. They offered to make me supernova if i cleared 500k raked hands by the end of the year.

??
You only need 100K without a deal.

50k

50k raked hands, that isn't bad at all you can pump that out in two months.

You can do it in two weeks if you dont have any other obligations.

And pokerplayer could do it in one.

fyp.