PokerStars has the worst points system for cash games I've seen so far in that the pot has to be at least $8 for you to earn one FPP. In order to clear 500 FPP for the $50 bonus, you have to pay approximately $100 in tournament fees or more than $200 rake in cash games since most hands in 1¢/2¢ - 50¢/$1 will have a no-FPP rake between 0-35¢. The risk of your deposit or time running out before you clear the bonus is high.
I am faced with a similarly challenging problem of trying to earn 5,000 FPP by mid-August to clear the $250 reload bonus, while playing high-variance satellites and avoiding depositing any more money. Grinding cash games would be much better at most other sites which give fractional/partial points, especially with rakeback. I think your best option with PokerStars may be to play low-variance tournaments where you earn points consistently while your balance doesn't take too big a hit. The following are some of the options I am considering.
1) Double or Nothing SNGs have the lowest variance in that you have ~50% chance of almost doubling your money. However, as the PokerXFactor video coach and I found out, even the $10+$0.80 SNGs are not a piece of cake. If you don't like grinding multiple cash games, you may go crazy multi-tabliing DONs.
2) Other SNG, since 1/3 of players make it to the money.
3) Steps SNGs, since 4-6 players make it to the money. I posted before that I wouldn't touch a PokerStars Steps with a 10-foot mouse but resistance was futile and I finally tried one for the first time and won it. The problem is that you get a tournament ticket instead of cash, so you could have a stockpile of tickets but run out of cash.
4) Forget about the $50-$250 bonus and SilverStar status, and just play what you want in PokerStars. I joined PokerStars to mainly play the high-variance satellites where less than 10% make it to the money in the qualifiers and only a few get the final prize of a $4K-$19K package.
5) Forget about PokerStars and play elsewhere, especially with rakeback. I am considering transferring my balance to another site which has lower variance satellites.
I haven't decided myself what to do with PokerStars. Maybe moose or other online gurus have better ideas for us.
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Originally Posted by mynick71  Just wondering what are some easy ways to clear the bonus?
Tried playing FL10 but earned nothing in about 260 hands. Also tried NL10 but hardly anything there. I thought once you earned $0.40 in rake you get a point and it didn't have to be in one hand? Is that true or not? |
