Poker Video: Misc/Other by PygmyHero (Micro/Small Stakes)

First,
good vid

Can you just post your Excel sheat, im pretty lazy, and you did a very good job already

thanks in advance

Excellent PygmyHero.

I learned a fair bit about using spreadsheets more efficiently. Also I agree with your bonus interpretation as in "only counts for free deposit bonuses and not the ones you have to buy with FPPs".

If people want to expand on it they can add a simple calculator in some spare space to calculate the fpp value of a purchase, by entering the $ value of a purchase and how many fpps it costs. If they want to go further they can add a $ exchange rate, which might be nice for those in non $ countries. For example enter a book price from amazon.co.uk in GBP, enter the exchange rate, enter the amount of FPPs it costs and voila it gives you the value of your FPPs.

By the way, at the moment the exchange rate has stolen our exchange rate bonus. The effect of the exchange rate is dramatic on the value of an FPP when exchanged for a gift token. At the time of writing a £50 amazon.co.uk gift token is only worth $0.014 USD (and thats rounded up!). Also, for euro folk, some books are amazingly more expensive at least here in the UK compared to USA. As a result the FPP value for a book like harrington on cash direct from the vip shop is the actual $0.016 rate at the time of writing.

This brings about a strange effect for us lot living in non USD countries. If you get a lot of USD to your GBP for instance, then FPPs become more attractive as the dollars are not worth as much as converting into GBP via a gift token. Where as when you get a sharp fall in the amount of USD you get for a GBP then your probably better off trying to get rakeback in $'s as you get more GBP for a dollar.

Hey, thanks for taking time to do this.

Very cool, and learned a little about Excel.

Again very nice video, will go back and watch others of yours now.

Keep up good work.

nice vid, but what I am missing is a value to limit the amount of $ you earn from a bonus.
atm the rakeback- and $/h-values with bonus are way too high

really nice video. One thing i was wondering about, im a 1-2 and 2-4nl 6 max player. Could you add inn or tell me how many hours a day or hands you have to play to get to the different levels?

Just a little tip: you can double click on a cell that contains text to edit the text in-place instead of selecting the cell and edit on top of the excel window .

Can you further elaborate on the bonus calculation? For Platinum level, the calculation says that it is equivalent to 44% rakeback. How applicable is this? Is it only relevant DURING the time that you are working the bonus off? How often does Stars offer these bonuses? Are they ever just pure bonuses (no deposit required)?

Hey guys, thanks for all the feedback. I will try to answer all questions in the thread but am at work for most of the day. So some of them may have to wait until I get home depending on how much time I can devote to this thread right now and if anything gets complex enough that I need to see my spreadsheet.

Can you just post your Excel sheat, im pretty lazy, and you did a very good job already

thanks in advance

Thanks Salvali, and I'm sorry but I have no ability to host a file. If that were going to happen it would have to be something that DC did.

kondor, that's a great point. Stuff that is subject to change is very handy to build into the spreadsheet, and the exchange rate is a great example of that.

As is I just hard coded the $0.016 value into the cell. But it'd obviously be fine to just enter the dollar value of an item divided by the FPP cost. So the cell would read something like "=29.95/2000" (for a book).

But I really like your idea of incorporating the exchange rate on a separate line and then just pointing to it. So the FPP value cell would be something like "=50*cell where you entered exchange rate/5500" (using the GBP Amazon gift certificate as an example.

This brings about a strange effect for us lot living in non USD countries. If you get a lot of USD to your GBP for instance, then FPPs become more attractive as the dollars are not worth as much as converting into GBP via a gift token. Where as when you get a sharp fall in the amount of USD you get for a GBP then your probably better off trying to get rakeback in $'s as you get more GBP for a dollar.

I haven't done any math but I suspect this is not correct. That's because the cumulative benefits of playing a larger volume at any one site is likely to outweigh fluctuations in the exchange rate.

Hey AssontheRiver, I'm glad you liked the video.

I do not think the rakeback and bonus values are high - at any given point you are either playing with a bonus or without. The spreadsheet shows what you're earning in either case.

I will say that my spreadsheet makes no assumptions about how often you are playing with and without a bonus, which I suspect is what you're looking for. Rest assured that I will address that issue in the third video. It just didn't really fit into my plans for this video.

So after the third one comes out hit me up again if anything remains unresolved.

really nice video. One thing i was wondering about, im a 1-2 and 2-4nl 6 max player. Could you add inn or tell me how many hours a day or hands you have to play to get to the different levels?

dydde, I cannot do that as I don't have data on 1/2 and 2/4 NL. I have no idea what percentage of hands are raked at various FPP increments for those games.

However I will address how to project what VIP level you will hit in the third video and I think if you follow the methodology I lay out there you'll be able to do the same thing with your data (even though I'll show it for LHE).

In the meanwhile, you can solve the problem yourself if you want to. Just enter the raked hands information as I did (but with your data from the game you want). Then the equation you'll use to solve will be:

=VIP level / (hands earning 1 FPP + hands earning 2 FPP *2)

Where VIP level is the required number of VPP's to earn that level,
hands earning 1 FPP is the percentage of hands earning 1 FPP (but NOT more),
and hands earning 2 FPP is the percentage of hands earning 2 FPP's

Make sure you have the parentheses in there.

The output will be the number of hands you need to play to reach that VIP level. To convert that to hours just divide the answer by the hands per hour that the spreadsheet calculates.

Just a little tip: you can double click on a cell that contains text to edit the text in-place instead of selecting the cell and edit on top of the excel window .

Thanks dw33p - that's actually a really good tip and I never knew that.

Hey, I was reffering to the "30k hands/month"-area, but you're right that I didn't make that clear at all

WallyWattz, the spreadsheet shows what you earn (per hour and in terms of rakeback) for the times when you have a bonus and the times you don't have a bonus. It makes no assumptions about how often you do and do not have a bonus. Obviously the reality of playing is that you will NOT have a bonus most of the time (unless you're playing an exceptionally low volume).

As for how often you WILL have a bonus, I use a well known site to view the history of reloads offered by any given site. Due to the name of that particular site I do not feel it wise for me to visit that site and link you since I am at work. Someone else can probably do it. Or just google 'Stars reload history' or something like that and I'm sure you'll get what you need - there are probably many sites that have that information.

Off the top of my head I'd guess Stars averages 2 point something reloads a year and that the total value is a couple hundred dollars. I will work through some of these assumptions much more precisely in the third video.

Yes, you do have to deposit to receive the bonus.

Hey, I was reffering to the "30k hands/month"-area, but you're right that I didn't make that clear at all

Oh, haha! Yeah, I see what you're saying now and of course you're absolutely right - it's ridiculous to think you'd play more than a couple hundred hands a month with a bonus (on average).

Like I said I realize not all of the data is relevant. I put it in there partly because it's going to be sometimes relevant to some people, and getting all the output is trivial once you get any output.

That said, again I will deal with the problem you're talking about more in the third video.

Hey guys, I realize I'm talking about this 'third video' an awful lot, so let me try and give you some idea of what my plan is for the rest of these videos as that may help answer some questions.

Video two will focus on Full Tilt Poker much the same way that this video focuses on Poker Stars.

For video three my intent will be to compare the two sites in a useful and meaningful way. That means I will try to make realistic assumptions about how much bonus you could get from site x, what VIP / Iron Man levels you are likely to reach, etc. And of course all of these things will be built in as variables so that YOU can enter different assumptions than mine (or revise them as the year goes on, and your volume / stakes changes, or whatever).

Basically my plan right now is to say, 'what if I played all year at Poker Stars - how much would I make?' And then ask the same question for Full Tilt Poker. I'm not 100% set on that format yet, but I think it's probably how I'll do it. After all, we're poker players and we're all about the long run, so we need to look at a large enough time span that our output has real life value.

Okay! Back to work for me - I'll stop in again later to check for more questions.

i was unaware there were only 2 poker sites!

Basically my plan right now is to say, 'what if I played all year at Poker Stars - how much would I make?' And then ask the same question for Full Tilt Poker. I'm not 100% set on that format yet, but I think it's probably how I'll do it. After all, we're poker players and we're all about the long run, so we need to look at a large enough time span that our output has real life value.

great, thats what i want to know before i start

what is value of FTP ironman bonus system in addition to rakeback offered?

Dammit PygmyHero

That's twice now you've done one of these thing so I decided to try and do the same in Openoffice...

I now have a huge monstrosity of a spreadsheet due to iPoker's virtually incomprehensible rewards system...they don't use multipliers becasue they don't like to be nice to people.

Also I had to program in about 10 new Rake = xxx+ into HEM because again iPoker hates everyone and everything using 25c divides to guage fraction of VIP Points and HEM tends to get a bit annoyed when you use too many custom reports

Worth it though because...

Net result....46% Rakeback at microstakes...BOOYAH!!

Thanks very much for doing this, great stuff

what is additional rakeback value of been iron for 13+ months on ftp

lets assume i spend my ironman metals on 100k ftp points to spend in store

so how do these two sites stack up ?

i was unaware there were only 2 poker sites!

these are the two big main sites out of the ones that usa players can play on

so i'm sure that was just his thought process when he was making this

much love to everyone who has tons of options still <3

Hi crispyh, BBB is correct in why I chose Stars and FTP. There are a lot of poker sites out there and analyzing every single one (or even just every network) would be a huge undertaking and was NOT the point of this project. These videos are just part of my way of giving back to the DC community and I think my decision to limit the overview to two sites was reasonable.

That said, the video does show how to look at one site's reward program and break it down into dollars and cents figures. You can apply the same methodology to any site. If you don't want to carry out that analysis yourself but still want the answers feel free to contact me privately and we can discuss alternative arrangements.

sagehens and AKNL,

As stated in my earlier responses in the thread, you will have to wait for videos two and three where I believe all of those questions will be covered.

Hey Boomer, that's great! I'm really glad you were able to take the method shown here and apply it to your poker site.

very interesting video even though i don't play on stars. only problem is that i got the blue screen of death as soon as this video ended, very bizarre.

sagehens and AKNL,

As stated in my earlier responses in the thread, you will have to wait for videos two and three where I believe all of those questions will be covered.

sick i cant wait

Good video, I might actually get around to doing this now for the various sites I play.

Had this video come 2 weeks ago I would have watched. Now all I care about is the 30% tax on none EU sites.

Hey, can I get some feedback on the absolute reference versus relative reference stuff? I'm kind of surprised that it hasn't come up yet and I don't know if that means everyone is ignoring it and happy to just copy the format without understanding it, if people are confused but afraid to ask, or if everyone gets it.

I actually thought it'd be a pretty big sticking point and spent a lot of time trying to structure that part of the video to be comprehensible. If it made sense that's great, but if anyone needs more help with it I can try to go over it a bit more.

Really nice video PygmyHero, thanks. I thought you explained the absolute/relative stuff pretty clearly as well.

Wow, that was a really nice video. You did an excellent job explaining the use of excel.

Thanks Salvali, and I'm sorry but I have no ability to host a file. If that were going to happen it would have to be something that DC did.

what about megaupload/rapidshare?

Nice video PygmyHero. Looking forward to your others. About the absolute references, anyone who uses excel regularly probably knows how to do this already but for the people who never use excel I think you explained it well.

PygmyHero,

Excellent video. However 2 questions I have that came up as I watched.

1) Where did the random $.016 dollar value come from per FPP?
2) Almost at the end you talked about the $50 bonus you could buy, and that it caused the FPP value to drop to $.01 How did you calculate that?

Otherwise this information was clear as day and really put together well.

Cheers!

$0.016 as the value for an FPP:

Let's take a simple item from the Stars store like ToP. I can get it for 2000 FPP or buy it on Amazon for $29.95. (rounding) $30/2000 = $0.015

You can do a bit better with electronics, etc.

When you buy the $50 bonus you pay 5000 FPP. So $50/5000 = $0.01

And that's why $ value for FPP is ever changing... thus affecting the rest of your formulas. Ok got it, thanks.

Anybody know how to filter PT3 for rake amount? It looks really easy on HEM

Trident, I don't have PT3 so I'm not sure. But I used to do this all the time in PT2 so I'll tell you how I did it there and hopefully it will be similar.

Go to the Game Notes tab.
At the top right you can enter a number to only show hands with x rake or more.
Click Filter. Get All.
Done.

Supersolid video, thank you very much!

Changes to the VIP program eff 3/09.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/vip-changes-pokerstars-411086/