I recently received a mailed invitation from Party Poker.com inviting me to download their program and become a real money player. In return, I get a free seat in a $20,000 freeroll this coming March 2 and a restricted $50 to be used in their casino.
I don't know where they got my name and address, probably in a poker database somewhere. But its not a bad deal. So I went ahead and transferred $100 out of my Pokerstars account to moneybookers and from there to Party Poker. I had to do it like this because Party Poker for some reason does not accept Click2Pay and that is where most of my funds are.
So now, I'm a Party Poker player. Heheh ... I'm such a sucker for these promotions.
So I started to browse around the site and saw the usual SNGs. It started from buy-ins of $3, $6, $11, $22 and so on. What I found strange was that the buy-in amounts where whole amounts. Meaning other sites would usually reflect it as let's say $3+0.30 or $6+0.50, but Partypoker did not follow this convention.
When I checked further, I discovered something that was surprising. I found out that their $3 SNGs were actually $2.40 + $0.60. This is a whopping rake of 25%. Their $6 SNGs were actually $5+1 for a 20% rake. It only began to normalize at the $11s and $22s which was an acceptable $10+1 and 20+2 for a standard 10%. This rake structure was the same whether you played normal, speed or turbos. A case of fleecing the low limit player ?
Compare this to the rake structure of Pokerstars and Full Tilt. And one will immediately realize that you are better off playing at PS and FTP. $2+0.25s are raked around 12.5%, $6 + 0.50s are actually only raked 8.3% and $11+1s are raked 9.09%. Same goes for the $22+2.
In essence, $6.50s are actually the most cost efficient tables in terms of rake. I didn't realize this before since I never actually did the math until now.
So the question is. Without any other incentive besides the freeroll ticket which I already got. Why the heck should I play SNGs here?
Oh well, I'll take a look at some of their MTTs and maybe I'll burn the $100 there. Or I'll just withdraw the money after I play the freeroll. =)
Monday, February 25, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Learning Curve
I'm currently on an SNG losing streak. Meaning I haven't placed in the past 8 or so SNGs that I played. A mixture of 11s, 6.50s and even a 22.
Every poker player is aware of variance and I know that losing 8 games in a row is not uncommon. But I did notice something. I don't know if its the same for everyone. I noticed that whenever I'm reading some new poker literature. I go on these extended losing binges. One minute I'm winning consistently, then I decide to read and absorb some new concept, suddenly next thing I know, I lose 5 straight and my ROI dips.
It's as if the human mind takes time to adjust and adopt the new concept into what you already know and during this period of adjustment, you tend to play experimentally as you try out some of the advices given.
I know that some of the things we read about poker strategy may be junk, but others are obviously critical to better play. Sometimes you just have to try them out yourselves to see the validity of the concept. Because everybody plays with a different style and a poker concept's value is different for each individual depending on how it is integrated into one's style.
Every poker player is aware of variance and I know that losing 8 games in a row is not uncommon. But I did notice something. I don't know if its the same for everyone. I noticed that whenever I'm reading some new poker literature. I go on these extended losing binges. One minute I'm winning consistently, then I decide to read and absorb some new concept, suddenly next thing I know, I lose 5 straight and my ROI dips.
It's as if the human mind takes time to adjust and adopt the new concept into what you already know and during this period of adjustment, you tend to play experimentally as you try out some of the advices given.
I know that some of the things we read about poker strategy may be junk, but others are obviously critical to better play. Sometimes you just have to try them out yourselves to see the validity of the concept. Because everybody plays with a different style and a poker concept's value is different for each individual depending on how it is integrated into one's style.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Mission Accomplished or Wasted Opportunity?
11finger made a very interesting comment during my last post. I was sort of bitching about the bonus scheme of Full Tilt and how it was not tailored to the playing frequency & limits of a player. I kinda thought that this was just laziness as it is quite easy to get the data from your historical database and program the algorithm granting bonuses based on exhorting a player to play 2 or 3x his normal playing frequency.
He commented in FTP's defense that they did get me to play twice my usual rate so mission accomplished for them. Which is true but I see a lot of wasted opportunity in this seemingly random bonus granting.
Let's take the recent bonus that I just got. $75 bonus to be cleared in 10 days.
What happened was that I tried to take advantage of the bonus and played around twice my usual rate which still only cleared me $15 in 10 days. Let's break down the numbers
My usual rate is around 3 SNGs a day at the $11+1 turbos. So without the bonus scheme in place, I would have normally generated FTP a 10-day rake of $30 (3 SNGs X $1 rake X 10 days)
With the bonus scheme in place, I played twice my usual rate which would result in a total rake of $60 for FTP. (6SNGs x $1 rake x 10 days)
So their additional rake during this bonus period was 60-30 = $30. Then we need to deduct the $15 bonus that they granted to me so net additional profit for FTP is $15.
This $15 was something they would not have gotten without the bonus promotion so good idea yung bonus granting. Multiply this by the number of people they gave it out to and its a pretty big amount.
But think about it, what if they had given me a bonus structure that was tailored to my frequency. I see no logical sense for the $75. What if they gave me a bonus scheme of $40 dollars to be cleared in 20 days. Then this would have generated more profit for them. I would have reached to clear $40 and their net additional profit would have been bigger.
And its a win-win situation. Player is happy because he got the complete bonus. FTP is happy because they generated additional rake and profit that they normally would not have had. The additional rake will always be more than the granted bonus anyway as long as you keep the timespan short so nothing to lose and everything to gain.
So actually yun lang. I am not sourgraping about the unfulfilled bonus. It just bugs me that its kind of inefficient.
He commented in FTP's defense that they did get me to play twice my usual rate so mission accomplished for them. Which is true but I see a lot of wasted opportunity in this seemingly random bonus granting.
Let's take the recent bonus that I just got. $75 bonus to be cleared in 10 days.
What happened was that I tried to take advantage of the bonus and played around twice my usual rate which still only cleared me $15 in 10 days. Let's break down the numbers
My usual rate is around 3 SNGs a day at the $11+1 turbos. So without the bonus scheme in place, I would have normally generated FTP a 10-day rake of $30 (3 SNGs X $1 rake X 10 days)
With the bonus scheme in place, I played twice my usual rate which would result in a total rake of $60 for FTP. (6SNGs x $1 rake x 10 days)
So their additional rake during this bonus period was 60-30 = $30. Then we need to deduct the $15 bonus that they granted to me so net additional profit for FTP is $15.
This $15 was something they would not have gotten without the bonus promotion so good idea yung bonus granting. Multiply this by the number of people they gave it out to and its a pretty big amount.
But think about it, what if they had given me a bonus structure that was tailored to my frequency. I see no logical sense for the $75. What if they gave me a bonus scheme of $40 dollars to be cleared in 20 days. Then this would have generated more profit for them. I would have reached to clear $40 and their net additional profit would have been bigger.
And its a win-win situation. Player is happy because he got the complete bonus. FTP is happy because they generated additional rake and profit that they normally would not have had. The additional rake will always be more than the granted bonus anyway as long as you keep the timespan short so nothing to lose and everything to gain.
So actually yun lang. I am not sourgraping about the unfulfilled bonus. It just bugs me that its kind of inefficient.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Bogus Bonus and a Trick
Well, my ten days of FTP bonus whoring is up. Just in case you're interested to know how much of the $75 bonus I cleared. Heheh... I cleared the staggering amount of $15 playing approximately twice as many SNG games as my usual rate. Bwahahah!!
The good news is I did manage to increase my FTP balance by around $80 doing this, so up yours FTP. Next time you give a bonus, kindly tailor it to the player.
Actually, I see no sense in giving an unreachable goal. It isn't as if people would drastically change their playing pattern. You'll only cause unnecessary frustration because people would think the uncleared bonus is "sayang".
And its not like the company will go bankrupt if they extended the timespan since its just a small percentage. Your objective in giving the bonus is to generate additional rake more than the bonus amount you give. So If I was actually the one in charge of the bonus granting, I'd program it so that each player needs to play around 3 to 4x above their usual rate in the span of time given. This way, the incentive is maximized.
It's like the carrot on the stick, you want to keep it just beyond the reach of the donkey's mouth, so that he keeps on pushing. If you place it too far, the donkey will just realize he can't reach it and give up.
Makes sense? My guess is the bonus granting is probably based on some predetermined criteria. As to what this criteria is, I have no idea but its certainly not playing frequency as it should be easy to determine that giving a $75 bonus to a guy who plays 2 to 3 SNGs a day and asking him to hit it within 10 days is retarded.
Another example of illogical programming is in the merge network. They have this program in place which actually tracks playing frequency and if you haven't played for a while, it automatically sends an email offering bonuses and exclusive freerolls if you redeposit and play again. Sounds like a good program thought up by the resident genius to lure back players. The bonus looks good but its actually one of those unreachable bonuses unless you play 8 hour sessions for a month. And there's a small bug to it and I will share what it is. I don't know if some of the guys who play there already know this as I see some Filipinos there.
What I do is I redeposit a small amount, let's say $20. This would automatically give me the bonus which is fool's gold (see previous post as to what this is) because it is "unreachable" at my playing rate. But I don't really care about the bonus. I only want the freeroll ticket which starts at a $1000 tourney.
But I don't actually play since I don't want to trigger the termination of the incentive program. A week later, I will receive another email, this time offering me a bigger bonus and a ticket to a $2000 freeroll. How is that possible? Well, it seems as if the incentive program only checks if you eventually play. So the bonus and the ticket is triggered by the redeposit but doesn't check if you actually played.
Heheh, you guessed it yet? I redeposit another measly $20 which give me an even bigger unreachable bonus and the ticket. So I now have 2 tickets. Another week passes with no playing and another email and $20 redep gives me a $10,000 freeroll ticket.
So I now have $60 in my account which I can withdraw anytime. Withdrawal will void the last bonus but who cares since I won't be able to earn it anyway. But I now have 3 freeroll tickets which I can use anytime since there's no expiry to the ticket. The freerolls are very winnable because the number of players is quite small compared to the other sites. So a perfect example of something for nothing.
I'm not sure if they caught on to this yet. But I'll post an update on this since I haven't played there for a while in the hopes that I trigger the program again. =)
The good news is I did manage to increase my FTP balance by around $80 doing this, so up yours FTP. Next time you give a bonus, kindly tailor it to the player.
Actually, I see no sense in giving an unreachable goal. It isn't as if people would drastically change their playing pattern. You'll only cause unnecessary frustration because people would think the uncleared bonus is "sayang".
And its not like the company will go bankrupt if they extended the timespan since its just a small percentage. Your objective in giving the bonus is to generate additional rake more than the bonus amount you give. So If I was actually the one in charge of the bonus granting, I'd program it so that each player needs to play around 3 to 4x above their usual rate in the span of time given. This way, the incentive is maximized.
It's like the carrot on the stick, you want to keep it just beyond the reach of the donkey's mouth, so that he keeps on pushing. If you place it too far, the donkey will just realize he can't reach it and give up.
Makes sense? My guess is the bonus granting is probably based on some predetermined criteria. As to what this criteria is, I have no idea but its certainly not playing frequency as it should be easy to determine that giving a $75 bonus to a guy who plays 2 to 3 SNGs a day and asking him to hit it within 10 days is retarded.
Another example of illogical programming is in the merge network. They have this program in place which actually tracks playing frequency and if you haven't played for a while, it automatically sends an email offering bonuses and exclusive freerolls if you redeposit and play again. Sounds like a good program thought up by the resident genius to lure back players. The bonus looks good but its actually one of those unreachable bonuses unless you play 8 hour sessions for a month. And there's a small bug to it and I will share what it is. I don't know if some of the guys who play there already know this as I see some Filipinos there.
What I do is I redeposit a small amount, let's say $20. This would automatically give me the bonus which is fool's gold (see previous post as to what this is) because it is "unreachable" at my playing rate. But I don't really care about the bonus. I only want the freeroll ticket which starts at a $1000 tourney.
But I don't actually play since I don't want to trigger the termination of the incentive program. A week later, I will receive another email, this time offering me a bigger bonus and a ticket to a $2000 freeroll. How is that possible? Well, it seems as if the incentive program only checks if you eventually play. So the bonus and the ticket is triggered by the redeposit but doesn't check if you actually played.
Heheh, you guessed it yet? I redeposit another measly $20 which give me an even bigger unreachable bonus and the ticket. So I now have 2 tickets. Another week passes with no playing and another email and $20 redep gives me a $10,000 freeroll ticket.
So I now have $60 in my account which I can withdraw anytime. Withdrawal will void the last bonus but who cares since I won't be able to earn it anyway. But I now have 3 freeroll tickets which I can use anytime since there's no expiry to the ticket. The freerolls are very winnable because the number of players is quite small compared to the other sites. So a perfect example of something for nothing.
I'm not sure if they caught on to this yet. But I'll post an update on this since I haven't played there for a while in the hopes that I trigger the program again. =)
Monday, February 4, 2008
Fool's Gold
Recently, I got a message from Full Tilt informing me that I was granted a $75 bonus for being a special player blah blah blah. Yippee ... then I read the rest of the message and it says that I have 10 days to clear it.
Fool's gold was a nickname used by miners to describe the mineral pyrite which has the same metallic luster and yellow hue as real gold. This caused many miners to mistake it for the real thing and whoop prematurely in joy when they discovered it in the mines.
I am pretty sure that Full Tilt knows my playing history. I play an average of 2 to 3 SNGs a night and my playing is also somewhat erratic depending on my schedule. At my current rate, it would take me approximately 2 months to clear the $75 bonus and they generously give me 10 days.
FTP Bonus = Fool's Gold
Fool's gold was a nickname used by miners to describe the mineral pyrite which has the same metallic luster and yellow hue as real gold. This caused many miners to mistake it for the real thing and whoop prematurely in joy when they discovered it in the mines.
I am pretty sure that Full Tilt knows my playing history. I play an average of 2 to 3 SNGs a night and my playing is also somewhat erratic depending on my schedule. At my current rate, it would take me approximately 2 months to clear the $75 bonus and they generously give me 10 days.
FTP Bonus = Fool's Gold
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