Back to Stars and Stars 2013 Changes

Quick Update.

I managed to clear out about 1/3 of my Deal Me In bonus on Full Tilt before it expired. I took another week off during that promotion to work on some other things I'm enjoying like my self-paced programming courses. The old me would have played 24/7 to get that free money. The new me still couldn't care less about anything volume related

As much as I like FTP's VIP/rakeback program for the amount of volume I'm playing now, I just can't stand the software. Plus my current strategy doesn't seem to want to work out for me as well there. I can't figure out if games are just reg-infested or what, but the winrate took a nosedive into the slightly negative over 15k hands there.

So I'm back to Stars now and continuing with the run-good and play-good, tilt-free sessions I enjoyed before FTP re-opened. Graph since the day I 'quit.'

Stars Graph

 I'm pretty comfortable at 25NL right now with some 50NL mixed in, so I'll have to wait and see what kind of requirements there are for January's promotion on 100k VPPs (see VIP below). If I can do it comfortably (see volume related above) and it's a significant amount of money, I might consider opting in for that.


2013 VIP Changes

The 2013 changes were announced recently, live at the Amsterdam VIP Party by Steve Day (aka Steve D). Overall I think they're pretty small, yet decent and there were no downgrades which is always a good thing.

They started a Hall of Fame that will include a handful of players. The group of 5 million lifetime VPPs is obviously small, but I think they're headed in the right direction if this is going to lead into making Pokerstars more social. Looking around at all of the free and for-pay social gaming sites out there, it seems like a no-brainer direction to take regarding casual players.

They've also added a ChromeStar level at 100 monthly VPPs. There is no real benefit to it over Bronze except for being entered into the new weekly $5k freerolls with Silver+, but I think it's a good stepping stone to get those Bronze players to play a bit more to get to the now reduced requirement of 500 VPPs from 750 VPPs for Silver.

The other potentially big thing is the 2013 VIP goals. Specific announcements on this are not yet available, but it is supposed to be some sort of system where you can risk FPPs in January and be rewarded later for staying on pace for your 100k, 200k or 300k VPP goals.