I'd appreciate any advice, here is my current situation:

Poker bankroll: About $2000 -- I would not be crushed if I went busto, but it would really suck. (Have a friend that would stake me but I don't want this.)

I'm mainly wanting to play $6.50 and $3.40 turbo STTs. (9 max for $6.50, 10 max for $3.40)

and 1/2 6 max Limit HE.


I'm currently gold star and have a bit over 7000 fpps. It's very unlikely that I'll make platinum star this month. However, it is very likely that I will make it to plat next month. (fwiw, I spent the other points on entry into the million turbo takedown)

Doing some math I realized that the 25k fpp cash bonus (the gold star one for $285) is 14% better than the silver star (5k for $50) and the platinum star (50k fpp for $650) is 30% better than the silver star bonus (or about 14% better than the gold bonus)

I would feel comfortable playing higher than I am now (I have done so in the past when I had a larger roll, before I stopped playing to not be distracted at college and started vacuuming money out for living expenses)

However, I don't really want to play higher until I grow my roll some more.


So my question is:

Is it worth it to take the $50 bonus now so that I can play higher sooner more comfortably, or should I wait and go for a better fpp value bonus?

Personally I’d continue to play the level you are at and wait to get a better fpp value bonus. I did one of these lower level silver bonuses and regretted blowing points on it. You could get much better value elsewhere as well as the fact that $50 isn’t going to help you jump up a level much. Keep grinding where you are at and do the Gold Star bonii.

Thanks for the reply. That's the way I was leaning already but it's nice to have it reinforced.

On a side note, I went to play some of those $3.40 turbo sngs and realized they are $3 + $.40... for whatever reason I thought they were a better deal rake wise than that (3.1 +.3 or something like that), so I'm going to avoid those and stick to the $6 + .5 sngs.

I believe the $6.50's actually give 3 vpp anyway so they're a much better deal rake wise and vpp wise. I'm comfortable playing the $6.50's anyway.

Im confused about the Stars FPP and how I can turn them into cash. I have over 14,000 just sitting there and I am no longer playing on Stars since I moved the roll to Cake. Can someone tell me what I can do to turn it into moola?

If you aren't currently playing then the only thing you can really use them on is tourney entries and bronze level stuff in the store...which is mostly crap but a few decent things there. To turn them into cash you need to be at least Silver level and then you can buy a cash bonus with them...which you then have to play-thru as well but I think it's much lower than most of the reload play-thru requirements these days. The Silver bonus is only $50 and is a pretty bad value compared to some of the other stuff you could get from the Silver VIP store. You could then turn around and sell that stuff on eBay or something if you have the time and whatnot. Otherwise you're better off playing enough to hit Gold and buying the $285 bonus and playing that...

I'm actually starting to think that the gift certificates might be the best buy. The value is much higher than the cash bonuses. I don't know if they are transferable if you want to sell them though. As I understand it, they just give you a code, but there is no physical certificate or card.