Blog I posted:
So PokerStars has unveiled their new SuperNova Elite Club, and I'm very excited about it. This past year they only had a regular SuperNova Club, which I recently reached. How these "clubs" work is that for every hand of poker you play you potentially earn a VIP Player Point(VPP). Depending on how big the pot is, you will either earn 0, 1, or 2 VPPs per hand. At lower stakes like $.25/$.5 NL you'll only earn a point ever 2 or 3 hands and practically never get 2. At medium stakes like $1/2 NL or $2/4 NL you'll get a point on about 3/4 of the hands and get 2 points maybe once every 20 hands or so. At the higher stakes like $10/20 you'll still get zero points on 1/4 of the hands, but when you do get points it'll be two of them.
Anyway, last year I needed to earn 100,000 VPPs to reach Supernova. But to reach SuperNova Elite I need to get 1,000,000 points. What that basically means is that I'm going to be playing a ton of poker in 2007. I've been discussing it with a few people, and we all agreed that probably only 20-30 people in the world are going to play enough to achieve this status. I have no clue if I'll be able to keep up such a pace, but I'm going to give it a shot. Basically I'm going to play as much as possible in January and then realistically assess whether or not I can make it.
Overall, I think this is good for me. While I'm a very talented poker player, I've often had motivational issues, played way too high of stakes for my bankroll, and just made dumb decisions in general. This will force me to do things the right way, and if I can do it I should be in great financial shape by the end of the year.
You get the following benefits from being a SuperNova Elite:
-400% FPP bonus - Frequent Player Points are the heart of the PokerStars VIP Club. Use them to buy merchandise, enter VIP only events, or to buy into live and online tournaments. As a Supernova Elite VIP you will receive a 400% FPP bonus. Every time you earn 1 FPP, we'll actually credit your account with 5 FPPs. If over a ten minute period, you earn eight VPPs, your account will go up by 40 FPPs!
-PokerStars has introduced special milestone levels for our Supernova players on their road to Supernova Elite status.
When players hit one of the following VPP milestones - 200,000, 300,000, 400,000, 500,000, 750,000 they will be eligible to purchase a special reward bonus*:
$2,000 at 200,000 VPP
$3,000 at 300,000 VPP
$4,000 at 400,000 VPP
$5,000 at 500,000 VPP
$7,500 at 750,000 VPP
-Free trip and entry into select PokerStars signature events! As a Supernova Elite you will automatically be given free entry to the WCOOP main event and regular PokerStars prize packages to 2 out of the 3 following events of your choice:
• PokerStars Caribbean Adventure - January 2008
• EPT Monte Carlo - March 2008
• WSOP main event - June 2007 or 2008
-Entry to WCOOP main event (online tournament) - October 2007 or 2008
-Entries into weekly freeroll tournaments
Frequent player points(FPPs) are points that you can use in the PokerStars store. They have a concierge service for their high volume players where they'll pretty much give you any $3000 item for 180,000 FPPs. Because I can get a $3000 gift certificate to the supermarket or to a gas station, these are pretty much as good as cash to me. In fact they're actually a lot better because I can avoid paying taxes on these, while I have to pay taxes on any cash withdrawls because its easily traceable.
I currently get 3.5 FPPs for every VPP I earn because of my SuperNova status(it would be 5 for every 1 if I were already SuperNova Elite). So if I attain my goal I'll have earned 3.5 million FPPs. I'll use 250,000 of them for those special bonuses above and the rest I'll use towards $3000 gift cards. That will earn me approx. $75,000.
The value of 2 of those live tournament packages is $28,500
The ability to earn FPPs at a higher rate is definitely worth a lot to me as well. I'd estimate it at about a $6000 value depending on how much I choose to play in 2008.
The free seat into the WCOOP is worth $2600.
Its tough to say how much the freerolls are worth, but I'd say that its a fair estimate to say that I'll win around $5000 from them throughout the year.
You add all of that up and its $117,100 of bonus money. Not bad at all.
I've had some issues with depositing money on PokerStars after the online gambling bill passed, so I was forced to just have a friend transfer me $100. I've worked that up to $2500, so I'm now able to play $1/2 NL. I'm playing 9 handed on special "fast" tables, which greatly increases the speed of the game. While I'm sure that I will have my share of downswings, I really should be able to crush $1/2. I'm playing 10 tables at a time, and I plan to put in about 6-7 solid hours every single day. If I play as much as I'm planning, I don't think that making $500/day from this is out of the question at all. Of course, I'll want to move up in stakes though once I get more of a bankroll. This will be the major challenge for me. I need to be able to honestly assess my ability at each level and constantly remain at a level that I can beat and that is acceptable for my current bankroll. If I can do this, I have no doubt that I can make $500/day. That would come out to $182,500 of income on the year.
I also plan on entering the nightly multi table tournaments. Theres a ton of variance in big tournaments, so its tough to accurately say what my expected income would be. In 2006, I made approx. $80,000 from them, but I also had the luxury of playing on both Party and Stars. I'll cut that in half and say $40,000 from multi table tournaments this year.
So adding my bonus money, my $1/2 NL money, and my multitable tournament money that comes out to $339,600 on the year. I'd be estatic with that, and I honestly don't think its that unreasonable of a goal. It just comes down to being dilligent and disciplined.
I'll probably post some updates throughout the year.