Thinking big

Today was fairly uneventful at the Pokerstars jungle. Finished up a little, and got that much closer to Supernova. Less than 10,000 vpp's to go, so should be Supernova by the end of next week. It's a little bit scary in some ways because once I reach Supernova, and invested so much time at Pokerstars, I don't have a lot of incentive to play elsewhere. The overall bonus works out to be good enough at Pokerstars to not waste time transferring money and looking for bonuses at other sites. The problem is that I hate to be tied to one site and not get a bit of variety. Pokerstars has a lot going for them. They are reliable, good customer service, good traffic flow, good cashout times, fast software, and very secure. On the negative side my win rate at Pokerstars is lower than Full Tilt, Ipoker, or Ongame. When you take the vpp bonuses into account I think that I am still better off at Pokerstars for the time being. I've just got to keep working on pushing that win rate up.

Today's Topic: The quest for Supernova Elite.

Now that I am approaching Supernova, my mind has been wondering to next year and weather I could feasible achieve Supernova Elite and what it would be worth to me. Supernova Elite is Pokerstars top vpp status and the rewards for achieving it are substantial. Supernova only really took me a couple of months to achieve, as I have been spending most of my time on other sites this year. If I could achieve Supernova Elite it could be worth considering poker full time next year. Here are the sums:

What is Supernova Elite worth:

• 400% FPP bonus. This is a great bonus but in reality it would take me all year to achieve Supernova Elite so the FPP bonus would not kick in until 2009. Until then I would receive the Supernova FPP bonus of 250%
  
• Buyin's to 2 x $10,000 live events plus flight and accommodation. Worth $26,000 in total.
  
• WCOOP buyin. I'm not sure of the buyin amount but think it might be $1,000
  
• Milestone bonuses of $21,500 along the way, costing 250,000 fpp's
  
• To achieve Elite you need 1,000,000 vpp's which equates to 3,500,000 fpp's. less the 250,000 used for milestone bonuses. Using your fpp's to buy the cash bonus at a rate of $1500 per 100,000 would give you another $48,750 in bonuses.
  

This give you an amazing total of $97,250 in bonuses only, before you make a cent from playing poker for the year. This equate to $1870 in bonus money each week.

I would be playing either NL200 or NL400 to achieve the goal so if I only made 1BB/100 (pokertracker) then I would earn the following:

• Playing NL200 I average .52 vpp's per hand meaning I would need to play 1,923,077 hands for the year, earning me $76,923 in poker earnings.
  
• Playing NL400 I average .63 vpp's per hand meaning I would need to play 1,587,301 hands for the year, earning me $126,984 in poker earnings.
  

In summary total earning at NL200 would be $174,173, and at NL400 $224,234. That seems like a fairly acceptable figure to me, but is it achievable?

Here goes:

At Pokerstars the NL table's deal about 64 hands per hour. I play 9 tables at a time which equals about 575 per hour.

At NL200 I get about .52 vpp's for each hand I play so would need to play 1,923,077 hands for the year. Divided by 575 equals 3344 hours for the year. 64 hours per week. 10 hours per day (If playing 6 days per week). Playing 10 hours a day is not impossible but would be a huge ask, and would have to wear you down fairly quickly. The earn rate would be $52 per hour.

At NL400 I get about .63 vpp's for each hand I play so would need to play 1,587,301 hands for the year. Divided by 575 equals 2760 hours for the year. 53 hours per week. 9 hours per day (If playing 6 days per week). Again achievable, but a massive challenge. The earn rate would be $81 per hour.

If I devoted my entire year to this goal then it could be achieved. Unfortunately for me, I have played enough poker to realize that I couldn't sustain that amount of play without going stir-crazy. Also I am still playing NL100, and while I am confident playing NL200 at 9 tables, I don't know what success I would have 9 tabling NL400. So, while the dream is nice, I think my Supernova Elite aspirations might have to go on hold until 2009. I think I might look at what the 500,000 vpp pay rate would work out to; this might be a more achievable goal.

Today's link:

Today's link is yet another AHK script. If you ever wanted to play poker with just your keyboard this is the script for you. Pokerpad requires a full size keyboard, but keeps all your actions around the numeric keypad area. Check it out here.