I know I haven’t done any recap for December, or any kind of yearly recap. I was on Vacation at the PokerStars Carribean Adventure in the Bahamas. Unfortunetly my lack of updates is not b/c the weather was sweet, but rather because the internet was garbage so I didn’t feel like dealing with it. I’ll get to it soon enough, just been real busy since I got back to Vegas. What’s actually more important is one last interesting comment on November…

I paid $14,367 in rake. Of that, the value I got back is as follows.
Straight Full Tilt Rakeback - 27%
$1000 Rake Chase & $1320 from TLB for $2320 - 16.15%
FTPs @ 7 per $ @.5cents each for 3.5 cents per dollar, 73% of which I get on top of rakeback (accounting for rakeback MGR deductions) - 2.56%
Iron Man Bonus Medals 10 per $142.86 in rake (1000 ftps) or 1 per $14.286. Medals @ the best exchange rate are worth $75 per 400, therefore each medal is worth 18.75 cents, or 1.31% Rakeback
This month I also recieved a $100 holiday bonus and 200 Iron Man Medals for my monthly status (which we now know is worth $37.50 for a combinded bonus of $137.50 in free $ from full tilt, or extra miscellaneous rakeback amounting to .957%

Add all that up and I earned 47.977% rakeback for the month of November; essentially 48%. Two things I will point out, first is that during happy hour you are getting double the 2.56% Rakeback bonus from ftps, for an extra 2.56%, and if you play triple points happy hours when they come up, you’re making an extra 5.12% rakeback during that time on top of the 2.56% you normally get from accumulating FTPs. Secondly, and this is minor, but the best straight conversion for Iron Man Medals in a vacuum is the $26 tokens not the $75 tokens, and it’s by a fraction of a cent per medal. Basically, you should get $26 tokens if those are more inline with the stakes you play. But for me, the time it would take away from my hourly by mixing in such a low limit game would never make it worth it.

As far as I know SNE on Poker Stars is worth 56%, a reasonable difference for sure, but not nearly as big as when you look at 56% compared to a dry 27%. I’m not exactly sure how often I played during happy hour, so it’s hard for me to say exactly how much RB% I earn on FT, but it’s about 50%, and stars being about 56% with a lot of drawbacks: the SNGs on Stars are overloaded with regs, the attainable ROIs are much lower, I’d have to learn my math over again for antes, adjust to new regs, and go 2 months before I reached Supernova and another 8 to reach SNE. With all that said I think I have more than enough reasons to stay where I’m at for 2010.