How Can I Get The Most Value Out of My PokerStars FPPs?

Jace Thomas : May 27th, 2009

PokerStars Frequent Player Points are the way that PokerStars rewards poker players for their play. FPPs are accumulated whenever you play cash or tournament for real money on PokerStars. They can be exchanged for a number of things on PokerStars, which leaves people with the question – what is the best way to redeem their FPPs on PokerStars? Below you’ll find some common options for redeeming PokerStars FPPs and their relative values.

A quick word – the values below might seem small, but consider: it’s not hard for a casual player to rack up tens of thousands of FPPs a year, especially if you play Sit and Go tournaments. In that frame, the difference of a half cent or so in the value of a FPP point can translate to a few hundred dollars a year extra for your bankroll without any real effort on your part.

Satellite entries: PokerStars allows you to buy into some satellite tournaments with FPPs. The value of the entry can change a bit based on the number of entrants, but as an example, let’s look at PokerStars Steps tournaments. You can buy into Step 3 with 5,125 FPPs. Step 3’s normally cost $82. That means in this case that you’re getting about 1.6 cents per FPP.

Tournament entries: MTTs that you can buy into with FPPs are where you’ll often find the best raw value for your FPPs, but you lose the advantage of a high (or certain) probability of converting those points into cash. For example – the Turbo Takedown (a monthly 5k FPP buy-in tournament) has a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million. In April, 8949 players showed up, meaning that the tournament basically had a buy in value of about $111. That’s a value of about 2.2 cents per FPP.

Not all tournaments offer a superior value – for example, a recent WSOP Main Event Satty with a buy in of 4k points awarded 3 seats for a total prize pool of $36,000. With 686 entrants, that meant each buy in was worth about $52, or 1.3 cents per FPP. Your best bet is to look at past example of the tournament you’re considering entering (or waiting until the last minute to register).

Books: PokerStars has a wide variety of books that range in price from 1000-2500 points. Comparing their books to the current cost of the books on amazon.com suggests that you’re getting about .8 cents per FPP here, maybe a little less. You’ll likely find a similar value for other products offered in the store that can be purchased in the real world.

Bonuses: PokerStars offers a variety of cash bonuses that vary depending on your VIP level. Sometimes the bonuses are just straight cash; other times they’re bonuses that need to be worked off just like a deposit bonus. The cash bonuses tend to convert at about 1.6 cents per FPP, while the bonuses you need to work off convert slightly worse, at a range of 1.1 – 1.4 cents per FPP. The cash bonuses tend to be promotional items that are not always available in the store.

PokerStars Merch: This category values pretty closely to books, etc, assuming you can find the merch you want on ebay. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. If you’re really dying for some merch, check on ebay first, as you might be blowing a couple bucks by getting about 1.1 cents per FPP by buying it from the PokerStars store.