3:40pm: I get emails about it all the time. I see posts on PocketFives and 2+2 about it all the time. The big question:

“What’s the best way to turn FPPS directly into cash?”

To answer that question, first we have to determine what is not the best way. Let’s take a look at the overly simplistic, old fashioned way: buying cash bonuses directly from the FPP store on Pokerstars. If you buy the $50 reward bonus for 5,000 FPPs, each FPP is worth exactly 1 cent. If you buy the $285 bonus for 25,000 FPPs, each FPP is worth 1.14 cents. Going further, if you buy the $650 bonus for 50,000 FPPs, each FPP is worth 1.3 cents. So let’s calculate how much you’d have to play in order to release a $285 bonus:

Let’s say you are a SilverStar member on Pokerstars. You earn 5 base FPPs for every $1 in tournament fees. However, the multiplier for SilverStar members is 1.5 so you wil actually be earning 7.5 FPPs for every $1 in tournament fees. Let’s say that you play 10 $20 heads up sit n gos daily, for a total of $10 in tournament fees/day. This would yield approximately 75 FPPs per day. If you play 5 days a week, that’s a grand total of 375 FPPs/week. This means that it would take you 66 weeks and 5 days to acquire each $285 bonus at this rate. Yearly, you’re looking at only about $220 in bonuses, which roughly translates into $4.24/week in return on your play. To calculate how much of this is “rakeback” (money earned back from the rake you pay), all you have to do is figure out how much you pay a week in rake, and then divide it by your return. If we use the existing conditions (10 heads up sngs/day), and if you played 5 days a week you would pay approximately $50/week in rake, but only get a return of $4.24 on it. This calculates into essentially 8.5% rakeback. As you can see, this is not a very generous return on your hard earned FPP points.

So to choose a more optimal method of getting cash in return for your FPPs, we need to examine other options. There’s a beautiful thing about PokerStars satellites — you can unregister from them. Anytime you unregister from an event, you are credited with T$ (tournament dollars). These tournament dollars can be used in any tournament on PokerStars (regular sit n gos, heads up sit n gos, MTTs, or anything else that has a set buy in fee).

Let’s pretend like you guys took my advice to keep $2,000 in your account for $50 heads up sit n gos. Remember, $2,000 is your “threshold”, which means that at any given time you should always have $2,000 in your account and $2,000 written on your bankroll sheet as money towards your net worth. If you play heads up sit n gos for a living, then it doesn’t matter if that $2,000 is in cash or tournament dollars because each spends the same on PokerStars, as related to heads up sit n gos. Simply put: if you want to maximize your gain from FPPs, the best option is playing satellites and unregistering from them every time you win a seat.

I know, I know. That begs the question “which satellites?”

The answer to that could be a matter of preference, but I will tell you what I do personally. Some people suggest the 1200 FPP 27 player satellites to the Sunday Million. After all, each time you win, you pocket $215. However, anytime you’re dealing with fields this big, you’re putting your fate in the arms of variance. It’s tough to grind out 25,000 FPPs, which would earn you 20 buy ins to the 1200 FPP Sunday Million satellite, and it’s totally conceivable that on a bad day you would not win a single one. However, let’s just say that you fulfill basic odds, and win 1 out of 27 like you’re supposed to. Well, it looks like I’ve already made my point. In theory, if everyone is of the same skill level as you, you are expected to win 1 out of 27. However, using this method you would only have 20 buy ins, which means that you’re statistically not even guaranteed to win one of them. Therefore, this method’s variance is too high to be a reliable method of turning FPPs into cash. So to that, I say no thanks. We’ll need something with (a) smaller fields and (b) lower FPP buy ins to maximize our potential of earning cash back.

Look no further than the 70 FPP satellites to the Sunday One Hundred Grand. These are single table (10 seated) sit n go satellites, with the winner taking the $11 buy in for the tournament. Not to mention these are probably the softest sit n gos on the planet. After doing some calculations we discover that we can buy into 357 of these satellites with 25,000 FPPs. For the sake of argument however, we will say that you once again fulfill normal odds and win 1 out of every 10. This means that you can expect to profit $11 36 times out of 357. Using this method, your total “rakeback” would be $396, which is a significantly better return on 25,000 FPPs than the cash award of $280.

How many at a time should you play? I suggest six.

Let’s take it one step further. We were being very literal when we talked about you winning 1 out of every 10. A blind monkey could probably take 1 out of every 10 of those satellites. Take my word when I tell you these sit n gos are so soft that you can expect to win not only win 1 out of 10, but actually as much as 1 out of 6. It’s simple: when you get a hand better than AQ offsuit (for unpaired cards) or 77+ (for paired cards), shove it. Yes, that’s right, that’s all it takes because they are that bad. The first ten hands of these things are pretty much someone picking up KJ, QJ, J10, or any suited connectors and going all in hoping to get lucky. If you have 6 tables loaded, you can afford to wait for AQoff or better and then watch in amazement as time and time again someone calls you with a worse hand. Of course there will be exceptions when people will call and you will be behind, but more often than not, even if you’re behind it won’t be by far. I don’t suggest shoving 22-66, as a good portion of the time you will be called by pairs higher than this and will be behind significantly.

If you follow this method, let’s assume you will win 1 out of every 7 satellites. This means that you will profit $11 approximately 54 times with your total of 25,000 FPPs. Using this technique, each 25,000 FPPs is worth approximately $594. Breaking it down even further, this makes each FPP you earn worth 2.4 cents. Compare that to the stingy return (1.14 cents/FPP) on the $280 cash bonus that PokerStars offers and you will see that by implementing this technique you will more than double the default value of your FPPs.

This method equates to 18% rakeback, which is light years better than the 8.5% rakeback method discussed above. Not to mention that if you win more than 1 out of every 7 satellites, you could earn up to 25% rakeback.

Have fun with it!

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process