Yesterday Everything Changed

This is going be complicated, but it has to for the explanation to make sense.  I've mentioned before that I've had a lot of issues with Juicy Stakes Poker.  One of those has been that they make cashing out too complicated.  In fact, that was going to be my next post.  I'm including some of that anyway, and you'll see why as you read.

On most poker sites, it's not complicated.  When I played on PokerStars it was simple.  When I wanted to cash out some of my winnings, I told them how much I wanted and they sent me a check.  There were a few rules, for example, minimum and maximum withdrawals and how frequently you could cash out, but it was easy to understand.

On Juicy Stakes Poker it's so ridiculously complicated and they can't or won't ell me how it works.  When my bankroll was over the minimum amount to cash out ($250) I asked what the requirements were, even though at that point I didn't want to make a withdraw.  They told me that they would let know "what else was needed" when I was ready to withdraw.

For the last month, on an off, I've been working on that problem, trying to figure out what's going on.  After a lot of investigation and no small amount of math (trying to extrapolate from situations and transactions that I've run across on their web pages) I thought that I had it figured out, not the details, but a good general idea of how it worked..  The problem wasn't how much I could take out, or how often.  The problem was that I had to "clear" the amount that I wanted to cash out, which in my case was a very big problem.

What "clear" means is that I have to do a certain amount of playing on the site, at certain levels, to get FPPs (Frequent Player Points.)  It's a forced loyalty program.  For example, if I play fifty $1 tournaments in a month I will get twice as many FPPs than if I play only 25 of those tournaments.  Also, if I played fifty $2 tournaments a month I would get twice as many FPPs than if I played only $1 tournaments.  It's a combination of playing frequency and buy-in level.

The bottom line is that what I just explained runs into a basic tenant of poker success--bankroll management.

When I did the math I figured out that with the mostly $1 and $2 tournaments that I've been playing, I could barely get enough FPPs in a year to clear the minimum $250 withdrawal.  I could theoretically make more money, have a balance of $1,000 (or more) and never have enough FPPs to make a withdrawal.  Very shady in my opinion.

I can't solve the clearing issue by playing more often..  For a while I was playing tournaments starting at 10:14 A.M. and 10:14 P.M., and sometimes others as well.  I have to sleep sometime.  I could solve the issue by playing at a higher level, but if I moved up, for example, to play more $3 or $5 tournaments, I wouldn't have the 100-buy-in bankroll necessary to cover  my mathematical risk of ruin.*

I had been playing a few $3 tournaments, and rarely, maybe once a month, a $5 tournament.  I decided to bump that frequency up a little bit, keep a close eye on my bankroll and see what happened.  This is what happened, documented in an E-mail from Juicy Stakes Poker, when I played a $5.50 tournament on 2/25:


Congratulations on your Juicy win PokerClif,

Out of 25 players in Tournament 16597102 ($300 Guaranteed), you came in 1st and have won $120.00.

You've also been awarded 1.75 Frequent Player Points for participating in the tournament.

Kind Regards,
Juicy Stakes Support


That win increased my bankroll by over a third.  I am now bankrolled to move up, make more money and get enough FPPs to clear my withdrawal sometime soon.

I've said more than once that success in tournament poker is often the result of just a few big cashes.  Now we've seen that principle in action.  The tournament started at 2314 on 2/25.  When it ended at 0150 on 2/26, everything changed.
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*https://www.pokerstrategy.com/glossary/Risk-of-Ruin/
http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/