Adam Winter

Lately I have been thinking a lot about trying to achieve supernova status on pokerstars and how much money I could earn throughout 2010. Ideally, I would like to get to supernova (100,000 VPPs) by the end of April at the latest. $1 in rake = 5 VPPs so 100,000 VPPs = $20,000 in rake fees.

There are 17 weeks through the end of April. Thus, I would need to pay an average of approximately $1176 in rake fees each week to get to supernova by April 30th. These calculations are based on SNG and tournament play. I will be playing the occasional cash game, most likely PLO, but that will be rare. 99% of my play will be SNGs and tourneys.

Obviously this seems like a ton and will require playing a lot of hyper turbo sng’s and large buy in tournaments.

500 $86+1.72 hyper turbos = $860 in rake
750 $86+1.72 hyper turbos = $1290 in rake

From my Hold ‘em manager stats, the hyper turbos take an average of 5 minutes per game. If I can play 150 games/day (~6 hours if I 2-table), then I can easily get to 750 games/week in just 5 days of play and 30 hours total 2-tabling. I feel like I could increase my tables to an average of 3 at all times since the games don’t fill that quickly. Which would mean only about 25 hours per week.

In the first week of August I was able to play 246 of the games in only 12.5 hours, or nearly 20 games per hour. A lot of this play was off peak hours, as well as me not actively trying to play a lot of games in a row. I was able to make $3000 profit from these games as well. So I know that I could easily put in more than 12.5 hours in a week and add in another table or two to increase my # of games per hour. There have been a few hours where I played 30+ games/hour.

Another thing I have been thinking about is if I do play 750 of these games per week, will my winrate suffer? If I decide to put in that much volume, I will have to play against other pros, grinders, and highly skilled players. I can still table select, but to put in the high volume I need, I will have to play some games vs. stronger competition. Therefore, I feel like a winrate of just +$2 per game might be more reasonable than my current expected winrate of +$5/game.

So if I assume that I can play 750 hyper turbos per week in 30 hours, that means I will rake $1290 per week. I am also assuming I will be able to maintain a winrate of +$2 per game, or +$1500 per week.

Using these rates I expect to get to supernova in 15.5 weeks, or by the end of April. If I continue playing through the rest of the year at the same rate of about 100,000 VPP per 16 weeks, then I can expect to earn approximately 300,000 VPP by the end of the year.

The first 100,000 VPPs will earn me 250,000 FPPs and the the next 200,000 VPPs will earn me 700,000 FPPs for a yearly total of 950,000 FPPs. I will be able to purchase milestone bonuses of $800, $2,000, and $3,000 when I reach 100k, 200k, and 300k VPPs. These bonuses cost 50,000 FPP each, which leaves me with 800,000 FPPs to spend. The best use of these FPPs is either concierge service, or a $4,000 bonus for 250,000 FPPs. Thus, I could buy 3 $4,000 bonuses for 750,000 FPP, and use another 150,000 for the milestone bonuses. In total for the year I would earn $17,800 from cash bonuses. This amounts to close to 30% rakeback.

If I am able to achieve my goal of +$1,500 per week, then over 50 weeks I will earn $75,000. With bonuses that equals $92,800 for the year. Assuming I win some small tournaments and do ok in live games, I should be able to make around $100,000 for the year.