kksuited is the best poster on p5's and I bow down to him. May all of the hearsay be true!

maybe if you mentioned harrah's "potential" problem, your post would have been more clear.

It's almost March 2007 jerichoholic. Maybe I should catch you up. Nothing I'm talking about would be in the damn FAQ.....I'm talking about policy not posted yet by pokerstars.

Harrah's apparently is going to make it very difficult for the sites to register players. UB has already said they are just going to give their players the $10k and they can register themselves.

Pokerstars is most likely not going to be able to register players, so they need to come up with a way to "encourage" player to still play the ME since many will just take the 10k and not play.

Please edit your post, you sound like a moron. Maybe you should check my profile. I think I know what I'm talking about.

"Read the FAQ before you make these irrelevant posts."....lol, the irony is funny.

So not only do you win the 12k price package, but you also get a plasma TV and SuperNova? Never going to happen.

Why not just have a rep at the main event handing out the cash and have the player sign an agreement that they will use the cash to buy-in to the ME? Harrah's cannot police private agreements between stars and thier players. Once a player has traveled all the way to Vegas and signed an agreement they are not likely to welch at the last minute even if stars has no intention of enforcing the contracts.

If I'm not mistaken I think they're already incentivising the package with an extra $1000 worth of hotel stay or cash. The $650 qualifier is paying out one $12,000 package for each $11,000 in the prizepool: the package is $10,000 entry + $1000 cash + $1000 hotel/cash.

I'm guessing that the last $1000 can only be had if you actually use the package to play the ME.

Last night I searched for the article where Harrahs made the comment about "third party" registrations. I couldn't find it, but I found another wherein they stated they had NOT been accepting "third party" registrations for the last 2 years. So if that's accurate, their definition of "third party" may be different than what we think it is.

It is conceivable that the sites use someone or something not affiliated with them to register the players. For instance, say stars contracted a small company to do their registrations, there would be no visible link between them and Stars, and no reason for Harrahs to sweat where the money was coming from. If I, as a private citizen, want to register and pay for 1000 players at the WSOP, there is nothing illegal about it, and I'm sure Harrahs wouldn't care one bit.

I'm not saying this is exactly what happens, but it's possible something along these lines has been done, or may be done this year to sidestep the potential of having 2000 players win seats and having only 200 actually show up.

Ultimate Bet has made the decision to go with full cash directly to the winners and leave them the option to participate ion the WSOP or not. No extra materials.

Kind of a good thing and a bad thing for me (as I won one in November). Bad is that I WILL NOT be playing the Main Event, nor will I get some "extra gear". Good news, I can still play in some of the other events and still have enough to blow it out while in Vegas, and I won't have to wear UB gear.

First of all, the intent of my post was not to come up with incentives. It was to respond to the OP's question of how to make sure that qualifying players make it to Vegas and don't keep the 10K.

Secondly, I disagree that the types of incentives I mentioned are not an option. stars has historically spent a shitload of money on player amenities and tournament support cost- player's lounge, player's breakfast, pretourney dinner, staff travel etc. Those options will obviously be toned down this year. Redirect those funds into player participation incentives and you'll get more compliance.

I have a ton of experience designing employee incentive compensation plans; the key is to find the "breaking point" where the incentive drives the desired behavior. It's no different here. Make the incentive rich enough and you'll get compliance.

if they state that as a policy then the answer is simple. Play elsewhere.

they had this problem in the past. When you ask someone you get a lot better result than when you tell them. Should they expect for nothing for us to wear their gear, my opinion would be an emphatic "no". As long as they take juice. If they don't take juice, I would think they should be able to say whatever they want and no one could object.

There are alot of potential issues, many of which have been mentioned here already.

The situation isn't a great one but they should do the most they can to maintain their place as the leader in online poker.

As for pokerstars threatening to close someones account that doesn't play in the WSOP I think that would be a bad move on their part. Keeping things as positive as they can will benefit them and online poker far more and that is where their bread is buttered so to speak.

Incentives that could be added for those that play in the WSOP would be a smart move rather than penalizing those that kept the cash and didn't play.

Despite the fact that $1000 cash plus hotel and goodie bag is included I'm guessing with all the advertising they get out of this it would be in their best interest to step it up and come out of pocket for something that is unique. Maybe adding a bonus to all Pokerstars entrants. If it was significant it would be a very enthusiastic "TEAM POKERSTARS" that showed up.

Think about it, if they qualified it so it would only apply to players that made it to the start of day 2 and you could win thousands of dollars in bonuses based upon your continued play on Stars you would show up and be happy you did.

An improved rakeback program for all entrants such as 100% rakeback for 6 months would be a very interesting incentive.

Compared to the return they would get from such and investment and what they would risk losing this would seem to be a smart business consideration.

Of course I'm just thinking about this using their money :-)

I just don't think a $200K Freeroll is enough considering what is at stake for for pokerstars in the terms of advertising exposure and good will.

It's a nice thought but I don't think that is going to give players that need to travel to las vegas from all over the world a good enough reason to plunk down the $10K they have received in cash if they are considering otherwise.