[Edit: For me -4% ended up being the correct amount, so I re-edited the figures]

Wow.  FT made some sweeping changes to rakeback and points today.  In a nutshell, the "new rewards system" will end up being exactly the same for me.  Dear FT, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the "awesome new rewards program" you made us wait over a year for.  TY TY.

Here's a list of the four huge announcements today, and how they affect me:

1. CHANGE TO "WEIGHTED CONTRIBUTED" FROM "DEALT" RAKE
Previously, you got rakeback on hands where you sat in on the hand, even if you did not contribute to the rake.  Now, your rakeback is purely based on how much rake you contribute.  I suppose this is fair.  Unfortunately,  this change will negatively affect me by about 3 percentage points of rakeback (it's hard to say exactly how much until next month).  Ouch.  I'll talk more about this in a later post.

2. INCREASE IN FT POINTS
They started awarding 10 FT points per dollar of rake paid by the table, so this is a 500% increase in points for HU players, 67+% increase in points for 6max players and and 11+% increase in points for 9max players.  Since 25% of my play is in 6 max, my points should increase 25% overall.

3. BLACK CARD
The Black Card doubles my points.  Tourney tickets remain the best value, so I will continue to use tourney entries for all my points.

4. REMOVAL OF IRONMAN PLUS
I made more medals per month on Ironman Plus than the regular monthly Ironman medals, so this sucks balls.

The new summary of my rewards is below:

(A) Rakeback: $14,750 rake x .23 = $3,393 [23.0% rakeback - was 27%]
(B) Rake Race: $900 [6.1% rakeback - was 6.7%]
(C) IronMan Medals: 700 medals / 3000 x $600 x .73 = $102 [0.7% rakeback - was 1.5%]
(D) IronMan Bonus: $75 [0.5% rakeback - was 0.5%]
(E) FT Points: 147,500 points x 1.25 x 1.25 x .00455 x .73 = $766 [5.2% rakeback - was 3.7%]
(F) New Black Card: $766 / 1.25 = $612 [4.2% rakeback]
TOTAL REWARDS = $3,540 + $900 + $102 + $75 + $766 + $612 = $5,848 [39.6% rakeback - was 39.6%]

Oh, and Mrs. Fly needs another week because she's been a little under the weather.  This week is turning out juuust great.