The PokerStars Tournament Ranking System

Here's how it works: The top 15% of finishers in each event will receive points towards the PokerStars Tournament Leader Board standings, based on the number of entrants, the tournament buy-in, and place of finish.

Note: "Sit & Go" tournaments with less than 40 players, satellite tournaments, heads-up tournaments, shootout tournaments, restricted-entry tournaments, private tournaments, play money tournaments and VIP Freerolls do not count towards the rankings.

Only your 10 best results will be counted for the weekly rankings, 20 best results for the monthly rankings, and 100 best results for the yearly rankings.

The formula used to determine the total points awarded to a player (in the top 15% of finishers) for any given tournament is:

Points = 10 * [sqrt(n)/sqrt(k)] * [1+log(b+0.25)]

Where:

n is the number of entrants
k is the place of finish (k=1 for the first-place finisher, and so on)
b is the buy-in amount in dollars (excluding administrative fee). For freerolls the buy-in is $0, and for FPP tournaments 1 FPP is counted as $0.05.

Downloadable Excel sheet to calculate TLB points - leaders.xls.

Example 1: A player takes third place in a $20 tournament with a field of 150 players. Here:

n = 150, k=3, b=20

The total points awarded to this player are:

= 10 * [sqrt(n)/sqrt(k)] * [1+log(b+0.25)]
= 10 * [sqrt(150)/sqrt(3)] * [1+log(20+0.25)]
= 10 * sqrt(50) * (1+1.31)
= 10 * 7.071 * 2.31
= 163.09 (rounded up)

Example 2: A player takes 25th place in a freeroll with a field of 900 players. Here:

n = 900, k=25, b=0

The total points awarded to this player are:

= 10 * [sqrt(n)/sqrt(k)] * [1+log(b+0.25)]
= 10 * [sqrt(900)/sqrt(25)] * [1+log(0+0.25)]
= 10 * sqrt(36) * [1+(-0.60206)]
= 10 * 6 * 0.39794
= 23.88 (rounded up)

Example 3: A player takes 10th place in a 200 FPP tournament with a field of 250 players. Here:

n = 250, k=10, b = 200 * 0.05 = 10

The total points awarded to this player are:

= 10 * [sqrt(n)/sqrt(k)] * [1+log(b+0.25)]
= 10 * [sqrt(250)/sqrt(10)] * [1+log(10+0.25)]
= 10 * sqrt(25) * [1+(1.01)]
= 10 * 5 * 2.01
= 100.54 (rounded up)

The PokerStars tournament ranking formulas are designed to reward excellent performance and frequent play. The annual tournament rankings are based upon a calendar year, starting on January 1.