perhaps instead of a monthly award, just have a top 5 ppg column in the leaderboard. but the problem with ppg, as youve pointed out, is that it biases the members. regardless of whether or not you include the 2500 points in the ppg calc, members start out with a higher earning potential.

example: my personal experience. i never had membership until this month (thanks wish for donating). in the past, it took me about 30 games to get to 2.5k from 0. thats a ppg of 83. this month, starting from 2500, i have played 91 games and gained (23427-2500 = 20927) points. thats a ppg of 230 (which in fact is what is reported... i.e. the way ppg is calculated now, the 2500 starting points are not included). if i had started from zero, then my ppg would have been (23427/(91+30) = 194).

so if i had started from 0, my ppg would be lower due to the lower earning potential on the 0, 100, and 500 tables i would have to slug through before getting to 2.5k. therefore, ppg is biased towards members. no idea how you can fix this, besides only calculating ppg for players on a tablelevel by tablelevel basis, i.e. my ppg is xxx on 0 tables, xxx on 100 tables, xxx on 500 tables, xxx on 2500, and xxx on 10000 tables.

however, this solution would be highly vulnerable to statistical anomalies, since there would be very few 10000 games all month (right now my 10000 table ppg is 4800, and 2nd place's is like 500... which is ludicrous.)