Every Christmas, the amount of wager that you will need to do, to get into the top 5000 gets higher and higher; the amounts are just ridiculous. It is never really worth pursuing it, in the end you will always loose more than you win (allthough it also helps in achieving your vip status lol).
This simply means that people who are playing in stake gets bigger and bigger which is a sign that Stake is getting more popular each year and attracting more people to the platform. Instead of pursuing the top 5000, let us just play and have fun if we get lucky and have our session performs better than others then just let it decide whether we can be among those top 5k. This way the pressure of being included to the top 5k will diminish and it won't make us disappointed if we fail to be included on the list.
I only experienced one time getting a position with 3000 members, but now Stake is becoming more and more popular and there are more and more entrants with large finances, of course it will be difficult, competition is tight and you must have large capital. To even be one of the 5000 people, you may need to reach a minimum bet of over $10000.
So now I don't have that target anymore and play freely according to the budget I have. Well, coincidentally, this Christmas event, I think it's better to collect tickets ($500/ 1 ticket), the prize reaches $150K which will be drawn later on the 17th during Live streaming Eddie on Kick. But it's back to the user whether he has a specific target or is just playing casually as usual.