The "Seven Stars is invite only" thing has been written in the official documentation for many years, but wasn't known to be enforced until that Kent Houston e-mail was posted this year.

However, now there is a real concern that they will deny some people, both due to that e-mail and the fact that they highly degraded the program in 2018 by taking away the guaranteed comp rooms. It shows they're moving in the direction of eliminating bonus whores.

As I said, unless you have already earned a lot of tiers from normal play this year, I would not suggest trying to upgrade to Seven Stars through this promotion.

You have a better shot in getting your Seven Stars RENEWED this way, but again, if that's your only play in 2018, the odds are against you.