Today I’m returning to my occasional looks at correct strategies to milk most of the varieties of promotions that poker rooms sometimes offer. Having talked before about “splash pot” and “aces cracked” promotions and high-hand bonuses, today I WOULD LIKE to speak about another popular more or less promotion — the freeroll tournament.
The basic idea is that the poker site tracks your hours over the process some time period. That is usually done over the process a month, but I’ve seen places do it by week, and no less than one who did it for a complete year. Everybody who puts in some set choice of hours playing cash games in the course of the specified time frame then wins a free entry right into a tournament, with cash prizes for the highest finishers.
In some casinos, it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. That is, you either qualify otherwise you don’t, and each qualifier starts the tournament with the similar chip stack. In others, it’s a graduated reward, and also you get more starting tournament chips the more hours you could have played.
The benefit of this kind of promotion to a player is apparent — you get a shot at some “free” money. That’s in scare quotes because if truth be told the money is solely being redistributed to the players, after having been taken from them by means of an additional tax on every pot.
The disadvantages could also be less obvious, but they’re just as real.
One thing worth noting is how this sort of promotion almost exclusively targets locals. Tourists who're on the town for only a few days will almost never qualify — or even in the event that they do, they probably won’t be around when it’s time for the tournament. As a result, freeroll tournaments transfer money from tourists to local players.
Keep in mind also that freeroll promotions are justly notorious for attracting hordes of the nittiest players within the city. Retirees with out a other time commitments plop themselves down at a poker table and skim a book, watch sports, play video games, or browse the web while there’s a poker game occurring under their noses. They fold for hours at a time, playing only their premium hands as they rack up enough hours to qualify for the freeroll. In addition they take long, frequent breaks from the game, leaving it short-handed.
Some other potential disadvantages related to freerolls can include:
- They cause you to commit your playing hours to 1 poker site when others are available, because of this sometimes you can’t go where the most productive action is that this. likely cuts your maximum hourly rate of profits.
- If you might be better at cash games and don’t play tournaments well, you’re at an obstacle for winning your fair proportion of the cash back within the freeroll.
- Trying to satisfy the specified selection of hours too can make you pressure yourself to play even if you’re tired, out of sorts, or off your A-game. If it does, you’re in all likelihood to lose much more throughout the cash games than you’ll ever make back within the tournament.
Also worth noting with reference to freerolls is what number of casinos run the tournaments not with graduated payouts, but with all who make the cash getting equal pay — call it a mandatory, multi-way chop once the bubble bursts. That suggests that neither probably the most skilled tournament players nor the largest stacks are proportionately rewarded.
So how in case you approach this kind of promotion? Let me suggest three justifiable general strategies.
1. Given the severe disadvantages noted above, you'll be able to just stay as far-off from that poker site as you'll be able to. In fact, I heartily endorse doing so.
2. Take the promotion as icing at the cake. That is, make your usual decisions about when and where to play as though the freeroll weren't a consideration. If after doing so it seems like you'll be able to qualify with only fairly minor stretches of your endurance, or with just a session or two at a nittier game than it is advisable to otherwise choose, then opt for it.
3. Make a major effort to qualify for the tournament provided that all the following describe you:
- You can installed the time without playing when you’re not at your best, and without sacrificing the entire other commitments you've gotten on your life.
- You’ll be available for the tournament.
- You play tournaments a minimum of in addition to the others who could be in it.
- You’re good at beating tight, nitty, and infrequently short-handed cash games.
- Your other poker cash-game options aren't meaningfully better through the qualifying period.
When I lived in Las Vegas, I mostly followed strategy No. 2 — that is, viewing the freeroll as an advantage that had no effect on my usual playing habits and preferences. Occasionally, however, a poker site would provide a freeroll sufficiently juicy to make it worthwhile to show to strategy No. 3 temporarily.
For essentially the most part, however, I BELIEVE freeroll tournaments as a reward for cash-game hours are a foul deal for both tourists and locals. They’re a nasty deal for tourists because a part of the pots you win is being held back as prize money in a tournament you effectively can’t enter. They’re a foul deal for locals since you finally end up in lousy cash games for an entire lot of hours, while you can make extra money — and feature a lot more fun — elsewhere, assuming you've got a call of multiple poker room.
Here are those articles I mention above that debate strategies applicable for other poker site promotions:
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker at the “Poker Grump” blog.
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