Freeroll Strategy II

 Freeroll Strategy I - Go here to read the original strategy for winning free money in freeroll tournaments.

After 62 tournaments, I was able to cash, coming in 20^th place and earning a whopping $2.00.  I would love to tell you that the strategy I outlined in part one is the secret to winning free money.  However, I learned something even more interesting.

When it comes to poker, there are no systems, or full-proof schemes.  For a while I believed that the system was going to work.  But time after time I found myself banging my head against the wall, watching idiots and donkeys suck out over and over again.  The harder I tried to prove that my system would work, the quicker I would lose my whole stack.

It seemed as though, with all the crazy people, calling crazy bets preflop with 94o, and pushing all-in on the river with nothing, that this was closer to a slot machine than a poker game.  This is not far from the truth, but it doesn’t mean all is lost.


When trying to formulate a strategy, I failed to take into account is how quickly the blinds rise.  I have played many online tournaments, but never any with a structure as fast and light as some of the freerolls I have played in the past few weeks.  Most are so quick in levels that before the bubble was even reached, everyone in the tournament except the top 5 players only had between 2 and 10 rounds of chips.  It didn’t matter if I saw every flop and built a huge stack, because that huge stack ended up being only 12 big blinds before the bubble.

Early in the process of proving my strategy I started getting frustrated, and found myself folding often from early position.  And when I had a big hand, like QQ, I would re-raise, only to be called by three people.  Even though the queens didn’t hold up, it was enlightening. The answer revealed itself to me as I played, slowly giving up on winning, giving up on my strategy, and just enjoying the game.  I found myself playing poker again, assessing the situation, keeping an open mind every time I was moved to another table, and paying attention to all the crazy moves everyone was making.


Don’t get upset or go on tilt when you suffer a bad beat.  This is easier said than done, because I have gone on tilt myself plenty of times.  But this is something to strive for.  Every time this happens now, I remind myself of this: Bad beats can only happen when your opponents play bad poker.

That’s why the word “bad” is in there.  Getting your chips in the pot when you have an 85% advantage, and getting called by a terrible hand only to have them suck-out, is a wonderful thing.  Bad beats happen because of bad players.  Great players don’t call with bad hands.  They might bet or raise with them, but even when they bluff, they believe they are making the play with the greatest positive expectation, not because they are a goof.

People complain about the same kinds of things in micro and small stakes cash games and tournaments.  I have found myself saying the following more than a few times when I was first starting out.  “These people are idiots.  They call with anything.  They don’t respect my raises.  They don’t play real poker.  It is impossible to push them off a hand.  No one can make money at this level.”

I have already learned this lesson.   Those games are beatable, and they aren’t even that hard to show a profit, because a lot of the people play so badly.  However, what seldom works at the small-stakes level is the super-advanced, deep-stack small ball strategies, with three or four levels of thinking.  If you are playing $0.01/0.02 and you find yourself thinking “What does he think I think he thinks I think he has?” you are giving your opponent WAY too much credit.

In fact, no strategy is going to work.  By constraining yourself to a thought out strategy set in stone, you prevent yourself from being able to make the correct moves at the correct time.  So relax.  Don’t look at freeroll tournaments as anything more than what they are: A great learning tool that costs a few hours, and teaches many of the virtues that make a great poker player: patience, aggression, observation, and humility.  If you can’t stop from tilting during a freeroll tournament, then maybe poker isn’t your game.  Just wait until you suffer a bad beat with all of your money on the table.

 

Freeroll Statistics

I haven’t had a lot of time for playing freerolls, but my stats are below.  The times I got close, I did exactly what I outlined in the Freeroll strategy blog.  Even if you only win that big stack 20% of the time, that is every 5^th free roll, which could be twice a day depending on how many you are playing.  If only half the time you go deep, you have a rather good shot at winning some of that free money.

Update: So far, all the times that I went deep, I ended up all in against another big stack, and the winner of that hand would be in the top ten chip leaders.  Every time, I have had the best hand, and have lost.  Sooner or later I will win a couple of those key hands, and have a shot at the tournament.

I will continue to post updates as I play more tournaments...

Freeroll Strategy

Freeroll tournaments at online sites are an interesting animal.  Some people believe that they term comes from the early days of Las Vegas, when people would receive a free roll of nickels to play in the slot machines when they checked into the hotel.  People would ask for their “free roll”, and the term became slang for gambling for free.  Regardless or the origin, (and even if the above story isn’t true, it sounds good), these tournaments, that are free to play but pay out real money, have aspects of play money games and real money games.  Let’s look at the differences:

Real Money Poker

This is any kind of poker game where real money is on the line.  It doesn’t matter if you are playing a deep tournament with a buy-in of $10,000, or a home game with friends for $50.  When real money is on the line, people play real poker.  The degree to which they play depends not on how much money is at stake, but how important that money is to the player.  Everyone at a casino $1/$2 no limit cash game could have the same amount of money in front of them, and yet they could all play very differently, based on how important that money is to them. One lady may have suffered a huge loss, and has dropped down to these super “small” stakes to regain her confidence, while another player could be playing cash for the very first time, and has saved the $400 they brought to the table over the last six weeks.  While it isn’t possible to predict how everyone is going to treat their buy-in, one thing is clear: when real money is on the line, people play real poker, to some degree.

When I first started playing online poker, I won some money playing tournaments for $0.10 and $0.25.  I tried playing cash games at the $0.01/$0.02 tables, and I was amazed at how many people were playing real poker (and way better than me).  I got destroyed the first few times I played, and while there were always some crazy players popping in, for the most part, people played real poker, even with two cent blinds. 

Play Money Poker

To say it another way, when there isn’t any money involved, people do not play real poker.  Sometimes I am sitting at the kitchen table dealing poker hands to myself and thinking about the game (what do you do on the weekends), and my kids come over and want to play a few hands.  Without any chips, we deal some cards and play, saying things like “I raise,” and “I call,” but there aren’t any chips on the table, and we really don’t care.  At some point, one of my kids will say “All in!” and then when they lose, remark how it’s all fake anyway, and go outside.  But when they win, they get very excited to have kicked daddy’s butt.

Just try playing some real poker for play money on a social networking site and you will see what I am talking about.  Everyone just pushes all in, and they don’t care what happens.  They just keep playing until they get lucky.  Without real money on the line, poker goes from a game of skill to a game of luck.

Luck vs. Skill

I can’t tell you how many times I have been talking about poker, only to hear someone say “I don’t play poker because I don’t gamble.”  I used to respond with “But poker isn’t gambling.  It’s a game of skill like chess, or golf.”  This would spark a debate that, in relation to how much alcohol was being consumed, could drag on for hours.  And yet, I would never be able to change their minds.  This is why I now just nod my head.  Because they would push all-in with any two cards, and turn the game from a skill game to a slot machine.  This is what makes freeroll tournaments an interesting animal.

Freerolls start out as play money games, and then transition to real money games.  At some point, which is different for every tournament, it looks like this:

This is why my strategy might seem weird.  To win the tournament, players need a huge number of chips.  If someone were to simply watch what is happening during the tournament, they would see, at the beginning, a few players gaining a huge amount of chips.  While chip accumulation like this doesn’t happen as quickly in real money tournaments, at the beginning, it is play money, without regard to skill.  Unfortunately, to make it through the transition from luck to skill, and to have enough chips to play real poker, a player needs to get lucky, multiple times.

Freeroll Strategy

My strategy is, in the beginning, to see as many cheap flops as possible, regardless of starting hands or position.  However, it is important to remember to never give up.  If you call with 53o, only to face a re-raise and an all-in, just fold.  Don’t get frustrated and tilt, pushing in chips with crappy hands.  It can be irritating, because the play is still in the slot machine zone.  The goal is to flop 2 pair or better, and then get all your chips in, hopefully against multiple opponents. 

Now this is not a money making strategy, but there isn’t any money at stake.  You can play freerolls all day long.  Sacrifice some tournaments for the chance, once in a while, to end up with a huge stack early on.  Once an initial large stack is acquired, perhaps twice the size of everyone else, then start raising every unopened pot, regardless of starting hands or position.  And, just like before, without giving up and dumping off all your chips, see as many flops as possible while stealing the blinds, and driving all the people trying to play real poker right to the edge of madness.

At this point, many people will have already left the freeroll, and many others will have turned off their computers, their online avatar slowly losing chips each round.  Those people trying to play real poker, folding all but the best hands, will have dwindling stacks.  As the blinds continue to rise, they are forced to wait for great cards, and even if you call and double them up, they won’t even dent your stack. 

During this transition phase, many people drop out, and big stacks start appearing at your table.  As you continue to try and get lucky, pushing all in with two pair or better, you will, at some point, end up all in against a big stack, and whoever wins that hand will end up in the top 10, and stand a good shot at making the final table and winning the tournament, or at least getting some of that free money to start climbing the real money ladder.  And everyone likes free money (except babies).  At this point, it is time to start playing real poker, reading your opponents, and adjusting your game from tight to loose depending on the other players at the table.  There is no guaranteed strategy at this point, but getting here is half the battle.

Next time I will post my stats for freerolls, so you can see how this strategy is working…

Ciao,

ZenToad 

Freeroll Strategy II: http://zentoadpoker.blogspot.com/2012/07/freeroll-strategy-ii.html
Freeroll stats are here: http://zentoadpoker.blogspot.com/2012/06/freeroll-statistics.html

Playing after black Friday

In an effort to play poker again, I checked out all the websites I found that were listed on all the different poker websites and blogs.  If I saw a site listed at many places, and had lots of different advertisements, then I gambled, downloaded the software, created an account, and tried it out.  I have been running malware and virus software since downloading and installing the various software, and so far I have not had any detections of any kind.  Of course any software download and installed comes with risk, but for me, I have not had any trouble.  Below is a list of the sites that I have tried over the last few weeks, and my feelings about them:

Bovada - http://poker.bovada.lv/

I didn’t have any trouble installing and using this software. There seems to be some good free-roll tournaments, but I have been unable to sign up for any of them. I have tried numerous times, but always receive an error. Even though the free-rolls look good, I’ve been unable to partake. If you have better luck, this could be a great place to try and build a bankroll.

Lock Poker - http://lockpoker.eu/

Carbon Poker - http://www.carbonpoker.ag/

Poker Host - http://www.pokerhost.com/

These sites are all part of the Merge gaming network, and other than the different names, the software seems exactly that same.  I like the software, and there seems to be a lot of different options available.  The free-rolls are a bit ridiculous, however.  Not only do the free-rolls mostly offer tickets to other free-rolls, paying real cash to only the top 4 places, there are only a few free-rolls every day.  Also, these different sites do not allow more than one client connection at a time.

Cake Poker - http://cakepoker.eu

This was another site that seemed promising.  The software download and installed fine, and I didn’t have any trouble creating an account.  The free-rolls are also a little silly, with the winners earning tickets to other free-rolls, but those offer prizes over $100.00, so it could be worth it.  However, I had the same problem with this site that I had with Bovada, and wasn’t actually able to register for any free-rolls.  Multiple attempts just returned a server error.  I don’t know if it was a bug, but I moved on.

America’s Card Room - http://www.americascardroom.eu/

This site had some promising looking free-roll tournaments, and after creating an account, installing the software, I was ready to play.  However, the next day, I couldn’t get the software to work.  Clicking on the program launched something, but nothing ever happened.  I uninstalled and reinstalled the software multiple times, but I could never even get a window to pop up again.  If you could get this one to work, then it really looked promising, but I didn’t have any luck.

Bet Online - http://www.betonline.com/

I almost didn’t even try this one, and at first is wasn’t on my list, but after having all the problems I described above, I did more searching and added this site to the list.  So far this one has been the most promising.  I was able to create an account and download the software.  There is a free-roll every hour, and they all pay out real money, not just a ticket into some other tournament.  Also, this is one of the few sites I’ve seen that have $0.01/0.02 cash games, which is good when you win only a small amount.  There are also tournaments for as little as $0.05 or $0.10, which is just what you want when trying to build a bankroll from nothing.

I have been playing on Bet Online, recording my stats, and trying to find a strategy that will win me some free money so I can build another bankroll from nothing, which is always been fun for me.  The only other site I play on is Lock Poker.  The other ones have too many problems. Perhaps you might have better luck.

Next time I will post my initial strategy for wining some money in these free-rolls, and will present my current stats (I’m not doing that well so far), but that’s poker :-)

Ciao,

ZenToad

Welcome

Welcome to ZenToad's poker blog.  I am a self-proclaimed professional-amateur poker player, and I love playing poker, talking about it, reading about it, watching it, and thinking about it.  It has been a year since online poker was shut down, and I find myself wishing it was back.

After one year hoping that online poker would come back, I am tired of waiting.  It was not a source of income for me; it was a source of fun.  I viewed online poker the same way people view other online games.  For whatever reason, when I signed up, PokerStars.com gave me $5.00.  It must have been some kind of incentive to get me hooked, or a promotion of some kind.  Back then, I had just started learning how to play, and was happy to play for free.  I was reading all kinds of poker books, watching poker on T.V., and just enjoying studying the game.

I took a leap one day, trying out a very high-stakes cash game: $0.02/$0.04 limit hold ’em.  I played for a while, but didn’t have any luck.  I was studying no-limit, and limit is played very differently.  Also, at the penny level, there didn’t seem to be much strategy.  I was over-thinking the game.

I graduated to $0.10 – 360 player tournaments, and played for quite a while, turning my $5.00 into $12.00.  I then moved my way up to the staggering $0.25 – 90 player tournaments.  With over 40 buy-ins, I played lots of tournaments, and eventually made it past $20.00.  Feeling good about myself, I decided to take the next step.

I had read a lot of books at this point, and all of them said the same thing: Tournaments are fun, but cash games are where the money is.  So once I reached $22.00, I decided to risk $2.00, which was a lot of money :-).  I got destroyed.  I would grind back to $22.00, buy in for $2.00 at the $0.01/0.02 no limit hold ‘em tables, and loose it all.  Luckily I ended up buying the following book:

Cash Games (How to Win at No-Limit Hold'em Money Games) Vol. 1 by Dan Harrington

Permalink: http://amzn.com/1880685426

That book really helped me, and I played for almost a year with the $20.00.  At one point I was up past $60.00, but a couple of weeks of serious tilt dropped me back to $30.00.  I was amazed, and still am, at how easily this game can drive a person to the brink of insanity. 

So after poker was shut down, and having never given anyone any money, I didn’t mind that the money was gone.  I missed the fun.  I check the news every few days waiting for some word about online poker coming back, but since is doesn’t look like that will happen any time soon, I have begun testing out all the online poker sites available that still allow me to play. 

So stay tuned for an account of my experiences trying to build another bankroll in these volatile times.

Ciao,

ZenToad