Annoying Freeroll-and how do they balance tables?

I know most of you guys here are poker Pro`s and are at cash tables but i felt i needed to talk about this,you may have experienced this yourselves in the past im sure.

Just played in a $250 dollar freeroll at Littlewoods poker (1256 entries top 100 paid) and not long after the start players just switched to `sitting out` especially when i was moved to the second table onwards, i know im new to poker and i am playing in freerolls so i get to see a lot of that but most of time there was 10 seated and only 4 players at the table playing.I am not sure that is is even an advantage i simply just found it annoying as there were less people contributing to the pot,then later i was moved to a table where the other 9 players had very little chips 50-200 and i had the highest stack at the table just under 800 i just looked at it in disbelief,almost every body was just sitting out to die.After a few hands they moved a couple of players to the tables with higher chip stacks,a comment from the 20K stack echoed my thoughts.

It made me wonder how they balance the tables? as you can imagine the 20K stack was quick to flex his muscles and i was almost glad to be out of it.

Errr, no. There are only one or two CCers for whom Poker is their main income, and there are STT and MTT specialists here as well as Ring Game players (and some who play all three).

But, to answer the main question, the table balancing is random, at least in theory. Mostly, it seems to work quite well at sites I am familiar with. You do see oddities, though.

For example, I play a lot of MTTs on the IPoker Network (Titan etc.). I have noticed that it is not unusual there, when you get down to the last two tables, to find the top three or four leaders on one table and most of the shorties on the other. Quite irritating if you are one of the big stacks. You would rather be picking off the little guys than tangling with other big stacks, who can hurt you.

yeah, i'd say it's all random because i've sat at a table for about 50-100 hands and had everyone sitting out and just sat there calling stealing the blinds, but thats never a bad situation haha.

In many freerolls, folks enter and then forget, or leave, or something. Was at its extreme at party poker where 60% of the people would not show up after signing up.

The longer the lead time between start of sign up, and starting time, the worse it is.

Then there are the players who win big early, and sit out for a while thinking the maniacs will weed themselves out, and they can come back 40 minutes into the contest and play a more civilized game.

There are some who sit looking like they are sitting out, but are right there waiting for the big hand. They will catch you trying to exploit the sit out behind you. They are rare though.

For the most part if you have sit outs behind you, they can work to your advantage. Easy to buy the button if no one is there to call you.

sometimes its gets a little goofey when i'v gotten moved to three tables in about 3 minutes and sometimes having to post a blind back to back , then other times ur at a card dead table and u never get moved lol

Thats the most annoying thing is when you have people "Sitting Out" at your table...I can't stand the fact that they took the time to sign up and don't play, unregister if you can't play. I really really hate it when people build up their chip stack to or past $10,000 or somewhere close and then sit out to see how far they can go, and when they see that they are getting blinded down they start back in agian....Play if your gonna play, or get the F out!!! ...Just as annoying as the guy who goes all in the first 15 hands and has the chip lead because he sucked out every other player.

The upside to the sit-outs is that in some cases, no one is playing. I've had this happen quite often and just sit there and raise till I dry up the table. It's a heck of a boost and I almost always get to the money when this happens.