mendozaline
Rock Star
Silver Level
I saw a thread on freerolls here in Poker General, so I hope this is the right place for this. The subject of play money SnGs, and freeroll SnGs (and MTTs) has recently been of major interest to me. It's kind of a long story and I'm going to try to condense it as much as possible, but I believe there are some important issues here.
While I was settling on my approach to No Limit Hold'em, I started first by reading some books, then to live game strategy, then to online play money ring games, then to online freerolls and sngs, then to money ring games, then to cash tournaments. {It's funny but that's the first time I wrote that down, and seeing it makes things very clear to me now.}
By time I zeroed in on some formal rules (which I had laminated on small cards), I was playing play money ring tables. When I printed my first set of rules, I didn't even know you could play in online tourneys anytime you wanted to. Once I was introduced to the tourneys in freeroll style, I immediately had to revise my rules to deal with the looser style of the early round Jackals.
My change reflected the idea that the Jackals were getting too many chips early on, leaving me the short stack if I made it to the final table. So, I started vying for those early chips by upping the ante on all-ins, and sliding my scale of hands that I'd play. In other words, I got looser.
Then, when I switched to real money tourneys, at first I tried to use my last set of rules on both cash ring games and cash tourneys. It seemed to work fairly well, but after awhile I realized there was something wrong with it. Namely, the rules were really designed exclusively for tourneys, and freerolls at that! While the willingness to go all-in early does have it's redeeming qualities, in the final analysis it's not going to get you to the final table often enough in cash tournaments. You're going to bust out too soon too often. That's the bottom line.
So the conclusion obviously is to tighten up in cash tourneys. But the strange thing is that didn't get clear to me until I went back and started playing some play money tournaments again, which is the reason for this post.
Play in some play money SnGs (the 180 or 90 player version) on Full Tilt, and you'll quickly find that the best way to make it to the final table is to play tighter 'n snot. Don't get caught up in the Jackal's nonsense. Fold, Fold, and re-fold. Hell I made a final table playing only two hands agressively: JJ and KQs, and folding all the rest. (Maybe I checked my way into seeing 3 other flops, and then folded). Then I won five hands at the final table and came in 3rd.
Then take that back to cash tourneys. Same thing, fold, fold, and re-fold, survive, play good cards, make people think you never bluff, ram and jam the hands you play, (hell you may even bluff when they least expect it), and don't lose your patience......find it, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Maybe it really all boils down to knowing how to play poker, which is why you see so many of the same pros at the major tournaments, and that there is no Holy Grail.
But don't underestimate the usefullness of the Play Money Tourneys and Freerolls.
While I was settling on my approach to No Limit Hold'em, I started first by reading some books, then to live game strategy, then to online play money ring games, then to online freerolls and sngs, then to money ring games, then to cash tournaments. {It's funny but that's the first time I wrote that down, and seeing it makes things very clear to me now.}
By time I zeroed in on some formal rules (which I had laminated on small cards), I was playing play money ring tables. When I printed my first set of rules, I didn't even know you could play in online tourneys anytime you wanted to. Once I was introduced to the tourneys in freeroll style, I immediately had to revise my rules to deal with the looser style of the early round Jackals.
My change reflected the idea that the Jackals were getting too many chips early on, leaving me the short stack if I made it to the final table. So, I started vying for those early chips by upping the ante on all-ins, and sliding my scale of hands that I'd play. In other words, I got looser.
Then, when I switched to real money tourneys, at first I tried to use my last set of rules on both cash ring games and cash tourneys. It seemed to work fairly well, but after awhile I realized there was something wrong with it. Namely, the rules were really designed exclusively for tourneys, and freerolls at that! While the willingness to go all-in early does have it's redeeming qualities, in the final analysis it's not going to get you to the final table often enough in cash tournaments. You're going to bust out too soon too often. That's the bottom line.
So the conclusion obviously is to tighten up in cash tourneys. But the strange thing is that didn't get clear to me until I went back and started playing some play money tournaments again, which is the reason for this post.
Play in some play money SnGs (the 180 or 90 player version) on Full Tilt, and you'll quickly find that the best way to make it to the final table is to play tighter 'n snot. Don't get caught up in the Jackal's nonsense. Fold, Fold, and re-fold. Hell I made a final table playing only two hands agressively: JJ and KQs, and folding all the rest. (Maybe I checked my way into seeing 3 other flops, and then folded). Then I won five hands at the final table and came in 3rd.
Then take that back to cash tourneys. Same thing, fold, fold, and re-fold, survive, play good cards, make people think you never bluff, ram and jam the hands you play, (hell you may even bluff when they least expect it), and don't lose your patience......find it, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Maybe it really all boils down to knowing how to play poker, which is why you see so many of the same pros at the major tournaments, and that there is no Holy Grail.
But don't underestimate the usefullness of the Play Money Tourneys and Freerolls.
