When you need to stop playing the poker freerolls
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You will find a cross section of the entire poker community playing the freerolls; from absolute novices who have never played a single hand before but have maybe watched a bit of poker on the TV, to poker players of a very good standard who perhaps have a bit more time than money. This results in a situation where most of the poorer players get knocked out very early in the tournament leaving a hard-core of decent players to fight it out for the next couple of hours.
If you play a few online poker freerolls and you find yourself improving enough to make it past the first hour, it is probably time for you to move on and leave the freerolls behind. Playing a freeroll and being successful – ie winning some money – means sitting for anything from three to five hours for a prize from a prize fund of as little as $50. You could play for four hours, finish in the top ten and win less than $10!
The next step up in your poker ladder is to move on to the paid entry tournaments, even if you are only paying a dollar or two to enter. Here’s the difference between them in a nutshell. Poker freerolls typically have a total prize fund of anything from $50 to $500, this is money put up by the poker website itself so that you go there and play, brand recognition in other words. There are up to 2400 people playing in every freeroll tournament so the money per player is very small, typically $0.20 or less.
Now if you decide to opt instead for a paying tournament, even if the entrance fee is only $1, there is already five times as much money in the prize pool per player and that’s without “added” money which the poker site will often throw in to encourage more players to join the tournament. You have just as much chance of a prize in this game as in a freeroll, in fact you probably have a better chance because you don’t have as many players in the game so you stand less chance of coming up against a lucky player who will burn you with a “bad beat”.
So ask yourself the question, what would you rather spend your time doing
– spending hours at a freeroll for a pittance of a prize or paying a
couple of dollars and aiming for a prize that’s actually worth winning?
Article by Ian McIntosh*
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First million winner of a online poker: Poker-playing UK chef $1m richer
Lee Biddulph, a 28 year old chef from Blackpool, won a million dollars
A chef flew in to Manchester Airport almost $1m (£567,419)
richer after beating about 4,000 hopefuls in an amateur poker tournament.
(UK).- After battling 3,900 opponents online, Lee Biddulph, a 28 year old
chef from Blackpool,
England has walked away with $1 million dollars, the winner of ParadisePoker.com’s
first Million
Dollar Free online poker tournament. This is the world’s largest online
poker tournament prize
ever, and it was free to participate.
The final table, which was played out in a mystery tropical location, was
made up of nine amateurs,
eight from the U.S. who beat out almost four thousand players at ParadisePoker.com.
In the end, it
came down to a showdown between Biddulph and Mike Darweesh, a software engineer
who processes
images from Mars, and lives in Tempe, Arizona.
After seven hours of play at the final table, Biddulph revealed the tension.
"Even my teeth are
shaking," he said as he played the final hand.
"ParadisePoker.com
is a great experience at the best of times, but throw us$ 1 million in to
the
pot and make it a freeroll for amateurs and you discover a whole new crowd
able to challenge the
best of the pros", said Bruce Stubbs, marketing director, ParadisePoker.com.
"Lee played
brilliantly, he started the final table with less chips -- us$ 1.58 million
to Mike’s us$ 2.72
million and came out a winner.
"In the end - the us$ 1 Million Freeroll Tournament has been a historic
event, lots of fun and
ample opportunity for online poker players who want to try out their skills
with the best of
amateurs. Our second us$ 1 Million Freeroll Tournament is already in progress,"
Stubbs added.
All finalists received an all expenses paid weekend to a five star resort
in Costa Rica for
themselves and a guest, as well as receiving us$ 10, 000 just for making it
to the final table.
