Australian Freeroll At Party Poker

Every day at Party Poker there are 2 freerolls available to Australian poker players. Actually, to be completely honest, the freerolls are open to Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans, but the majority of competitors tend to come from Australia. The freerolls are given the name Trey Nations if you’re looking for them on Party Poker.

The first Trey Nations Freeroll for the day kicks off at 8:05pm (Sydney, Melbourne time) and usually has around 800 entrants. The format of the tournament is as a speed tournament which Party Poker seems to be particularly enamored with. With a speed tournament the blinds go up every 4 minutes so it’s crucial to take down an early pot to put you ahead of the game. It will also allow you to play a little more tightly until you get your next big hand.

However, one of the big problems with the speed structure in a freeroll is the vast number of people who register early and then don’t take their seats until after the tournament starts. By the time you’ve sat through 5 or 6 people all timing out because they’re not there yet, the blinds have already been raised once and in some situations twice.

The payout structure is pretty good too – not that you’ll win a whole hell of a lot for the time spent playing, this is a grind remember. The top 100 finishers get paid starting with 0.30 for placings 81 – 100 up to $35.60 for taking out 1st place.

The second Tret Nations Freeroll for the night at Party Poker takes place at 11:05pm Sydney time. This freeroll generally has fewer entrants (around 300 – 400) and this is so for a couple of reasons. The obvious reason is that this freeroll starts late into the night for a good proportion of the population who are eligible to take part. But the more compelling reason is that the prize structure is nowhere near as enticing as the first freeroll – not that the first freeroll is by any means lucrative.

In the later Trey Nations freeroll you can play for entry into a weekly 50 Seat Frenzy Tournament that has a buy-in worth $15 and is held on the following Sunday morning. Payouts go to the top 10 finishers of the freeroll.

Because the prize structure is less of a drawcard you tend to get a lot more of the freeroll All-ins that are so familiar at the start of the tournament. The speed structure of the blinds forces you to push a lot harder than you possibly would otherwise too.

Realistically though, you don’t enter a Trey Nations freeroll – or any other freeroll for that matter – with the expectation of making money out of it. Rather, you should use the experience to gain valuable tournament experience without risking your hard earned. Once you’ve gotten lucky a couple of times and the field has been whittled down, the competition begins to get very serious. Competitors are playing hard to ensure that the last hour or so they’ve invested hasn’t been for nought.

If you’ve got the patience and are willing to grind out hard for little or no return then you may just have the satisfaction of starting a bankroll from $0. Good luck to you if you choose to give it a go – if you’re ever a chance t manage it then Party Poker is as good a place as any to try.

Freerolling At Full Tilt

I’ve been easing back from Party Poker’s cash tables over the last few days for a variety of reasons, one of which was that I wasn’t particularly happy with my style of play and felt it could do with a brush up. So rather than take a break from poker altogether I’ve been sitting down at the nightly Freerolls in a bid to nurture a more aggressive game and to try it out under ‘match conditions’.

My preference is to play in the Full Tilt Freeroll even though the payout at Party extends all the way down to 80th and the field is a lot smaller. At Full Tilt there are regularly over 1500 starters in the Australian Freeroll and they only pay down to 27th place, however the blind structure is a lot slower giving you a realistic chance to recover from a beat without being blinded out.

Last night was the first time I made to the money in a Full Tilt Freeroll and, not only that, I went deep finishing in 5th place.

The most satisfying part of the tournament was a comeback from dead last place when there were 57 remaining. I was in a comfortable position with around 55,000 chips until I basically threw away all but 4,500 of them. With the blinds at 3,000 / 1,500 and the ante at 100, I wasn’t going to last very long and it certainly didn’t look as though I was going to cash. So, when I was UTG I chucked my last 4,000 chips in with J 8c and resigned myself to closing up shop. Three callers were all over me, but when I flopped trip 8s I was pretty sure I was saved.

I picked up QQ the very next hand, threw it all-in again and my tournament was alive and kicking once again. But then, I not only get back in the game, I proceeded to race through the field until I was chip leader heading towards the final table.

So what did I win for over 5 hours of hard work, good play and good luck? $6!!!

Read it an weep suckers

A Second Grinding Challenge

So, I have managed to add a lucrative $6 in freeroll earnings to the sick and sorry Full Tilt account to bring it up to the grand total of…um…$10.

I’ve been bleeding cash badly at Full Tilt and the situation’s dire. The main problem is that I haven’t been preserving my profits when I’ve been ahead at a table. It’s the same story as before, I’d be sitting on a handy profit for a session only to eventually bust out due to bad play or bad beat.

As with what I’ve been doing at Party Poker for the past 2 and a half months, I propose to devote some time at Full Tilt to build up my bankroll using a similar bankroll strategy. I’ll be playing the $10 NLHE tables and will leave a table AS SOON AS I make a profit, regardless of the size of the profit. I’ll then move over to another table and (hopefully) repeat the process.

Starting bankroll is $10.

Second Freeroll Tourney Payout

I picked up my second Freeroll payout last night making it to 38th and earning me the princely sum of 0.70. I know, I know, it’s a pittance, but on the other hand, the prize money represents around 3 days worth of what I need to earn to reach my short-term goal of $60.00, so in that respect it’s not bad at all. Perspective is a funny thing, no?

I may have progressed deeper if I hadn’t been so conscious of the payout bubble, around which I altered my playing style. Earlier I was prepared to push when I had to and was paid off as a result. I became too careful, releasing winning hands rather than accept the risk v reward ratio. Consequently I left myself short-stacked against the rapidly rising blinds. In this kind of speed tourney you have to continually push when you’ve got half a hand to keep building the chips and remain oblivious to the number of opponents that remain.

Still learning...still learning.