Freerolling

I played in a couple of freerolls recently. Usually I don't bother with them but I will play in them occasionally. They're a diversion, somewhat fun, kind of silly, they generally don't take long, and don't cost anything.

I had to take my two free shots at the Team Canada World Series of Poker freeroll from PokerStars. Thanks PokerStars. I mean it is the WSOP, The Poker Dream.

In the first one I busted out around 2300th out of 3000. I didn't get any hands to play. It's turbo format. The blinds were $50/$100 and I had around $1350 in my stack. I wanted to make a move. I didn't want to get to where doubling up would leave me still with a below average stack. My first playable hand was KQ in middle position, my first hand at a new table. UTG limped with around $900, big stack UTG+2 limped with around $5000. I pushed. Folded around UTG and UTG+2 both called. UTG showed AK, he should have open pushed. Big stack UTG+2 in freeroll style called two all ins with AJ. A jack flopped and big stack busted both of us.

In the second one I finished around 1200th out of 3000. In this one I got some cards and won a few hands. I got my stack up to around $4200. Blinds were $100/$200 and I had an above average stack. Still I was eager to make a move as it's turbo and I wanted to stay ahead of the escalating blinds. I was dealt 77 in the BB. Folded to CO with around $6000 who raised to $600. Micro stack SB didn't have enough to cover the small blind and was all in. I thought CO might be stealing and I was making a move here regardless. I pushed. CO paused a few moments and in freeroll style called for 2/3 of his stack with AJ. I was pleased to get my money in as a slight favorite to double up to a pretty good stack with a fair shot of at least finishing in the money. The flop was good but there was a jack on the turn and for the second time I busted out to AJ. No worries or regrets, such is freeroll.

One more freeroll. Stars had a promotion for the Sunday Million tournament. For 10 FPP you could enter a qualifying tournament which paid the top 27 finishers a buyin to the $215 event. This isn't quite a freeroll because there is a cost which is FPP. To determine if this is good value you need to quantify the value of an FPP. Stars has pegged the FPP with a conversion value of up to 10 cents. If you go onto the FPP store and divide the FPP cost of the stuff you can get by the number of FPPs it's around 5 cents per FPP. However one time there was a special 1000 player 50 FPP freeroll with a prize pool of $5,000. That works out to 10 cents per FPP.

So for the Sunday Million freeroll it has a prize pool of 27 * $215 = $5805. The per FPP value of this tournament is then $5805/# of players/10 FPP cost. I wanted at least a 25% premium on the 10 cents to enter this tournament. Setting the per FPP value to 12.5 cents and solving for the number of players yields the cutoff point of 4644 players. So if there were fewer than 4644 players in the tournament I would spend 10 FPP for a shot. If there were more I wouldn't join.

I was watching the lobby right up to the start time. Unfortunately around 5 minutes before the start it was over 4700 players, then well over 5000. So it wasn't worth enough to join, and it was an easy decision not to play. I was kind of leaning toward not playing anyway, which is why I set the 25% premium as the minimum to join. After two freerolls in a short time I was kind of tired of them and not real motivated for a third. So it's back to the cash games and sng tournaments for now for a while until the next big free promotion.