Hatch In The Money

With no available cash to spare for poker, I've been trying out various freerolls on some of the online poker sites. The best one I've found so far are the regular 2000 player $200.00 freerolls on Poker.com. These games get wild and wooly, and usually at least half of the 2000 starting players are gone within the first 30 minutes. The cool thing about poker.com's freerolls is that the top 100 players at least get something, even if it's only 25 cents.

So tonight I registered for the tournament and waited around until it started at 9. I won a big pot about 3 hands in and tripled up to about 3000 from the 1000 chips everyone starts with. Then I started playing really tight until there were about 800 people left. I wasn't really getting very many cards though and I slowly drifted down to about 200th place from my high of 15th place near the beginning. Just before the break I won a heads up all-in and moved up to about 67th out of 140 or so. At that point I completely clamped down and didn't play a hand at all until there were only 100 left and I was in the money.

I had to make a decision at this point on whether to go for broke and try to place really high or just hold on really tight and creep up as much as possible. I decided to do the latter and that I would only play pocket Aces or Kings unless I was in the blinds. I broke the rule once and pushed all in from the button with KQs and managed to steal the blinds, which probably helped me get about 10 places higher than I would have.

I ended up busting out in the big blind in 31st place, so my grand total winnings was $1.00 in real money and a $1.00 coupon that I have no idea what to do with. It's not much, but it's my first time to finish in the money in a really large online tournament, so I'll take it. I'm sure I could have finished higher if any real cards had come. I only had AKo once the whole tournament and the highest pair I had was Jacks. I didn't make any big mistakes and didn't chase any straight or flush draws the whole game.

So anyway, if you want to try playing in a large online tournament and don't want to risk any cash, go to Poker.com and sign up and I'll see you in the daily freerolls.