Sunday, April 20, 2008

Texas Holdem Online Freeroll Tournament Tips #2

Select the right Online Freeroll Tournament

In our last blog we discussed the overall basics. Now I am going to explore the mechanics of how to win money in online freeroll texas holdem tournaments.

Before we begin to play, let’s figure out what to play. All of these blogs are about No Limit Holdem because NL Texas Holdem offers the biggest opportunity to make money playing poker! In any tournament, there are going to be a lot of fish, and these fish will make you a winner.

One of the most important parts of winning is ensuring your time is well invested. Since you are about to spend a few hours or more playing in the tournament, we want to be sure that your time is well invested. Many players will play several online freerolls simultaneously to maximize this time investment, and this often is a good strategy. We will discuss this further in the next tips blog.

Freeroll Tournament Return Value

First, let’s determine how to pick the right online Texas Holdem Freeroll tournament. There is a formula for this and it is actually quite simple. Determine the percentage of paid spots top total players. Divide the total paid spots by the maximum players and multiply by 100. For example, a tournament with a 500 player maximum that pays 50 places has a Tournament Return value of 10%. (50 divided by 500 equals .10, times 100 equals 10%) A tournament that has a 1000 maximum and pays 120 places has a TR Value of 12%. If both tournaments offered a $500 prize package, you would want to enter the second one to have a slightly better chance of winning money, even though it may have more players. A 2000 player tournament that pays 50 places has a TR of 2.5%. Where do you want to spend your time?

Find an online poker room that offers the highest TR values! Observe some tournaments also, because they do not always fill up. On one site I play, one freeroll tournament allows for a maximum of 1000 players, but usually there are only about 400, and it pays 60 spots, a TR of 15%!

Freeroll Tournament Skill Factors

How many chips are initially issued and how fast do the blinds rise?

Some tournaments are called deep stacks, because they start with a high amount of chips for each player in relation to the starting blinds. These tournaments usually take longer to play and are considered more favorable to a skilled experienced player than the novice. If a standard tournament starts with 1000 or 1500 chips per player, than a deep stack may start with 3000 to 5000 chips. Both may start the blinds at 10/20 or 20/30. A higher starting stack with low blinds attracts the more skilled players.

The blinds may rise in a tournament in increments of 5 or 6 minutes and these are generally called speed tournaments. Luck is a bigger factor in speed tournaments. A novice player can get lucky in a speed tournament, and wipe out the experienced players!

Tournaments with increments of 8-10 minutes are pretty standard and favor skill a bit more.

Some tournaments will have blind increase of 12 to even 15 minutes. These tournaments will take a lot of time to play, and if you have a deep stack tournament with 15 minute blinds, it can take several hours or more to finish. These tournaments reduce the luck factor significantly and attract skilled players.

Overall, high starting chips, low starting blinds and long blinds means hands played and more time to wait for the big hands. These are freerolls where patience and skill is a bigger factor in winning money.

Low starting chips, higher starting blinds and shorter blinds mean fewer hands played, and luck is the bigger factor.

So to sum up, some tournaments have a high tournament return payout, and we want to find these tournaments. Of course, the prize amount is a factor here too. If the freeroll is for $50, we pick the best TR, but if it is for $1500, we may want to play even if the TR is low, because the payback could be so much higher. And we look for tournaments with patience and skill levels that are advantageous to us!

Picking the right online freeroll tournament to play is the first step to winning money in Online Texas Holdem Freeroll Tournaments.

And the
Texas Holdem Dynamic Point Count Super Strategy can provide the tools you need to not just win money, but to win tournaments!

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Texas Holdem Online Freeroll Tournament Tips #2

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