Then, a stroke of bad luck served to satisfy my curiosity. A few useless hands into a 10,000 chip tournament, my server froze. I couldn’t get back in for another couple of hours, and by that time I was eliminated from the tournament. I, or at least my user name, finished in 375th place out of about 1400. Sadly, that was the best that I had done for close to a week at the time.

The 375th place finish gave me two points in the league, which means that maybe they should rethink their scoring system somewhat. In large real money tournaments, the payout structure is organized so that anyone sitting out the whole time will certainly be eliminated without getting paid. I think that the benchmark for scoring should be performance compared to how one would do if they sat out the whole time, but I have no idea how to construct a mathematical formula to make it so.

If you agree, or disagree, or are just confused please let me know by commenting.

Arriving Late to a Tournament

By late, I don’t mean a couple of minutes. I mean something like 45 minutes after the start of a freeplay game with a thousand players and a starting stack of ten thousand chips, which is what I did this afternoon.

When I got there, I still had over nine thousand chips left. I also had an ace and eight and paired both to get a bunch of chips. I did manage to increase my stack up to over 20,000 chips, but it was downhill from there. I couldn’t bring myself to call a large bet with top pair and a decent kicker, and it turned out that I would’ve won. By that point, the blinds were big relative to my stack and so were the opposing chip stacks and I got bullied out of some more chips. I eventually pushed in with pocket sixes, but I had waited for the flop – a flop that gave someone else a set of 2s while I would’ve beat the other person in the pot.

Would I have pushed my opponent with the deuces out of the pot if I’d pushed all in immediately? I don’t know, but I probably wouldn’t have had to bet those sixes if I had played earlier to build up my stack against the weaker players and then it wouldn’t have been so easily bullied.

I also might have lost in the first few hands. I haven’t done that yet, but it could happen eventually.

Fake Fortune Fading Fast

Full Tilt Poker has certainly upped the stakes for its play money games.

Until recently, becoming a play money billionaire would have been an incredibly time consuming endeavor even with perfect play. With the highest stakes no limit tables having a maximum buy-in of two hundred thousand chips and the highest stakes tournament being a 100,000 play money dollars sit & go, making a million every day would have been the most that anyone could reasonably expect. At that rate, reaching the billion dollar plateau would take at least three years.

Anyone who could win that consistently would be much better off playig for real money, since the game is the same. Unfortunately for me, I can’t win with that sort of consistency.

My performance a couple of days ago made that quite clear.

After a confidence boosting second place finish in a 100k sit & go, I dared venture into the uncharted waters of the million play chip sit & go. I was very lucky at first, and jumped out to an early lead that I kept for a while. Then I must’ve lost my life preserver, because I got outplayed and drowned with a useless 4th place finish. I was set up after a short stack showed the cards that I folded to were not a bluff but not quite as good as my pair of aces with a decent kicker. That made me think I had a good enough chance with top pair but a pair on the board after a similarly large late bet by the same player. That player had actually flopped trip 4s and I was suddenly the short stack. I tried to double up with AQ , but ran into AK against the same player and lost.

Instead of cutting my losses, I played another one of those million chip tournaments and finished in 5th place out of 9. That put me under 2 million chips for my account, but I won a few hundred thousand in the high stakes play money ring game. I haven’t played since but I will probably play for free somewhere tonight.

I still have a lot to learn. At least I’m not paying actual money to better players in my quest to improve my own game.

The post Sitting Out An Entire Tournament first appeared on Antonine-Education.

The tournament began on Thursday, November 15 and runs until Saturday, November 17 at 3 a.m. EST.

Players will be able to watch their progression on the leader board, which is updated every 10 seconds. Top spot in the tournament will earn $300, $100 for second and $50 for third. Just make the top 10 and you’ll find a CherryCasino t-shirt on its way to you.

This isn’t the only promotion running at CherryCasino. Any deposit of $20 earns a ticket into our monthly prize draw for $500. We’ve already seen two players take the cash, perhaps next time it could be you!

We also offer a deposit bonus of 30%* on your first monthly deposit each and every month. If you deposit from a Pay Pal account linked to your bank account, you’ll receive a 20%* bonus.

CherryCasino is one of the smoothest non-download casinos on the Net. The casino accepts deposits though Visa, MasterCard and Pay Pal.

Prestige Casino

Prestige Casino was voted fifth best online casino in a Gambling.com readers’ poll, and has 12 of the most popular casino games on the Net to choose from.

Sign up and get a $40 or 15% bonus on a minimum $20 deposit, up to a maximum of $75. Refer 20 friends and get a $400 bonus.

Prestige Casino accepts PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Western Union, and is licensed by the Government of Antigua and Barbuda.

Lucky Nugget

Lucky Nugget players get $10 free and another $100 when they purchase $100 at the casino, and have a choice of Flash or download games.

Lucky Nugget is part of the Online Casino Malaysia Jackpot Madness progressive jackpot network, where players can try their luck at six different jackpots. A Lucky Nugget player recently took home $389,000 playing Treasure Nile; this was the second-largest online jackpot ever.

Regular players are rewarded with cash bonuses as part of Prospector’s Club, and visitors to the site can look forward to a $400 referral bonus and a $600 Amazon.com draw.

Lucky Nugget accepts Visa, MasterCard, FirePay, PayPal, ACH, and ClearChex, and payouts are reviewed by PriceWaterhouse Coopers.

The Sands of the Caribbean

The Sands of the Caribbean is offering a 50% bonus on all deposits of $100 or more, up to a maximum of $50.

There’s also a $20 referral bonus, four random $25 draws between Monday and Thursday of each week, ten random $100 draws every month, and a $5 ECP (Electronic Check Processing) bonus.

The Sands has some great comp programs; players are rewarded with merchandise, travel points, or casino chips.

There have been several big jackpots recently at The Sands, including two in the last two months that were over $200,000. The Jackpot Mania Rags to Riches jackpot is about to go through $115,000, so be sure to check it out.

Payouts are reviewed by PriceWaterhouse Coopers, and the casino accepts Visa, MasterCard, ECP, wire transfers, and money orders.

The post CherryCasino Sponsors Online Casino Malaysia Caribbean Stud Tourney first appeared on Antonine-Education.