Playing The Million Dollar Freeroll at Ultimate Bet

The email I got from Ultimate Bet said that the game would start at 3pm eastern which is noon on the west coast.  It game was never listed in the schedule which is odd, but at 11:55 a table opened and said I was registering for a tournament game.

There are 2489 people registered and with 3 minutes to go there are only 1559 people seated, which would be nice if 900 people don’t show up.  I would expect some players not to show because some of them qualified over a month ago, which is a long time.

Now we are down to 2 minutes and 2084 people seated.

The prize is a million dollars it says 1st place pays the 100k buyins, not sure what that means. There are payouts to 99 other places, but it does not say what those payouts are. Just says “99 other places pay out.”

Now it is up to 2122 people seated with 30 seconds to go.

2494 people when the game started.

After 20 minutes it switches to play for play and we have to wait for 119 other tables to finish their hands.  When you have qualifiers and 75 people will win then people slow playing is a real problem, when you have 1 top prize then who cares, you can’t win by slow playing and eventually everyone will lose their chips so nobody really does this.

After 30 minutes 2100 players left in the game.

Pocket 44 against pocket 55, no one bets until the river then 55 bets 100 I call and lose of course.  This has not been one of my better games unfortunately.  Too bad I can’t save up some of my luck from a few other games and use it on this one.  Oh well.

Every hand I have played I have completely missed the flop, I am going to just start going all in pre-flop because I am just wasting my chips away like this.

AQ with a flop of K, 9, 8
AK with flop Q, 4, 5
JJ with flop A, K, 9

These are not really helping me much at all, just making it easy to fold when someone bets. I get Ah,Qh and someone raises me pre-flop to 300 I call and the flop is 6c, 7c, Jc the other guy goes all in and I fold again of course. This is probably this worst game I have played in a long time. I am ready for this to just be over.

I am only going all in from now on so I can just put myself out of misery.

I get A, J and call again, what is wrong with me?  One really bad thing about this site is that there is no way to tell how much money in in the pot. Other than memorize the color of the chips and try to add them up by looking at how tall the stacks are out there.

The problem is sometimes there are 30 chips out there and there is 197 in the pot, and other times there are 6 chips out there and there is 1400 in the pot. Well there is a lot of difference between about 200 and 1400.  But it looks like the 200 is a lot more than 1400 by looking at the chips.  This has screwed me up 3 times now, and once I just folded because I had no idea how much was out there and didn’t think I could accurately figure it out before I ran out of time, when the person takes the chips then it tells you how many were out there, and I had good odds to call, kind of like rubbing salt in a wound.

They switch to hand for hand play when they are going to raise the blinds so we are back to that for now.  

One hour and 10 minutes and there are 1856 people left, everyone is really hanging on tight.

I was in the big blind and I had a 2,3 I want to check, so I clicked on the button to check in advance, at the same time I was clicking on the button someone went all in and the 4 people after them had checked the fold in advance button.  

So I ended up with amost all of my chips in the pot with a 2,3 of course the flop come A, K, 10 an I decide to bet another 200 to see if I can get the other guy to fold. He goes all in.  Then I realize that I hand not bet all my chips only about a fifth of them, not near as bad as it looked.

I am now down to 1100 chips, one quarter of the reason I am down is because I have to take wild guesses at how much is in the pot, and three quarters of the reason is because I have been getting the worst flops ever.

The blinds are only at 30/60 so I still have 18 big bets left so I don’t know why I am in such a panic, I guess just because the last 5 tournaments I have played I have tripled up in the first 10 minutes or better.

Just got 55 went all in, got called by QQ and hit a 5 on the turn.  Ok, now I have to stop complaining about my luck since I shouldn’t even be here any more.

Ok, just figured out that you can go to options and set it so that you can see the amount in the pot at the top of the screen, but you have to reset this each time you are moved to a new table.  Which is nice that it can be set but a real pain in the butt to have to do this every time.  I wish that the people who write these programs were forced to use them so they could see how inconvenient they are.

Click

1. options


2. show pot value


3. apply


4. ok

only four clicks every time they move you to a new table, maybe they could throw in a couple more things that I have to do each time to what about restarting the software each time I get moved to a new table and force me to log in each time. Please don’t tell them this, they might do it.

Ok, I just figured out that there is a button under options that says save settings as defaults so if you set it and then click that button that should be your new defaults, so you don’t have to reset them each time you change tables.

Two hours and I was just up to 2800 but now I am back down to 1100 chips, not one of my better games but I guess I am still in it so that is worth something.

There are 1200 players left at just over 2 hours (2 hours 9 minutes) into the game, I am in 1100th place with 3600 chips, what a difference a few minutes can make.

I am getting to play an unusual number of big blinds without being raised, or if I am raised many times it is only one more big blind to play.  

The guy to my left knocked out 2 players in the first couple minutes and got his stack up to 6000 and now he has worked it up to 12000, and of course I have played the whole game right before him.  At least he is not the chip leader.

There are 1054 players remaining,  I am 560th place after 2.5 hours with 3800 chips.

Getting a lot of 9 2, and 8 3 kind of hands which make it really easy to fold.

Caught a T,T and one player who called me to the river with nothing. So I am up to 7000 now.  709 players remaining and I am in 363rd place.

After 3 hours there are 573 players and I am 320 with 6980 in chips.

But this game only has 1 seat in the million dollar final table, so it does not really matter so much, it’s kind of all or nothing.  It doesn’t make any sense to try and limp in to a $20 payout when you can just play hard and have a chance at a million bucks.

I am under 10 big blinds again because I have no cards, so I am going to have to start playing some more crappy cards.

At the 3 hour break (which is really after 3 hours and 20 minutes) there are 414  me 367 4720 chips
Up to 10k in chips now back down to 7 in about 5 minutes. Blinds are 600/1200 and the ante is 125 so it goes fast. I didn’t realize how short stacked I am with the ante it makes the blinds more like

Went all in with A8 against TJ flop was 8, 9, 9 I thought for sure he was going to make a straight but he didn’t.
I have 14k in chips now, so I am up to 9 or so big blinds.  I am going to have to start playing more hands when I am in late position.  Lots of players are going all in now, trying to steal the blinds.

After 4 hours there are 254 players left and I am in position 188 with 11,830 chips.

I was getting low in chips and got K J suited, in the big blind, one player doubled the bet and I called hit a King on the flop went all in and got called, the other guy had K, Q.

After 4 and a half hours I am out of the tournament, with 153 players left.

Well not one of my better games.