'cuz I'm freeeee...freeroooooollllling

In what is sure to become a regular fixture to my online poker schedule, the second weekend of the month is time to freeroll time for me. Saturday is the Iron Man freeroll and the One a Day freeroll. Sunday is the Full Tilt Poker Academy freeroll. These are my opportunities to pad the bankroll after jumping through the hoops that FTP puts in front of me.

One a Day freeroll - For earning at least one FT Point on each day of a calendar month, I qualify to either receive 15 bonus medals which can be spent in the Iron Man store or I can join in on the One a Day freeroll. Last month I took the bonus medals but since I would just end up spending the medals on tourney entries as the best way to monetize my Iron Man achievements, I decided to just go ahead and do the freeroll instead. It is a $2000 freeroll with a fairly flat payout structure. 1409 entered and with the top 360 paying. First place paid $232.50 and 91-180 paid out $3.

I spent a long time just folding. Blinds started at 15/30 and for the majority of the first four blind levels I took down a few blinds when raising pre with strong starting hands. It wasn't until late in the fourth level that I got involved in a hand. With two limpers ahead of me I completed the SB with 3s5s and saw a flop four ways. It came down 5c4s2s for top pair and and OESFD, not bad. I bet pot figuring I would just take this thing down but was surprised/elated/horrified to get two callers. Turn was 8c and I shoved the remaining 810 into a 960 pot which was enough to shake off the other players. That got me to 1770. The next hand I picked up KQos on the button and took down a three way limped pot when I hit top pair. Those were the main hands that got me healthy. I had a couple other skirmishes and some blind steals but that was enough to get me past the bubble to my massive $3 payday. Since the next payout was 90 players out it was time to just jam and I got it in with 99 versus KQ and lost the flip. For a tourney with such a small min-cash I think I'm going to play more aggressively next time and look to either bust out early or position myself to make a deep run.

Iron Man Silver freeroll - Participants in the Iron Man promotion have the option of taking bonus medals or playing in the freeroll. I decided to do the freeroll this month for the same reasons as above. Since I'm at the silver level of Iron Man my freeroll is good for a $15,000 prize pool with the top top 180 places of an 837 person field. First place gets $2250 and a mini-cash is a reasonable $37.50.

The best part about these Iron Man freerolls is that people get entered into it by default since you need to opt out to get the medals. As such there are a lot of stacks on auto-pilot. When I started it became clear immediately that only three of the 8 seated were actually there so it was time to feast on the blinds of the the players who probably don't even know they are enrolled in the tourney. One player ended up being an idiot and was looking to mix it up with other players at the table instead of just cooperating and robbing the absent players which would have been far more profitable. I was fortunate to have had position on the other two and could min-raise and take down blinds for half the hands if they folded to me. Eventually the idiot started raising more than his fair share and I protested by taking the maximum time allowable including my time bank to let him know that I'm still at the table and if he's going to steal from me then I'm going to make it less profitable by slowing him down. I catch one set early and extracted some chips from another live player but for the first half of the tourney most of my profit came just from stealing blinds of absent players. However, those players eventually got blinded off and it was time to actually play some poker. Since the min-cash was actually a reasonable payout I sized up my stack and kept an eye on the lobby so I could estimate if I had enough chips to coast across the finish line. There was an absolutely irritating player on my immediate right who would literally take the maximum amount of time every single hand before folding. He had to have been there too or else he would be auto-folded after timing out the first time. Though he was a pain in the butt his actions actually benefitted my by slowing down my blind off time since we were getting in fewer hands per blind level. Eventually I got to the point of no return where I had zero fold equity and had to try to fold my way to the money which I was eventually able to do thanks to some microstacks who got squashed before I did. After I cashed I got it in twice with ace high. Won the first thanks to a fold but lost the second to QT who caught a T.

$40.50 of infinite ROI sugar in the bank which brings my cashier total to $277.57 which is the highest it's ever been. Quite pleased with how my first freerolls went and am looking forward to pulling down some bigger cashes in the future.