freeroll vs buyin MTTs

do any of you think there is significant differences between the 2? what kind of things would you do in buyins that you wouldn't in freerolls and vice versa?

I think the play is very erratic at freerolls. People will play way looser, because they risk nothing. Just like a play chip game.

i played a freeroll today, and i placed 223 outta 818...so i guess it's not THAT bad. i played the beginning like a loose ring game. it worked well cuz i built a moderately sized stack. eventually when it was down to 250 people or something people started to steal blinds. i tried to protect mine by reraising with KJ. they called. flop comes with a K. i raise them all in (i had about triple their stack), they called. the river turns their 77 into a set and they take me down.

after that i had JQ i think, i was SB and i called. hit my Q pair, went all in trying to steal the pot. they called...they hit a set on the flop.

all in all i didn't do too bad cuz the my last 2 big plays were just unlucky.

i don't play MTTs much, but for those of you that play MTTs regularly how many of them should i be placing ITM and how many should i make it to the final table?

i don't play MTTs much, but for those of you that play MTTs regularly how many of them should i be placing ITM and how many should i make it to the final table?

Impossible question to answer. How much in "regularly" every day, once or twice a week, once a month? What is buy in? What site? How many players? Too many variables.

MTT's are much more streaky than SNGs. You have to have a solid game and get very lucky to make a lot of money. I consider myself a pretty solid player and have made a few final tables and lots of "in the money" but no serious cash. Overall, not a profitable area of the game for me so far. However, I think it is the most exciting form of poker playing in very big tournaments with 800-1000 entries. I generally make it to the second hour and often through second break into third hour. That is enough to "cash" or get at least the buy-in back. I play tight and if the cards come and you avoid bad beats your stack will grow slow and steady. Once the blinds go up if you don't have a solid stack you are in move in mode and hope to get lucky against larger stacks.

It is most exciting because there is very little room for mistakes as the tournament progresses. The funny thing about MTT's is that you are doing ok if you can break even while waiting for the BIG SCORE. It only takes one top 3 finish to set up your BR for quite a while. In order to get there you are going to need a lot of game and a lot of luck.

I've not played a lot of freerolls but I did have a problem the other day which I've never seen in buy in's. I was on a fairly tight table where no one busted for the best part of the first hour. So we were all way behind the chip leaders. I guess this raises two questions 1) How should you handle a table like this - ie how loose should you go to not fall too far behind the avg stack size. 2) At what point should you start worrying about being far behind the avg stack size even if you are doing well on your particular table?

what i meant about how well someone should be doing is...

say if i played 100 tournies. how many of those should i make it into the final table, and how many in the money?

like would it be worth all the time i spend playing 99 tournies, lose them all, but win 1 and place 1st?

this is obviously not good because if the buyin is $1, you've wasted 100 bucks just to win $150. so all in all you've spent 100*2=200 hours for $50.

so basically for those who play regularly, how well do you need to do on average, to make it worth all the time and effort?

I'm actually of the opinion that you should play big multi table freerolls ONLY when you have no money to play elsewhere.

I think it is the worst game going. Play rock solid and well, and you will still be knocked out early most of the time.

So you're a 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 favorite on big pots. Big fat deal. You will be faced with 5-10 of them before you're anywhere near the money.

Little story from 5 minutes ago:
(my) big PF raise with KK called by three people. Flop is rags: J 8 5
So I go all in.

I get two callers, both of them with AT

They guy who's suited is a 4 to 1 dog. The unsuited guy is 5 to 1. But an ace comes. So I'm out.

And an ace will come often enough. You don't have to just beatodds, you have to beat odds a dozen times.

disagree - near the end of freerolls, the play is just as good as it is in low cost tourneys (1 or 2 dollars).

Anytime you go all in preflop and lose with KK, you can't be too surprised if you get beat. Also - the 4 to 1 and 5 to 1 odds - are those the odds preflop or post flop?

those are postflop odds, courtesy of:

http://simulator.pokertips.org/simulator.php

BTW I wasn't all in until the flop showed the rags.

Okay, enough whining. I've watched some of these multis finish, and the play is much better at the end. It just requires quite a bit of luck to get to the end.

Alternatively, you could play conservative as hell and get in the last couple hundred with a short stack... I don't know if that's a good idea.

I am forced to play these things until I place, since my bankroll is zero right now.

I would LOVE advice on doing better in them. Have played about 20 (PokerRoom, 1800 players) and got $5 for my trouble so far.

i think you have a much better chance of placing ITM by playing aggressive early on. at the beginning it's filled with fish, so i think it's best to play it like loose ring tables. take all the fish's chips.

you need the chips. playing conservative will only hold you so far. sometimes the killer cards just don't come and by that time the blinds are getting big and you'll need to go all in sooner or later which are coin flips.

i think playing conservative puts you in many more coinflip situations where you can get knocked out. but by going aggressive, you can build a big stack, and bully all the little guys.

some might say you wanna stay in the tourney so you shouldn't be so aggressive....i'd agree with SnGs...but with a tourney i don't have the time or luck to be conservative and wait for the cards and play on a lotta coin flips. so if i get a bad beat early on, fine by me...better to be knocked out early by a bad beat, then knocked out just outta the money when i'm forced all in.

I totally agree with Hypermegachi here. I have played in plenty of the Poker Room freerolls and placed ITM a few times. I am naturally quite a tight player but have found that u need to be aggressive in these freeroll tournaments, especially in the first half-hour/hour. Regardless of it being a freeroll, the standard is quite good once u get down to the last 100-200 so u need chips to play the second hour.

It doesn't necessarily mean u have to be a commando kid trying to rack up your stack. I just think it easier to try and scoop some chips of the "lesser" players early on to put me in a stronger position to play more selectively against the "better" players at business end of the tournament. If I crash out trying, so what?! My theory is that u might as well go out in 1600th as oppose to 600th or even 60th, u still get nothing for it.

This doesn't mean u have to bet with nothing, in fact, quite the opposite, I have found that people will bet absolutely ridiculously with things like top pair even where there are things like str8s, flushes etc staring people in the face, which makes trapping even easier (and very lucrative in the chip stakes!)

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freeroll vs buyin MTTs

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freeroll vs buyin MTTs