Degree West
The west regional tournaments are this weekend. I played yesterday in round 1B, and busted out around 120th. Just got no cards - the only showdown I won was with QJs where I caught a Q to beat TT, and I only played 'em because they were the best cards I'd seen up to that point and I was getting impatient. Such is poker.
For those of you out east, the blinds are pretty forgiving for the first two rounds, then it gets rough. My plan was to play tight for the first two rounds and show down big cards to build an image, then use that to steal some pots later. I think it would've worked - a couple of other people at my table tried the same strategy, and one of them built a pretty big stack doing so - but the cards just didn't cooperate, and I managed only one steal. Still, just winning two pots I made it through half the field to bust out early in round 4, it would only have taken slightly better cards to take a run at the top 20. Round 1A took about 5.5 hours to complete, 1B was around 5. It would not shock me if round 2 takes 6 hours or more, at the end they stopped raising the blinds to let the players fight it out themselves.
It might just have been my table, but I was impressed by most of the play - I figured it'd be an all-in preflop fest early on, but most people were conservative preflop and then making their moves post-flop. I also figured with the lottery qualifications there'd be a lot of people who didn't know poker at all, but I only saw one of those - some guy mucked his hand while all-in because he thought his hand was dead when he didn't have the chips to call a raise.
The promotional package included a t-shirt, free deoderant, some promotional coupons from River Rock, an issue of Bluff magazine, and scratch-n-win lottery ticket. Also a River Rock card protector at the tournament itself. Not too shabby for a freeroll. Good luck to everyone yet to play, and may you catch better cards than I did.
For those of you out east, the blinds are pretty forgiving for the first two rounds, then it gets rough. My plan was to play tight for the first two rounds and show down big cards to build an image, then use that to steal some pots later. I think it would've worked - a couple of other people at my table tried the same strategy, and one of them built a pretty big stack doing so - but the cards just didn't cooperate, and I managed only one steal. Still, just winning two pots I made it through half the field to bust out early in round 4, it would only have taken slightly better cards to take a run at the top 20. Round 1A took about 5.5 hours to complete, 1B was around 5. It would not shock me if round 2 takes 6 hours or more, at the end they stopped raising the blinds to let the players fight it out themselves.
It might just have been my table, but I was impressed by most of the play - I figured it'd be an all-in preflop fest early on, but most people were conservative preflop and then making their moves post-flop. I also figured with the lottery qualifications there'd be a lot of people who didn't know poker at all, but I only saw one of those - some guy mucked his hand while all-in because he thought his hand was dead when he didn't have the chips to call a raise.
The promotional package included a t-shirt, free deoderant, some promotional coupons from River Rock, an issue of Bluff magazine, and scratch-n-win lottery ticket. Also a River Rock card protector at the tournament itself. Not too shabby for a freeroll. Good luck to everyone yet to play, and may you catch better cards than I did.
Comments
stp
You're welcome. Oh yeah, something I forgot - there was a TV camera filiming some of the action when it got down to three tables, so the TV coverage will probably include clips from the preliminaries... dress nice
Sorry to hear that.