Cake 10K Ticket Quest
January 20th, 2010
Last week I happened to cash in a shootout event that gave away 2 free tickets to a $10,000 prize pool poker freeroll. There is no way to buy into the poker online event; you can only gain entrance by winning these special shootout online poker tournaments. It costs nothing extra to the players to go for a chance to win these tickets, they are just an added bonus on top of the regular cash prizes. The $10k tournaments are every Sunday in honor of football season. This week I have not been as fortunate to get a ticket yet. It’s a pretty difficult format. You have to win the first 6-handed sit and go straight out. There’s no prize for 2nd, just first. And even after you win the 1st SNG you haven’t even won any money yet. Only 5/6 of the final players will win cash with the top 2 getting the bonus tickets. I’ve been cashing in a majority of them, but not higher than 4th place this week. The problem with these is that it takes a long time. You have to first wait for 36 players to sign up, which can take up to an hour sometimes. Then you have to win the first SNG and wait for all of the other 5 SNG’s to finish up before you start the final game. If you win 1st or 2nd, this is a great return on your $5 investment ($68 and $48 respectively). If you bubble or min cash, this feels like a lot of wasted time, but the reward of playing in a $10k freeroll with less than 300 players where 1 in 5 cash, it’s hard to resist taking a shot. In this last attempt, I got really low in chips. You begin with 1000 chips and I was down to 460. the blinds were 50/100. Under the gun I was dealt KK. I could have shoved all in right there and probably gotten action, but I decided to try and guarantee it. I min raised to 200. Everyone folded except the big blind, who called. The flop was 4-8-3 with 2 spades. The BB checks and I shove for 260; he calls. He shows J-10 diamonds. There is one diamond on the board. Runner-runner diamonds turn and river for a flush to him. Though I didn’t get a ticket, I did get 4x my buy-in. That’s a few more shots!
