USA FREEROLL FTP

I NEED UR OPINON ABT THAT SITAUATION GAME.. I HAD QQS POCKETS AND HE RAISE LITTLE BIT PREFLOP AND I DECIDED CALLED WITH IS POTS.. THEN FLOP

COME 7H 3CL JSP I CHECKED AND HE ALL IN AND I KEEP WONDERING WHAT HE HAVE? JJJ ? OR CHASE STRS FROM LOW STRS? SO I GO AHEAD CALL SEE WHAT

HE HAVE AND HE SHOW CARD 10H 2 H AND I SHOWED MINE HAND QQ THEN TURN COME 3 H THEN RIVER A HEART I WAS LIKE WTF HE ALL IN WITH

RUNNNNNING RUNNING TILL CATCH FLUSH.. I CANT BELIEVE WHAT KIND HE PLAYED! HE IS FULL OF DONK!

In my opinion, you played the hand fine. Sounds like you were out of position to the raiser so a re-raise preflop is not necessarily the best strategy, unless you think it can make the other player fold, therefore negating your positional disadvantage. But I've got to say that your opponent didn't sound like the folding type. Perhaps though he simply believed that, since you had only called and checked, he could just scare you right out of the pot, figuring that you probably did not hold a big pair or hit the flop. A hefty bet after the flop could have been enough to make a decent player fold.

But here's the problem. You will encounter more players in freerolls than in other games who are not even halfway decent players. That's not to say that all freerollers suck, because there are some very solid players who participate in freerolls: Chris Ferguson, jjgrand, tiamarie223, ctmfun, foldemstupid, just to name a few. But while playing in freerolls, you will experience an unusaully high volume of bad players for a variety of reasons. Some are beginners who have no idea how to play. Others are crappy players who don't feel like losing any more of their own money. Often, a bad player in a freeroll can actually be someone who is normally a very strong player. Perhaps he is in the freeroll because he is on tilt after losing alot of money on a bad suckout, and came to the freeroll to try to pull some suckouts of his own. Or it could be a strong player who is drunk and goofing around for free and laughing his @$$ off when he shove all-in pre with the ol' 7 duey. Often players just don't care if they win or lose because they have nothing staked in the game and therefore feel they can't lose because they're losing nothing.

Regardless of the stakes, free or a $20,000 WPT buy-in I have got to say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting your chips in the middle in that situation. You will take that pot 92.6% of the time, and that's a fact. Granted, 10h 2h will suck you out 7.4% of the time, but that's a risk you've got to take.

Of course, that's all in hindsight. But when the hand went down, you didn't know what he was holding. Still it was a beautiful board to have an overpair on, and even against any random hand in that situation, you're still going to take that pot 82.6% of the time. In most situations, I won't get away from QQ with that board, and in most situations, I'll take the pot. However, be sure to always keep a close eye on your opponents. Sometimes it would be appropriate to throw that hand away, depending on who you're up against.

And always keep in mind that like fishermen always want plenty of fish in the water, good players always want bad players at the table. Imagine being at a table where all the players were the best, no one made any mistakes, and everyone always threw away the losing hand. That would be a pretty tough place to ever win a pot!

Just stick to a solid game plan, and hope, hope, hope that players keep shoving all their chips in with 10 2 when you've got QQ.

The Big Donk

I have to agree wholeheartedly with The Big Donk regarding his comments on freerollers. I have found one of the most difficult challenges in freeroll playing ito be sorting out the reckless players from the good players and still beating both of them. Reckless players can be detected but when they get lucky the detection is expensive!

BTW Big Donk, mentioning me in the same sentence with Chris Ferguson has me rarin' to go in the next tourney! Thanks Buddy!