Yeah, I’m one of those newbie schmucks who saw Hold 'Em on TV and decided to give it a try. I’ve been playing for a little less than a year, and tonight I just made my first tournament qualification.
$5 buy in, 444 players. Top 14 players divide the prize pool of $7600. I didn’t have to rebuy or add on once. I owe a lot of my success to this maniac player who went all in on literally every hand during the rebuy period. It was like he wasn’t even looking at his cards. Every hand he went all in, and most of the time he’d lose then rebuy more chips. He must have spent about $500 in rebuys. It was the weirdest thing. When I asked him if he was insane, he said that he uses that “strategy” to win. Do some people actually play like that? Needless to say, he payed me and a few other players off substantially. Four hours later, there were about 17 players left. I clicked on “sit out” and let the smallest 3 stacks get eaten up by the blinds. It works. Woo! $7600 divided by 14! All your $530 belong to me!
I click on Cashier and see no change in my balance. Hm. I check my email, and it message from PokerStars is there congradulating me on winning 530 tournament dollars. TOURNAMENT DOLLARS? I went through all that for fake money?! It said “Prize pool: $7600.” It said nothing bout TOURNAMENT dollars. Damn you PokerStars! Oh well, serves me right for not reading the fine print. :smack:
::grumble::
So now I get to buy into a $500 tournament for free and play against better players who will crush me like the newbie I am. Oh boy. Well, it wasn’t a complete loss. I made some great bluffs, caught some nice cards, made a spectacular comeback, and got lots of experience.
…
TOURNAMENT DOLLARS?