Free Roll Tournament Report


Free Roll Tournament Report

My 3/4 final tables at Artichoke Joes got me an entry into their free roll limit-hold’em tournament.

The free roll tournament is fed by all of the tournaments at Artichoke Joe’s, including no-limit hold’em, limit hold’em, and combination hold’em/omaha. This makes for an interesting mix of players. As a no-limit hold’em player I am used to the first prize being around $5000 which was the total prize pool for the free roll. I also haven’t played in a limit hold’em tournament before, so I felt I was at a disadvantage but decided I would start out the day playing a little looser and more aggressive than normal. We started with 12 tables of 10 people with the blinds starting at 20–20 with bets of 20–40. I started with $600 in chips because of two of my previous wins and found out that my last week win will count towards the next free roll tournament.

At my first table I did very well and knocked out 3/4 people that busted. I did get my comeuppance on the last hand before we were redistributed, I thought I had someone with my flopped pair of Ks, check raised, and got smashed by their kicker. Oh well, I was still nearly chip leader at the first break. After the second break I was still riding pretty high. At this point my wife and sister showed up to watch me. After that I won with a pair of 7s and no show down, correctly folded my 5s and my Js and eventually, in 16th place was beat by a hand I was dominating, my KQ unsuited vs. his Q9 unsuited. The nine on the turn put the nail in my coffin. All in all I did pretty well for my first limit tournament and I only made one major error, check raising a better hand.