Playing the Empty Seats

One of the biggest advantages to playing in freeroll tournaments is the amount of players who never even show up to play their cards. The stacks get blinded away and the few players who did show up have a much better chance at making the money. In a poker tournament with a cash entry fee, the typical structure pays out about the top ten percent of the field, while in a free roll it is often the top one or two percent. But if there are enough players who didn’t show up the percentage of time that you make the money can still be  excellent.

These dead seats are why freerolls that allow registration early are so good. If everyone has to register within 20 minutes before the start of the tournament, at least ninety percent of the players will actually be in their seats and able to put up a fight. With early registration you’ll lose a big percentage of the players. In a freeroll that allows registration a week in advance as many as 80% of the players may not show up.

When a large part of the field does not show up, you have a great shot at making the money if you follow a few simple guidelines.

1. Steal from the other active players, and if there are no live seats between you and the blinds remember to steal every time. It’s throwing away money any time you forget to steal those blinds.

2. Don’t get involved with big pots against the other live seats unless you have a huge hand. There is free money being handed out from those dead seats, but you can only claim it if you are still alive in the tournament. Play cautiously against your live opponents, making one continuation bet and then giving up on the hand if they put up resistance.

3. If you only have one or two live opponents, do what you can to bust them. This doesn’t contradict what I said above, because you shouldn’t be taking huge risks to bust those players, just lots of small risks. Play suited aces and connected cards against them whenever you can get in to a pot for a reasonable price. If you flop the nuts or something very close to it, try to get them all-in. It doesn’t matter if they fold when they don’t have much, those extra few chips don’t matter, but you want to try to get all their chips in the middle by the river.

4. Make a point of reraising them if they are raising too often and they are seated to your right. You want them to let you steal those blinds and you want to make it a point to let them know that they shouldn’t raise when you are still to act unless they have a big hand.

5. If you kill off the live seats at your table, move quickly. Keep your mouse over the raise button and hit it the instant it pops up every hand. A minimum raise folds the dead seats out just as fast as any other raise, it risks the least if someone does happen to sit down in their seat after you have raised, and most importantly it’s fast. You want to steal those blinds as fast as you can and get as many hands played as possible before the situation changes.

Eventually all of the dead seats will be gone, blinded away, but that usually takes an hour or so. By that time you will usually have a big stack and the field will be fairly small, so you can take advantage of your big stack and go for that money!