At this moment in time, practically every poker site is tempting their clientele with gateways to multi-million dollar competitions such as the WSOP, SCOOP and ECOOP, but are they really as valuable to a player as they seem? If you were to win (say) a $50 qualifier to one of the big finals, would you not have been better off taking the $10.000 prize and then deciding what you would like to do with the money?
As much as we all dream of playing with the stars in Las Vegas next month, if you were to win $10.000 at the casino this week (or sell your house, or get a bonus at work), it is unlikely that you would pay over the whole sum for a buy-in at the WSOP Main Event. However, that is what you are effectively doing if you won one of the qualifying events that these poker rooms are offering. In fact, if you paid $50 to enter the satellite and failed to qualify, what are you going to do then? If you carry on trying and get there on your tenth attempt, the value of your achievement is only a fraction of what it should have been, and effectively you are paying ten times more than the opponent who bought straight in.
The key to finding value (and isn’t that what all poker is about?) is to find the tournaments that are undersubscribed which offer a step up into the final or next qualifying event that you are targeting. There are certain times of the day when this is most likely, and you should be conscious of the opportunities that happen on the “Big 2” poker sites (Full Tilt and PokerStars) at around 5.00am GMT, when the Americans are drifting away from the sites and the European market is still in their pyjamas, or around 10.00pm GMT on the European Networks, when the British and Europeans (who are 1-3 hours ahead of GMT) stop playing. Quite often there is a significant amount of value to be had, not just in the satellite competitions, but also in the tournaments with guaranteed prize money.
Although the final game of your tournament may be at a more populated hour (or in Las Vegas!), if you have got there with value on your side, it makes the ultimate prize worth that much more.
Betsson Poker is a great poker room and offers 40% cash back Note that US players can not play here | |
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