As I mentioned in an earlier post, I won a Step 1 ticket in a Pokerlistings freeroll last week. My goal was to convert this into a Step 4 ticket that could then be used to enter the Sunday Million. After bouncing up and down through 4 games, I still had a Step 2 ticket. Previously, there was no way to cash out these tickets before reaching Step 4 ($215). So, unless you were serious about winning a package like benkogambit, the Steps weren't a good investment.
However, last night I clicked on "Tournament Tickets..." in the Pokerstars lobby and was surprised to see a whole slew of cash prize tourneys that I could enter using my Step 2 ticket ($27). Rather than taking the greater risk of trying to reach Step 4, I regged for a $22 buyin + $5 bounty knockout MTT with 15 minute blinds. There were about 250 entrants and the top 45 were itm. There were plenty of platinum and supernova vips in the tourney, but people were playing as if it was a $4/180.
I doubled up on the first hand of the tourney winning one bounty. Then stacked another guy winning a 2nd bounty a bit later and was among the chipleaders. With less than 100 players left a lot of middle sized stacks were getting desperate and all in shoves preflop were becoming the norm. A guy with 3000 chips shoved and it folded around to me in the bb with about 5.500 chips. I was holding KK and made the call but lost the hand and most of my stack with it. I never recovered from that loss, but did manage to get itm ending up 34th. This was not my Sunday Million dream, but $44 bucks profit from a freeroll is definitely welcome.
Well, the point of all this is that the lower level Step tickets can now be used to enter certain other tourneys. This makes them a very interesting option. Let us know if anyone else takes this route.
Roland GTX
Talking about changes at Pokerstars. Check out the "Options" - "Bet Slider Options..." menu in the Lobby. I have added Preflop buttons for 2.5x the bb, 3x and 4x as well as postflop buttons for 50% of pot, 75% of pot and 100% of pot. These are great when multitabling and all time savers are welcome :)
ReplyDeleteGood post Roland! I didn't know about this until u posted. I added the same for pf, then did 48%, 66% and 110% for postflop action, that makes for interesting "tall" betsizes, lol. I think the addition of the new step 2 options is great, I might take a stab at this again.
ReplyDeleteGlad you found this useful. I'm itching to play some more steps too, but trying to resist the temptation...
ReplyDeleteI like the idea with you new bet sizes, especially the 48%. I think I'll do the same. However, you might want to increase the middle one to above 70% and I really dont know how your overbet will work. 98% might work better, but who knows.
Post your impressions after testing them out in a few games.
Roland, thanks for pointing out the changes in the Step tickets and the bet slider options. I haven't been playing at all lately or keeping on top of improvements at PStars so I appreciate your passing on the info.
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving! (I'm about to watch the Patriots-Lions game.)
Happy Thanksgiving! We are having turkey with some American friends on Saturday. Today I had McDonalds for dinner - lol! I hope you make the final private game benko!
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