Freeroll is Inhabited by Millionaires

Suggestions & Feedback
1

Freeroll is inhabited by Millionaires! This is a fact. The average bankroll of a Freeroll of the winners of a random Freeroll will be over a million chips, that is in all 27 places. It isn’t as if we don’t know this. We just don’t talk about it. The reason we don’t talk about it is likely because every one of us played in Freeroll when we had over a million chips.

It is my guess that the total bankroll of all 255 players is over a quarter of a BILLION chips!

Here is a screen shot of a game finished just a few minutes ago:

Screen Shot 2017-02-26 at 11.28.30 AM.png703×656 140 KB

The reason I am bringing this all up is because by demonstrating this basic truth it demonstrates clearly that multi-millionaires can get much more than the free chips they get 2,500 chips by signing in every day, which is 75,000 a month, but they can double and triple that daily amount without risking a chip in their bank!

So is there any wonder that we get people chasing every hand, calling every street, and going all in all the time?

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. It is in the Freeroll system.

Variance is tough enough to deal with. So why can’t we find simple ways and means to teach the players not to be so cavalier with their chips?

Scratch

2

Here is a breakdown of the winners:

Started: Feb 26, 9:00am …Total Chips: Feb 26
1 - dplorable2016 (21,500 chips) 776,765
2 - david2104 (15,500 chips) 1,385,267
3 - gekas142 (11,750 chips) 744,704
4 - Zilia (8,750 chips) 10,405
5 - RocketChips (6,000 chips) 2,247,738
6 - LordBritish (5,000 chips) 4,950
7 - nanab (4,000 chips) 307,824
8 - robojo14 (3,000 chips) 1,125,194
9 - pigsfeet (2,000 chips) 3,208,291
10 - rootriver (1,750 chips) 1,467,128
11 - cawe76 (1,750 chips) 1,048,895
12 - RETWORKNMAN (1,750 chips) 533,708
13 - jonh2222 (1,500 chips) 5,279
14 - Furby120 (1,500 chips) 7,847
15 - Bey (1,500 chips) 25,991
16 - headeast1977 (1,250 chips) 5,285
17 - tazman69 (1,250 chips) 3,975,120
18 - mlc142 (1,250 chips) 3,351,489
19 - braintumor89 (1,000 chips) 75,872
20 - jackblack54 (1,000 chips) 846,824
21 - Rain21 (1,000 chips) 563,863
22 - rayo1959 (1,000 chips) 3,303,096
23 - rich1818 (1,000 chips) 5,607
24 - grandpaLee (1,000 chips) 5,352,823
25 - robertroger (1,000 chips) 2,448
26 - minksnopes (1,000 chips) 8,071
27 - aranybalta (1,000 chips) 12,101

27 Players having a bankroll of 30,402,585

3

Thank you for highlighting this key point Scatch. You are indeed 100% correct. Our freeroll system must be improved in order for our new players to be able to benefit from them. We need different freerolls for new players as well as for our more experienced ones. :slight_smile:

The major infrastructure upgrade we have completed two weeks back was absolutely necessary for Replay to keep running and growing. This project did require quite some resources on the technical side which explains why we haven’t released many new features recently.

Now that we have completed this project, we will be able to move forward with the developpment of new features that will be more ‘visible’ to the players as these will directly improve their experience on Replay Poker. Much feedback has been provided towards the poker room, our promotions, our leagues and leaderboards. We can’t wait implementing some of them.

Below are some of the projects we have at the top of our priority list:

  • Games (including freerolls) that are restricted to new players and/or low bankrolls. This is likely to have an impact on our Bankroll Builder too.
  • New leagues and leaderboards for casual players. I will post a proposal on the forum for the community to discuss and feedback on in the next few days.
  • Satellites with flexible prize pools, that will distribute tickets based on the number of participants.
  • More achievements which will directly be inspired by our community feedback and by Replay’s mission and values: poker education and recreational competition.
  • More promotions purpoe built for the ring-game players.

Please always keep the great feedback coming! We appreciate it sometime takes some patience before things get decided or implemented, espcially considering the big project we had to go through. That said, every single feedback is being discussed and prioritized internally.

1 Like
4

Great News…

A suggested schedule that has both MMT Freerolls that follow the same schedule as current Freerolls and SnG Freerolls that run between 9AM and Midnight eastern.

Freeroll Schedules.pdf (31.3 KB)

Note that I also suggest that the free rolls themselves take on the names of former champions in varying areas. It would also be great if these champions became mentors to the players who play in their named tables.

If the 100K mark is the minimum a player needs to play in the regular rooms it should also be the case that they do not get free chips until they reach the 100K, thus inspiring them even more to work hard to learn to win.

More ideas folks?

Scratch

1 Like
5

So, does that mean I should not be playing the Facebook freeroll I’m in right now?

I’d be a little wary of restricting tournament participation this way. Freerolls are notoriously high variance poker-brawls. Maybe there are better ways to address this? Not dead opposed to the idea but think it may need a bit more refining.

Love the idea of “adopt a table” though - let people who want to be mentors adopt a table in their specialty and mentor other players there. Require a certain number of hours a week or something like that to maintain mentor status. Just one of the best ideas I’ve heard in a long time.

6

Keeping with the thesis that the more players get free chips without risk, the looser they play, the more that devalues the chips.

I am fine with two kinds of freerolls, one for players with over 100K and one for the players with under 100K. But let’s make sure that before any player earns 100K that player should get no free chips. In other words, instead of allowing people to wait for ten minutes before getting chips for free, let’s instead allow the payer to earn the chips.

Scratch

7

Could work. I guess it all depends on the execution.

So bummed - finally had some free time to play a good game (Euro Millions 15K) and nailed the bubble right on the nose. At the very least, I want my Bubble-Boy award for the effort :slight_smile: Nothing more frustrating than to go out like that - seconds ahead of another short stack and 1 hand before someone who wasn’t even at the table and was just slowly blinding out. Sigh.

8

Precisely. And as the moderators have their own moderation forum, so too can the mentors have their own forum that is dedicated toward the basics, taking questions from the less experienced players.

I am unsure about copyright and trademarks but the free roll could be called Poker College or Poker Academy.

Scratch

9

IDK,I’m relatively new here but I like the FR system and I’m no millionaire.I risk and respect my chips,free 2500 and earned,although when I check my bank I always deduct the 2500 in figuring if I’m up or down just cause that’s how I keep count.I think the All In nuts are mostly new and usually go bust and either give up or learn/change their game.But I like the idea of separate FR for 100K +/- to keep out the riff-raff till they figure it all out.

10

New players learn little from playing new players.

In general, one learns more by losing than by winning.

I’m not a fan of segregation in any form.

Why people with chips would spend hours to try to win a few grand is a mystery to me, but if that’'s how little they value their time, it’s ok with me.

11

The Casino Freerolls will have the usual suspects minus all those who have less than 100K. There will be much less in attendance.

Camp Freerolls will contain not just new players but some folks who may be on tilt, some people who are simply wild and crazy players, and a group of folks who are trying hard but they need a few more rotations before they learn how to manage a bank. I think the educational element will be awesome…

Scratch

12

I overall like the idea . Another suggestion would be that chips could only be topped up every 3 hrs or so , I used to play on a site that the wait was 4 hrs , players didn’t go all in 1st hand quite as often because if they lost they couldn’t play again for 4 hrs.This could also benefit the site because then these players may opt to buy chips.

13

By the way, I am talking from experience here. I should explain…

In 2005 or 2005, Chis “Jesus” Ferguson created quite a buzz in the poker world by starting a challenge where he tried to go from 0 to $10,000 in one year. This involved following a strict set of bankroll management rules, and he actually pulled it off, but not in a year. I think it took him like 18 months.

Hmmmmm I said, that sounds like fun. So I tried it too.

The only path to get started, of course, were freerolls.

After a few tries, I finally cashed one… for 17 cents. I took this to a 1 cent / 2 cent micro stakes table and promptly lost it. A few days later I cashed another freeroll for something like $1.30, and eventually built this into just over $400. Not only was I off to a good start, I was way ahead of Fergyson’s rime line.

I lost my whole bank in one bad session a few days later, and gave up on the challenge.

I got ahead of his time curve, and eventually lost it all, because my bank management rules were far less strict than his. Lesson learned.

Was it a good experience? Actually, looking back on it, no, it was 5 months of hell. I pretty much hated and dreaded every minute of it.

Maybe new players would look at a “trial by fire,” as suggested, as a good thing… probably not. I’m guessing that most people who already know the game wouldn’t bother, and would just go find a less restrictive site. I know I wouldn’t do it. Then again, i did buy a few hundred thousand chips early on to avoid the lower buyin tournies, including freerolls.

I don’t have any real data to back it up, but I suspect this idea would have a devastating effect on the site if implemented, at least in terms of new player acquisition and retention.

14

The University of Alberta, over a decade ago was dedicated to research the impact of online poker. To that end they developed very sophisticated poker bots. To help support their research they also developed Poker Academy Online. I am sure they will have all the information you need regarding what they called the “PAX Boot Camps.”

Their software and their website closed because Full Tilt, who bought the online version of the game, was closed on Black Friday (ask Shakeraise for more information on this).

Notwithstanding, the noncommercial academic effort did well for a number of years with many hundreds of players learning the PAX system. Here are some quotes from Card Player about PAO:

"The software also comes with access to Poker Academy Online, which is a poker site that lets students test their games against fellow Poker Academy users in both ring games and a variety of different tournaments. The users use something called ‘PAX’ money, which can be only earned through tourneys and by winning in the ring games. Poker Academy tries to limit the amount of PAX a player can get in order to give it a sort of value so that players don’t just ‘donk’ their play money chips away.

Of Poker Academy Pro, here is what Kurt Lange, Poker Academy’s CEO said: “The people who will benefit the most are the people who will put the most time into it. It’s really a training tool, so the more you use it, the more you improve your game.”

My hope is you are successful in accessing the data from the University of Alberta and if you are not I hope management will try to access it. I know first hand that the Freeroll Poker camps work. I also offer there are multiple graduates of Poker Academy playing here at Replay Poker since early 2014 and they have collectively won hundreds of millions of chips here, and own many leadership championships as well.

The formula works.

Scratch

15

I didn’t use 100K for nothing. It just so happens that 100K chips is exactly what you get for $10 from our beloved Cashiers Mildred and Gladys, who happen to be twin sisters and work alternating shifts…

Scratch

16

The stand alone version of Poker Academy is what I used to learn the game, back in 05 or 06. I think this was before they took it online. it was probably the best tool for that purpose, though tournaments were limited to one table.

I mentioned that I don’t have any hard data to make the point that I was only offering my opinion, which is based on my personal experience with freerolls.

I pretty much got out of online poker in late 2006, well before Black Friday. For me, my shift came when Busch signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which set in motion a chain of events that eventually led to Black Friday. You gotta know when to hold um, know when to fold um, know when to walk away, know when to run. :slight_smile:

17

This is great to know Sun; wish I had known it before… I will defer to when PAO started to at least three people I know here who were ahead of me, Galak, BigBuddha, and BT. I came in around the time EdFrazier and HugoX started and I would say it was right around the time you used the game. Big smile on face.

Jo, BT, or Wayne, what year did they start PAO?

Scratch

18

Let me get this straight - the only difference you are proposing in the site is for the freerolls? People with under 100K can play in 1 and people with over 100K can play in another and neither can cross over to the other one’s game? If that’s what is being suggested, it seems totally innocuous to me. Cant see how it would change much on the site overall though.

What about replacing the chip-up thing with a bunch of lower level freerolls? So instead of automatically getting more chips for free when you run out, you have to play for them in one of the freerolls. You could have 25K freerolls run every 30 minutes rather than giving away chips with the chip-up thing. You could have these micro-freerolls in MTT’s and SnG’s to give players variety. That would confine the players who are essentially broke to these small tournaments and keep them away from the rest of the site. They don’t get chips to spend, they get to play only in the freerolls.

Of course they could do whatever they wanted with the daily bonus chips so its not a perfect solution but I do see a lot of merit in this if it can be worked out logistically. I’m really new to this discussion and just thinking out loud for the most part. At this point in my understanding of the subject though, awarding chips through Freeroll play and not just handing chips over seems like it could have merit. People would still get to play but they would be confined to one small space until they won chips or bought them.

Interesting subject and one I would not have given much thought to had you not brought it up.

19

Now that I think about it, I probably started using it in 04 or early 05.

I have been playing poker since the mid 70s, but got serious about holdum (which I had never heard of before) when Moneymaker won the main event in 03.

I learned while in the Army, but played mostly in a revolving home game after that. We played all kids of goofy games, usually with wild cards. These games are barely poker.

For example, we played a game we called “Night Baseball” which is a 7 card no peek game where 3s and 9s are wild, and you buy an extra card if you expose a 4. Dealer flips a starter card, then you turn over one card at a time until you beat that card. The next victim then flips over one at a time until he beats your hand, and so on. Fun, eh, kinda, but not really poker… no skill involved at all.

If you really want to drive yourself insane, try Badugi, which is 4 card triple draw where you try to get the lowest hand (ace is always low) that contains no pairs and no duplicate suits. It’s poker-ish if yer really drunk and squint, but it is fun and some skill is required to do well. :slight_smile:

20

I really enjoy the discussions here! Great stuffs. :slight_smile:

Just one point to clarify in regards to my previous post here. Creating games that are ring-fenced to new players and/low bankrolls certainly do not mean that we would segregate completely the poker room traffic between begginers and experienced players. It does not mean that the current freerolls will be excluding experienced players either. What we have simply in mind for now (there is nothing set in stone) is to add some freerolls, low stake ring-games and tournaments that are ring-fenced, purpose built for new players.

Quite a few online poker sites have run similar initiatives lately to ‘protect the recreational players’ and allow them to learn the game at their own pace, without being hunt by more experienced players on their first days on the site. A good example are the ‘new o the game’ tables Full Tilt have released a few years back. Party Poker had similar initiatives. Stars is exploring has been exploring this route too.

All that being said, it would be a first step. All your suggestions here gives us some very good food for thoughts!