$100 Freeroll 23/5/07

Buy-in: $0

Runners: 1177
Placed: 37

Amount won: $.35

My first foray into Pokerstars last night. Some play money 5 card draw got me into the software (which seemed a bit slow, but otherwise good) and then I decided to try seeding a new bankroll with a few freerolls.

First few blind levels were fairly boring. My table didn't have too many maniacs, just a collection of weak-tight limpers. Built my stack up a little, hit a few flops and reached about 5K by the end of the first level. Got up to about 12K without anything too extreme happening, then went back down to 8K when my kings ran into aces.

Shortly after that, I got moved tables four times in six hands. Grr. Built my stack a little more, then spent 15 minutes as one of only two players on my table who weren't disconnected. Stole my way through about 7K of blinds (I had position on the other player, and she had only about 1.5K and didn't really get involved). Around this point, I broke into the top ten.

After the first break, things picked up again, with the disconnects mostly being eliminated and real players coming back. I went a little card dead around the bubble, which was frustrating (I'm a lot less patient when I have no money in play). Once we got down to about 100 runners, the stacks all seemed pretty deep (don't know if this is because of the structure, because we'd all stolen relentlessly during the mass disconnects or because it was a freeroll and most people were throwing their chips around).

Around this point, I started playing like a maniac. There was no point finishing anywhere but top two for this thing, and I was able to steal from the table I was on with relative impugnity. Of course, I lost a lot of small pots, and the occassional large one. I was sitting on about 50K and top fifteen in chips when I went out (top two pair vs. a flush) and I knew I was overplaying that hand.