After playing online poker for about 7 months I finished 2nd in Full Tilt's Daily Dollar! It is a $10,000 guarantee no-limit hold'em tournament with first place paying $1,599. My prize was $1,215. There were 7,670 players and it took about 9 hours to complete. I agreed to a deal offer from the other player. He had 14,000,000 chips and I had 8,000,000 chips at the time we stopped play.
During the early stages of the tournament there was a lot of craziness and it was tough to survive the frequent ALL-IN's and donk-style of play from many of the entrants. But as the tournament entered the late stages I noticed a dramatic increase in the skill level of the remaining players.
It was a definite confidence booster. I honestly wonder if it is more difficult to win a low entry-fee tournament with a huge field such as the Daily Dollar or a high-cost, higher skilled tournament. The Daily Dollar is crammed full of maniacs and donks and therefore I believe that it is more dangerous in the the early stages than the higher dollar tourneys. Danger lurks around every corner and you can't fold every strong hand to the frequent pre-flop shoves from opponents with marginal or downright crappy hands. Obviously, the higher dollar tournaments require more skill in the later stages but I believe are less dangerous early. So maybe it is a wash. What do you think? I think both arguments have merit. In any case it was nice to get down to the final two players of a tournament with such a large field.
