Written by Tim Lavalli
 NEWS/Thursday, 08 November 2007

A trend in Las Vegas poker rooms has caught on, and players are enjoying it. Casinos are rewarding their regular and most frequent players with freerolls. Those who log in a certain amount of hours during a specified time period will get to play in these special tournaments.

If you are going to talk about freerolls then you must start with the granddaddy of all freerolls the $500,000 guarantee from the Station Casinos. This monster of all freerolls has been a staple of the Stations Casino poker promotions for several years and the prizepool seems to keep growing.

The first thing you need to know is that six poker rooms participate in the qualifying time for this freeroll. Players can log in their hours at Red Rock, Green Valley Ranch, Palace Station, Texas Station, Boulder Station, or Sunset Station. Over a three month period, players need to have 75 hours of play at any combination of these six poker rooms. Right now we are in the final month (Sept. Oct. Nov.) for the December tournament but another qualifying period starts in January.

Payouts for the next freeroll are:
- First $70,000
- Second $30,000
- Third $15,000
- Fourth $10,000
- Fifth $8,000
- Sixth $6,000
- Seventh $5,000
- Eighth $4,000
- Ninth $3,000
- Tenth $2,000
- 11th-50th $1,000
- 51st-500th $200

That’s right, they pay 500 places! It’s a two day tournament with four short four hour flights on day one. You can show up and blind off your first day and win $200.