Hello there.
Welcome to my Tournaments post. I usually make this when I win a specific tournament for the first time, or if I do well in a new/big tournament. For this post, I will be going through my journey on the Kryptogamers tournament.
If you've seen my other posts, or if you join tournaments as well, you will see the Kryptogamers tournament from time to time. I often mention this tournament because it is usually a free roll tournament where you get your entrance fee back no matter how you do in your battles. There are usually less than 100 players that join it.
The rules of the Kryptogamers tournament are pretty beginner friendly. It is a Bronze level tournament, where only the Chaos Legion set is allowed, and no legendary cards may be used. Similar to the official tournaments, each round goes for 24 hours, so there is plenty of time to put in teams.
The cost of entry used to be 5 DEC, but they increased it to 9 DEC this month. This change actually makes a difference since you need to finish in the top 50 to fully get your entrance fee back. Technically, if you add the 5 DEC reward, and the 5 DEC Lightning wallet, you still get 10 DEC total.
If you are not familiar, Kryptogamers is an online Casino that uses Hive currencies. The two common ones are HIVE and DEC. There are also STEEM and their native token GAMER. There are perks to getting and holding GAMER, but I haven't really explored it. I just go there to convert and withdraw my DEC. Since part of the rewards are in the Kryptogamers Lightning Wallet, I'll go over it a bit below. Kryptogamers.com is the website address, and Hive Keychain works there.
I mentioned convert because you can't immediately withdraw the Lightning Wallet DEC that you earned from the tournament. If you look above, I have a 'bonus' 100, but the DEC Balance is 0. To convert this bonus to DEC balance, you need to use it in their games. They have a lot of games available, but since I have bad RNG, I usually play the Blackjack since I feel like it has the highest chance of winning.
The picture above is how the blackjack game looks like. I've only tried this and the video poker, and both are just single player and against the dealer. Just click the "Lightning Wallet" to use the Bonus DEC, set the bet, and you're ready to go. For this example, I have 100 DEC in the Lightning Wallet, and I have 10 DEC for my bet. Win or lose, I will need 10 games to consume the bonus DEC. What's left afterwards is the amount I can withdraw.
I won the 1 game I played, and as you can see, I can withdraw 20 DEC, and still have 90 DEC in the Bonus. I don't really like gambling since I know the house always has an edge, and I know I'll lose money. But since this is just a reward money, I don't lose anything. Since I don't gamble, I also use a Blackjack cheat sheet to help me. I usually break even and just get the full amount. I then withdraw all of it. Most of the DEC in my Hive Engine wallet are from my Kryptogamers tournament earnings. [The DEC won is a bit inflated since it doesn't take into account the DEC I lost when I lose a game.]
Going back to the topic of the Kryptogamers tournament, I really like joining it because it is one of the few ways you can earn DEC. The only other way I get it at the moment is thru rental income. From the reward breakdown, the DEC amount gets really nice once you're within the top 25 players. I usually strive to at least get into the top 10, but I'm happy with top 25. I only earn 30 DEC/day from my rentals, so this is almost triple that.
Even though DEC is hard to earn, and it is a free roll tournament, not a lot of people join it. I can think of a few reasons, with one being the number of battles. With just 56 players that joined, there are 18 battles in round 1 alone. For round 2, expect there to be more than 10 battles as well.
The other reason is the level of competition. Unlike the official SPL tournaments, all players from any league can join, and there are no differences in the entrance fee. Be prepared to face all sorts of opponents, from bronze to Champion. Expect the competition to be fierce, since a lot of those that join are the ones that really enjoy the game. The champion players don't really need the 'small' amount DEC since they have/earn a lot more, and could just want to play more games. It could be even harder if they are scholars that want to earn more and are taking it very seriously.
Which leads me to the main topic. In one of the recent tournaments, I was able to finish tied for first place. As you can see below, I had the same record as Splinterstonks. Similar to the official tournaments, the regular prize is split between the players that tied. So we got 400 DEC each, instead of 500/300 DEC. The tiebreaker [which is really close, only a difference of 8], comes into play, and Splinterstonks get the 500 DEC Lightning Wallet balance, and I got 300 DEC for second.
I had a few other top 10 and top 25 finishes before, and I remember I had 600+ DEC in my Bonus balance. I played conservatively and I was able to withdraw 593 DEC. It might not be much in terms of value, but it will take me almost a month of card rental income to get.
What I like to highlight in this post is that if you are able to hone your strategy, you can also win tournaments even with low power, and an incomplete deck. Splinterstonks had 250k+ power, Huyquangvtvn1 had 3M+ power, and I was able to do as well as them with my 50k+ power. A lot of tournaments have additional rules, and some like this one [no legendary cards] even the playing field a bit, and give weaker players a fighting chance.
That is it for my Kryptogamers Tournament post. I like to share and document what I know about it, and hope it can help others. I don't plan on making another one for it unless they make any drastic changes. Don't hesitate to let me know what you think, and if you have suggestions for improvement.
And as always, these are Not Financial Advice, Do Your Own Research, and Gamble Responsibly.
If you want to start playing Splinterlands, you can use my link:
Splinterlands Referral Link