Silver Dollar casino is hosting a slots tournament called Holiday Feast all this month of December. It is broken down into four rounds that are each a week long. Round 1 of the Holiday Feast is already underway and will end tomorrow at midnight.

Don’t worry though, it isn’t like you have missed anything yet. You don’t have to qualify for rounds 2, 3 or 4 of the Holiday Feast Tournament. All you have to do is download Silver Dollar’s casino software here or you can play this tournament online here.

There is a $5 entry fee to play in this tournament. What? Five Dollars! I thought this was going to be free.

(No, unfortunately you can’t use the $5 bonus that Silver Dollar gives you for tournament play)

Well, sorry about that; but if you finish in the top 200 places in any of these four week long tournaments, you will receive a Free Entry into the 2011 January Showdown.

If you take a look at the tournament lobby above, you will see that there is a little more than 1200 people who participated in the first round of the Holiday feast. That means you have to finish in the top 1/6th of all players in order to win an invite.

Why does this matter? The 2011 January Showdown is a slots tournament that is by invite only. You can not buy into this tournament. A total of 800 invites will be given away. This means you have 3 more opportunities to win an invite to this exclusive tournament.

The January Showdown has a winner-take-all $50K prize. With only 800 people competing for this prize, your chances of winning are a lot higher then they would normally be. The 2011 January Showdown is going to start on Monday, January 3, and will run until Sunday, January 9.

Holiday Feast Slots Tournament

Let me explain a little bit more about the Holiday Feast tournament. It is more than just a way to qualify for the January Showdown.

If you take a look back up at the tournament lobby screenshot, you will see that there is a total prize pool of a little more than $14K.

This prize pool is split up amongst the players with the top 200 scores. As well as the free invite, you will also win some money back.

How much money are we talking about here? Take a look to the right at the Prizes and Current Leaderboard. The first place prize gets 25% of the prize pool. If there were no more money put into the pot from rebuys, that person would win about $3600.

If you place between 101 and 200, you’re only looking at winning about $7 to $10 when it’s all said and done.

After you register for one of the four rounds of the Holiday Feast, you will have a starting balance of $500. This is more than you would normally start with in any free slots tournament. This gives you more room to maneuver as your not in danger of busting out after a few spins.

You can always rebuy for an additional $5 if you would like to try to make it into the top 200. Below is a quick look at the tournament information for the next 3 rounds of the Holiday Feast. My favorite featured slot of the three weeks is round 4 – The Reel Deal.

For more information about the Holiday Feast slots tournament, check out Casino Newsvine.

I haven’t had a lot of time to tell you how I’ve been doing in these free tournaments. About half of the time I get knocked out quickly and haven’t had the proper time to really get going in these tournaments recently.

Now this Easter Week Long Freeroll isn’t over yet. For those of you who think it is too late to join, you still have a legitimate shot of getting on the leader board. Although first place is going to be hard to reach now.

By my estimates, it usually took some luck (obviously), but also about 10+ hours of time and 4000+ spins to get past the $10,000 mark before. It’s a war of attrition and usually the best way to fight it is by doing no more than an hour or 2 chunks. This is when your mind will be the most sharp. I tend to make bad decisions when I’ve been playing for longer than an hour.

Remember, all the real money prizes are for those you get in the top 10 and there is still a day and a half left in the tournament.

How I did in the Easter Week Long Freeroll

I got going for a little while. The reels started off very slowly and were only giving back more than I bet one out of 10 pulls. For that reason, I started out with the minimum bet of 0.20 for the first 100 spin or so. If you trying to make the free part of this freeroll last longer than 10 minutes, your going to have to wait until you have won one of the features before you can start to think about raising your bets.

I really don’t think that you should consider your tournament started before you win the bonus round or free spins at least once. You have to see a couple of cycles of free spins and bonus rounds to be able to have an idea as to around what time the feature will be triggered.

The frustrating times are when you go for over 300+ spins without triggering a feature. There is almost no way to win when this happens. Here is the only thing you should do when you feel this scenario happening:

If this happens early in the tournament – Stop spinning. Put the coin level to it’s lowest. Click the autoplay button. Set the spins to 250 or 500. Click start and go away for a while. You will come back to a bonus round feature almost every time. From there, reset your internal clock and start paying attention again.

If this happens later in a tournament (when you have more money) – Stop spinning. Put the Bet at either $2 or $5 dollars. Click autoplay. Set number of spins to anything you want. Set it to stop on any win that exceeds 50. Stop if the credits increase by 50. Stop if credits decrease by 100.

This is the method I use after what I consider the breakout when you have won a large paying feature. It’s all about timing of the larger bets. If you get a large bet wrong, you have to go right back down and try to make up what you lost.

The easiest way to lose is by betting more than 1/20th of your balance at any given time. The feeling of losing what you worked hard for will compel you to try to get it back with another mistake. After that, you say what the heck and go with large bets until you bust.

Knowing that the reels could be cold, the better solution is to take a break and set the auto spins. Then come back with a fresh outlook. I’ve gone from $9,000 and on the leaderboard to bust within 10 minutes before. You have to keep a cool head or your gonna crack and lose all your money.

By the way, I lasted about 1000 spins with the Free entry and $100 balance. I should be about as close to the bottom as possible as I have two cents left that I can’t bet.

How to register