Full Tilt's 7500 donkfest freerolls annoy me.

When they first came out it seemed like a good idea more money, more donks... what I didn't consider was the chip counts and the time involved increasing. Even though the amount of paid positions went up from 27 to 45, since the number of players went up to 7500 not even 1 percent are cashing. Still didnt seem that bad...

But honestly after fighting my way through most of the field, I was eliminated in 140th place when an opponent caught two pair to beat my pocket 9s. Playing the freeroll I reassessed my opinion, more donks are always better, but honestly the chip counts become insanely high, and if and when you're short stacked its almost impossible to steal because these idiots will called you down risking almost all of their stacks on stuff like QJ, it was a tiring experience to say the least, the freeroll didnt even cash for another two hours meaning I wasn't even close to done.

Well... I'm done ranting and I'm wondering who else has tried their luck on these festivals of donkitude? Anyone have better luck?

I don't even try in those. I just go in there and full around. : ) Unless you double up a couple of times in the beginning, it's going to be very hard to place. There is just to much variance in the tournament.

I wish that was all lol... I was sitting with 30K in chips and I was the shortstack... no one had as small a stack as me, in the old tournament format I could cruise easily stealing what i needed to get in the money.

I don't even bother with them anymore.

Those are nice to play when you want to play bingo. I tried using the Kill Phil strategies on those and actually qualified in several Round 1 tournaments.

Deposit 20$, freerolls are a waste of time.

Well person I just made up, You should probably not be on your computer wasting time on a forum.

My take is it's a freeroll, so you can't complain too much. Each event, they are giving free money to 45 people so they can set it up anyway they want. I think there has to be an expectation up front that a) it's going to take a long time and b) there are going to be a lot of loose plays.

I never play in them anymore. However, I do play in the $100 Canada Freeroll with 2700 players and private freerolls at full tilt. But the freerolls with 7500 players are too time consuming and just not worth it anymore.

Yeah it is a mess for sure but i actually won that tourny about a month ago. I played for 7 and a half hrs and won $25. Not even close to being worth it. I was exhausted from playing and watching all the bad plays. If u dont have a bankroll though i guess its a good way to start. Usually there is at least 2 or 3 people that go all in the first hand. It truely is a donkfest as u said and it is frustrating when u get KO before the $ after playing 3 or 4 hrs for nothing. I know the feeling!!!

If you dont live in the USA, you would be much better off competing in your country specific freeroll each night.

Like mentioned above, I just dont bother anymore with the general freerolls, unless its one where top 100 get a ticket to round2 where the next 100 get another ticket to compete for a seat in something like the aussiemillions

I have never cashed in a freeroll, and believe me I have tried plenty of times. It takes a huge toll on your mental health to sit through 7500 broke little poker prodigys to get a dollar or two.

i think they make those so if someone does make a small amount of money and loose it on 1 bad game after they are like i don't want to play anther 5 hours to make $2 so i will deposit

Those freerolls are a complete waste of time in my opinion. You may be able to get deep in the tournament, but most of the time you will not win because of the donks that play those freerolls.

In most tournaments, the donkeys are usually going allin in the beginning of a tourney, but those, the donkeys are donks throughout the whole tournament. So, your just wasting your time playing those. I play those sometimes because I'm just totally bored and have nothing else to do, so I would play those. But really, there's no sense in playing those. If there weren't so many donks, i might play them, but nope there always is.

Do any of you like to play in those tournaments? Because usually only donks do. Good, tight players usually don't like those tournaments, but you might.

Anything 'free' usually has a price ... of some kind. Freerolls ... it is the time you invest... that's all. If you don't want to put in the time, don't join them and deposit as others have said. No need to be 'annoyed' at the rules !!! ...

Gee... wouldn't it be nice if the sites had $1,000 freerolls with 100 max entries and a 40% pay structure ??? But there aren't any like that ...

I have never deposited on any poker site and never will. Not that I 'can't' ... I just choose not to. I also realize what I am playing against in freerolls. Everything from serious players trying to make 50 cents to many of the entrants being there just for the fun of it ... to see how many times their all-in will hold up. Nothing you can do will eliminate the adrenalin junkies except a better hand than they have at showdown.

Enjoy them for what they are ..... FREErolls ....

BTW salim .... what were you doing all-in in a pot with a pair of 9's that hadn't improved? A HH might tell more of the real story, but if you were all-in anywhere before the river... it was a risky bet putting all your chips on 9-9. (maybe they were sooted ... ?? - lol) If you were all-in on the river, sounds like you got married to them ... !!

Blech, no. I only play in private freerolls. The pay structure of 45 - 7500 people is insane and even though you may have gotten through all the donks at the beginning, by the end people are going all in with anything and everything. Even though I must say it's impressive for anyone who cashes. ^_^

I couldn't imagine myself playing in a tourney with a field of 7500 and only 45 places being paid. No thanks. There are way better freerolls on other sites.

I guess FT and PS just don't need good freerolls to lure new players onto their sites. Their traffic is already big, so no need to offer any good freerolls.

I used to play in the US $250 freeroll on FT every night...the best I ever got was #136...I had well over 40,000chips...after hours of play & trying to overcome the blinds, it just wasn't worth the small amount of money for the time! Way too many entrants! I'll stick to our CC freerolls & do more buy-ins with less entrants!

The freerolls did help me to learn how to play poker in the first place, but also gave me some bad habits that I have since broken! I learned so much more through CC's Challenges, freerolls & buy-ins!

A good tip... the last place where you're going to find RBD's (Really Big Donks) is when theres 600 to 400 people left, yesterday I took another shot at a 7500 freeroll and again I was doing well at about 18000 chips, I had a chance on a flop with AT where I paired my ten and had top pair, but someone had raised from the flop and got a caller, and then moved all in. The other caller besides me moved in instantly behind the initial raiser and I felt that someone had to have queens or something so I folded, the initial raiser turned over 77 and the other one turned over KT, I would have won and tripled up, it made me remember that a lot of these players are still pretty bad at this point, and if you want to take risks on hands the best place to do it is at that 600-400th place where the RBDs have big stacks and are spewing chips.

I ended up going out in like 437th or something because I decided to take a risk and call two all ins with a flush draw because it would have tripled me up to around 75,000 chips, I missed and went out but the tournament itself definitely gave me some things to think about.

I agree, these freerolls are no longer worth the time ! I much prefered the 2700 ones where 1/100 players got paid. imo though, you should just stick $10 on ps. Much more fun and it only works out at £6.30ish in my country .

these are still a good way to get experience in deep tournaments like the daily dollar and ftop events.....look at it as a tool for gaining experience where u can sharpen your strategy for free.....you can tighten your leaks here.....but know if you want to win you have to abc these morons....u will get called with bs U cant out play unconcious calling stations...rarely you will see a good poker player runn deep in these cuz most of the time when they do get their money in its with queens or better and they almost always lose to some overaggro idiot with some of brand suited king or sometype of connector......with anytournament over 7thousand people its going to be alot of hands and alot of varience......its here wher you learn how to fold those poket pairs pre flop out of position and those queens when reraised cuz youve already lived the nightmare of reshoveing in this very spot saying u raise me I raise you to only find yourself vs aces to flush down 4 hrs down the drain....good practice and a chance to make some cash...if you make it to 45 with a decent stack relative to the blinds and you utilize some level of patience and control itsw easier to final table .....after 27 you get alot of suicide bombers

>.> I bet 3x the BB (2K/1K blinds) from the small blind and was called down by the big blind who had about twice my stack at about 40,000. flop came undercards 7 5 2 rainbow or something. With my stack at around 14000 I decided that if I moved in here he would only call if he paired or the off chance that he was playing an overpair which I didn't put him on since he was playing pretty loose and could have anything. I moved in and he called with bottom pair and Q2 in the pocket, he rivered a queen. Sorry if that isn't amazing play on my part, but when you're short stacked you don't exactly get to wait for aces.

True, I was frustrated when I posted this. The problem with sharpening my strategy... freerolls are filled with bad play, in the beginning the strategy is to double up, whenever you get a good hand, you just shove all your chips in and like 75 percent of the time, someone will call you and turn over AX. DD is much tighter, and needs better strategy.

Urbandictionary.com defines freerolls correctly:

freeroll 20 up, 1 down

A free tournament in poker, where you can spend 3-4h grinding just to win 50 cent. Usually no lifers and retards play this since no skill is required.

Some people who are in deep financial misery play this in hope of grinding together some cash for a packet of cigarettes or some cheap liqueur.

"After spending 10h of humiliating free rolling, Petter did not grind togheter enough cash for a packet of cigarettes so he had to smoke cigarette butts instead."

"This is the hard life of a freeroller!"

That sounds about right :/

Yea I also agree that the 2500 player freerolls are much better than 7500. But again it is FT that is offering them, what can you do? It's free money, they can do whatever they want.

That's why I'm thankful for all the other freerolls out there. You don't have to stick to the 7500 player ones. In those the best I've yet to do is place 105th. I think I can make it if I'm diligent enough : ]

True... I wrote this when i was very annoyed after 4 hours of play... FT can do what they want, even though I think if they went back to 100 dollar tournaments instead of 150 with less players it would be better...

..i played the 7500, and i qualified for the nest round which i was delighted t...but then, fr some stupid reason, the ft site crashed, all the tourneys voided, and do you think im getting in to another one instead..me poxy ass :-)

I think you mean the 10,000 person round 1 freeroll.

you are right! ever since ftp got rid of the regular 2700 players freerolls it's gotten harder to cash since their are so more stupid donks making crazy plays and sucking out on you. Boy do i feel for you man

mmm really i wouldnt be so annoyed except it used to be so easy to cash in these things, i mean for the turbos you needed a decent stack at about 50K to 60K, the regulars you needed about only 40K-30K. Now for the turbos you arent safe unless you have over 200K, otherwise the blinds can rip you apart. I used to play the freerolls without caring if i lost the money i made cuz i had the time, i could just come back and beat another one if i wanted more money. The minimum won used to be 2 dollars too... now the minimum is .80 cents... what can you do with .80 cents? .10 cent tourneys with no rebuys and you have enough for two DD sitngos... gah im sick of complaining about this, we just have to deal with the fact that full tilt has changed the freerolls and try to adapt i guess... must not play to cash, play to win!!! >.< lol.

i hope that ftp can improve the poor to $250,and the max player change to 2700,i think that is btter,not percent 1 was paid attract so many donk to play,if ftp change the freeroll MTT,i thnk that donkey will decrease.

lol I made this post awhile ago, I dont bother with FT freerolls anymore barring CC private freeroll... they're simply not worth the time and effort. Playing the CC private freeroll has a much better return on time investment than the regular freerolls, even though CC freerolls are twice a week and FT freerolls are every day... thats kind of sad, but thats the reason the CC freerolls are so awesome.

I have managed to cash only once at a 7500 freeroll. Ended up in 5th place, it was a combination of some good moves and some luck. But I agree with everything that has been said, free-rolls are somewhat a waste of time, a donkfest,etc.

Even saying all that, I play them everyday, it's poker, you'll find some good players from now and then, you'll find donks who catch their card on the river, a free-roll has it all..

I cashed once like 2 dollars, second or third time i played.
But i do not play them anymore. Too much time to loose and too much stress. There are a lot of sites with freerolls with 100 persons to 2000 max with the same payout like Ipoker network, Carbon, Cake poker, etc etc.
Pokerstars and Ful Tilt non-restricted freerolls are a waste of time i think. But the regional or restricted ones on PS or FT are great cose there are 10 times less ppl involved.
CC freerolls are great too even though someone always has luck and kick me out near the bubble or at the final table with less money possible But it is different from others freerolls cose i never took a brutal bad beat. Not even once on CC freerolls.

Anyway i do not think they are a waste of time cose there are so many donks but because i loose too much time playing them for a couple of dollars.
But if u think that u will play a 7500 persons freeroll and do a better job without donks u have to be a little stupid .
CC freerolls have 50-130 persons max and u sweet like a pig for every hand u play because there are less donks and untill the first break maximum 10% of the ppl are out. U make a mistake and u are out. 7500 good players will be like hell ,the cashout impossible and the freeroll will take a week.

Round one is the easyest satellite ever.
U can qualify playing 2-3 of them.
But i think it is a waste of time cose the final is hard like hell. A lot of good players. It is not hard to qualify but as i said when there are thousands of average or good players, cashing out is hard like hell.