Building up a bankroll the FR way

I have decided to bankroll my way up only through cash prizes Freerolls, and yes altho this may be slow and takes alot of hard work, and just all in all being tired when playing sometimes, Im curious tho, what do you people think of this stragety? so far i have got 6.13$ all from winnings on freerolls with cash prizes on FTP.. just so some of you know how I have been doing..

I started playing freerolls online just over 2 years ago.
I had never played a hand of Holdem b4.
My total online bankroll now stands at about $1200 spread over six sites.
I have never made a deposit anywhere.
So I say keep playin, keep learning.
FullTilt has a few Tourneys for a flat $1 buyin.
I would recommend using your $6 there.
Read Chris Fergusons sections on Bankroll Management and going from Zero to 10K on FullTilt.

well play freerolls until about 5$
then go to the 1.25 SNGs
then dont play anything with more than 5% of your bankroll unless its at 1 Dollar.

I played poker for the first time somewhere in January 2008, since then I made some money finishes and a few FT's.

I haven't read that much about poker learned mostly by playing.

I will start reading pretty soon when I have more time and then I will crush everybody, I will become an on-line legend a ****in' force.

Mark my words !

I thank you for the advice but right now, I rather build my bankroll to at least 200 - 500$ before i decide on any $ tourneys.. I just like to be safe

I too started with nothing, and have managed to grow my bankroll to $600
in 4 months.
my bankroll is spred out over a few sites,with my biggest being $148 on one site.
bankroll management is very important as you do not want to have to start again, this is my 3rd try , i learnt the hard way.
my rules are that i only use 1% of my bankroll to buy into any one game.
of course it depends on your skill level where you want to set your % level.
anyway good luck

i've also learned the hard way. i had a 300 Br on fulltilt and lost it in one day being 2 cocky!! ive since slowed down to the low buy-in S-n-G's and its worked so far

I think u should wait untill u have about 15-20$, and then start going in 1$ tournaments without rebuys.
cash games are a big risk for a small br

If you won it on a freeroll why not play a sng or a small mtt? Your chances of winning more money are better than if you keep playing freerolls where you have to beat 95 percent of the field to even make 2 bucks. If you lose it....go back to playing freerolls.

There are new Double or Nothing sng's at PokerStars with buyins from $1.10 where the top 5 Double their money. And they're quick - turbo and they end after the first 5 get eliminated. The first one I played, lasted 32 minutes and a player sitting out cashed.

I bet you could take $1.10 of your bankroll and have it up to $50 in a couple of hours, playing the kind of TAG game you probably played to cash in freerolls.

building a bankroll from freerolls is tough. i havent made anything in 2 years from playing. well i have but then i lost it all. lol you just have to have patience. something i dont have.

I built up 175$ BR at full tilt from nothing but Freeroll winnings to start, I had a few good showings in a couple MTT that gave me most of my BR ( about $130 of it) the rest came from playing ring games and sngs.
Please if you do start a BR do not do like I did, and try to play above your level (25nl and 50nl in my case) you will win big yes BUT you will lose BIG and when that happens your BR can not recover. Mine is sitting at 84 cents atm.
I learned a valuable lesson from the experience though and will put my newfound knowledge to good use when I start building again

If you're trying to do take the freeroll approach, u definitely don't want to do it on FT unless you're a SNG or tourney player. Other sites have lower stakes cash games than FT and if you want to be a consistent winner and move up in stakes u have to have some bankroll requirements and it will take a long time playing freerolls to get to any type of bankroll requirment on FT

Wow so much good info ...well my problem is Ive been so frustrated lately I dont want to make another deposit ...so I just play freerolls and had a couple of wins at pokerstars and carbon poker ,I think I won a Full tilt fr last year but no significant br yet.I have convinced myself I can win some of the money I have lost by playing these freerolls or Ill never deposit again....Do you guys think you can judge your level of play with these freerolls?Only if you make it past the first 2 breaks lol...

Mac, in no way is this an attack on you personally but I think that approach sucks.

Freerolls, play money, and micro-stakes games can be fun and are great for learning the mechanics of the game but terrible ways to build a bankroll.

If John is willing to pay you $2 for washing his car and Bill is willing to pay you $20 then who's car are you going to wash? Same car, same amount of work, ten times the money...

If you want to play freerolls that's fine. Play your best and have fun. Don't grind them out trying to build a bank.

Freerolls are lots of time spent for small amounts of money and that type of thinking is just bad poker.

If you want to build a BR, you absolutely need to reinvest your winnings into the cheapest buy-ins available on the site, and then move up as BRM allows.

This is what happens when you do it.

Well think what you may, but there are people out there that can't afford to deposit alot of money just to play poker. and alot more of them, and im one of them. Its not bad poker, its just the situation we're dealt. And even if I do not win any $, I always have fun in the freerolls.. thats what its all about really anyways..

I'd say the only problem with this theory is that John is not going to charge you anything before you wash his car, whereas Bill is and both are a tossup as to whether you get paid in the end or not.

Doesn't make you a bad person if you're broke. Hell, I've spent most of my life that way, lol. But, if someone can't afford to deposit $50-$100 to play micro-stakes then they shouldn't be gambling.

i've never made a deposit and I will try not to. I win a few bucks here and there, but then it seems as though I crash thru it in a few days. I'm working harder on trying to maintain it, not multitasking while playing a SNG so I can get a good read on the players. Before I thought, I didnt deposit this money, so I'm going to take chances. Those chances busted my BR. But I've taken a new apporoach now, and have jumped my Pokerstars BR from $1 to about $25 in the last week. Best of luck to you.

Please read about proper bankroll management and you may not have to play freerolls anymore.

People keep telling you to check out ferguson's bankroll management, good advice but I'm guessing you've already done that.
freerolls are good to make free money but the beats you'll find will drag you down into their field, chasing your one out to the river. Don't become like typical freerollers if you're gonna stay there to build it, but I really think some low limit sng's to build slowly works, after all alot of sit and wait there works

mac,

Just so you know that you aren't alone in this.

I've decided to play nothing but freerolls on Full Tilt for 1 year and see where I can get my bankroll without ever risking any of it.

So far I'm 80 days in and have just over $30.

I have larger bankrolls on other sites and I save my real money play for those sites.

I just started doing this last week. I have been within 10 spots of the cash on 3 occasions now but i have managed to catch a couple of entries into private freerolls that will happen later this week. I have also joined a couple of websites (such as this one and pokerspace) to gain entry into their private freerolls with cash payouts.

Thats very impressive. ithink one thing that needs to be remembered is bankroll management because its easy to go right back to zero.

Just read some of the other peoples replies on here most would agree with that, and play only the FR route, and BTW, im not really broke its just the my $ needs to go for whats important, and poker isn't one of them. I've never once deposited any $ at FTP or whatever. I've so far within starting about 5 months ago, but lately I've been busy got now over 12$, and i just want to build that up, either for smaller buy-ins or cash out, or both.. and I'll do this for however long it takes. but I also have a life so not gonna put a time limit on it either

What's ther big deal about not depositing? If you're actually a winning player but happen to lose your bankroll due to variance, then why wouldn't you deposit and avoid having to start from zero in freerolls where your EV is tiny? Even a great player like Chris Ferguson noted that the first step ca be the hardest.

As for not being able to afford to deposit, or using your money for other priorities, that seems like self-justification to me. Go work a enough hours to earn an extra $50 or $100, and use that to play. It'll take a lot less time to do that than to win the same amount freerolling. So you'll be well ahead of the game.

Of course, if you're not actually a winning player, then the above doesn't apply.

I have just started plaing free rolls somewhat seriously. For about 1 year i myself was a donkey. Just the two days i have belonged to this site your free rol stradegy has helpmed me made it deep twice in free rolls on full tilt!

To Me, what you said sounds more like ignorance instead of thinking of the ppl now are having a harder time getting jobs or disabled in some way, but get money that is just enough to survive, well me im the latter, Im disabled in so many ways i, hearing being one of them. and by law im also blind. so.. now if your wondering then, how i can read, use a mac, and go to system preferences and enlarge the screen for seeing, and for hearing wise, im deaf in left and have severe to profound hearing (this means 80-90%) loss in right, do wear hearing aid but it sucks, ppl automatically think with any type of hearing loss that with a hearing aid, its all back to 100% hearing when really it isn't, I did work years ago, but found it difficult to even really do anything productive, so keep that in mind, when ppl go and play poker online.

I don't think Arjonius was attacking the messenger so much as attacking the message.

There are plenty of benefits to playing in freerolls (especially CC ones) but that doesn't mean they are a good way to build a bankroll.

Ferguson's "Zero To Hero" project proves that a winning player can start from scratch and get a bank rolling. But, it took him over seven months to get steady at $6.50. If his only goal were to build a bankroll then he'd have been better off spending a day collecting aluminum cans.

i would like to do that to though its tough because of the player types in freerolls you get called by a2c most of the time but it feels good knowing you built something from nothing so all the time you spent pays off.

i started playing poker by the freerolls. it's hard to build a solid bankroll starting by them and you will have a lot of work to do it, specially because of the crazy fishes in these tournaments. but good luck.

Nothing wrong with building a bankroll from freerolls, but know the facts.
First of all at almost any poker site, freeroll winnings are just that "freeroll winnings", NOT ELIGIBLE FOR CASH OUT, unless you have made a cash deposit at the poker site. After winning a sizable amount on free tourneys it could still take some time to clear these winnings, with "Ranked hands Played"

So be sure to check the requirements at your poker room on freeroll winnings.

keep plugging away man you will only get better at the game the more you play and free rolls are good for learning does anyone else agree??

Play at sites other than Full tilt if you want to play fr. their payout is very small, 1% of the field make the cash, some sites pay up to 20%.
You can make the money by playing tight, i used to make 10c a day on Pokerstars in the UK fr. and i did not even play, i would register then go and play in the daily $200 fr. on Poker4ever (3pm est), i found it easy to cash in the Poker4ever fr. and usually made the money on Pokerstars while sitting out.
If you go deep in a fr. you will win enough to start playing the micro stakes SNG, but not on FT, other sites have 10c buy-in SNG and if you win a couple of dollars you can start playing these SNG and build your br. more quickly.
Good luck.