How to win in the freeroll?

Play a lot, but I can not win. 'll Show a good strategy for a beginner.

Look here:

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that is where they are i got to read some of them too

Me too, pifan - but I guess you've done some reading in the past given your performance .

i see now tnx

Look back a few threads its titled freeroll strategy. I had some good replies too.

ok

You could always do a search of the threads...there's about 300 threads from this month alone with that same question

In addition to establishing a solid game foundation I recommend playing one of the easiest freerolls to win. I'm talking about the Satellite to the Furguson on Full tilt. Its kind of a mad house approaching the bubble with 3 minute blinds, but Its the easiest buck on the Internet. 2700 players fill the quota in about 3 seconds and 100 come out of the ring on the other side with a shinny new dollar.

Its only a buck but sometimes you just need to Win.

Good Luck

Suck out. (See pic from the all-in-pre-flop final hand of yesterday's freeroll)

Naw, just kidding.

Luck is involved, but there's a whole lot of room to create opportunities.
Last night I was dealt 7/2 nine times, while statistics say it should have come up 4.5 times over that same hand sample. And I had A/K twice, when it should have come up 4.5 times. Freerolls have a lot of weak players, so there is plenty of opportunity to exploit them.

I don't play a lot of freerolls. When I do I often play less than seriously.
I did hit th FR last night pretty seriously (because I was disappointed in my final table play the previous night in the UB buy-in and wanted to redeem myself).

Early in the game you still have the worst players in the game, so it's a matter of isolating yourself with them and exploiting them. They don't understand things like the value of position or continuation betting.
Often there will be a situation where Player-X limps from middle position, it's folded to me on the button, I raise my 4/5 to isolate, the flop is 8/9/A, he checks, I raise, he folds. I'm only in the pot because I know I can take it post-flop the 2/3 of the time he misses. And sometimes he does have a hand, but I hit something weird like two pair and bust him (then he whines that some idiot raised him with junk and then busted him when he had top pair or an overpair or whatever, whereas I was realling making a +EV play vs people like him).
Or I get in hands where the opponent keeps min-betting each street (which is weak) so I chase my draw or steal when a scare card hits the board.

Early on, for the most part, I sit back and play tight except when I see opportunity. That is, I'm folding A/J from early position. I'm limping with small pocket pairs from early position (hoping for a set to bust the people who will stack with their top pairs).

In the middle stages it's a lot of the same. Really, there are still a lot of weak players out there. Stealing becomes more important. Stack sizes are a big factor in stealing though. Steal from people trying to hold on to their middle stack, not from desperate short stackers.

By the end, well, the money for the upper positions is a lot bigger than the money for lower positions. This is when you get chips, because it's worth it. (This is true for most tournaments, and something people often miss)

Let's put it this way. Last night's game paid $54 for 1st, #34 for 2nd, and $25.50 for third.
When we were down to 3 we were all guaranteed $25.50. So essentially we were playing for $0 (3rd), $8.50 (2nd), and $28.50 (1st).
So getting 1st place pays us more than triple the difference of getting 2nd place. That is *totally* worth getting into coin flip situations for. Heck, that is worth getting into less-than-coin-flip situations for.
I mean, yeah, you don't want to take unnecessary risks, but you need to be playing for 1st place and if you go all-in and are only 40% to win but are practically guaranteed 1st place if you do win, well, that is a *good* situation to be in.

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Where is this game on ft because I have never seen it !
I saw one into the daily dollar with 7500 people.
Im from UK, is this a factor?

Cheers Tom

It's on play money and go to tournament and here the time 23:10 id# 106083335

i look forward to battling u guys if I can ever make up enough solid reasons to post...gl

Are you saying you can't win money or can't win tournaments? If you're talking about freerolls with hundreds of players and only a small number of places paid, it's hard to cash as a beginner. Just using made-up numbers, let's say 100 get paid out of 1000 entrants. Numerically, you'll cash one time in 10. However, if we assume your ability is below average, your ratio will be less than that. As for winning outright, that's 999:1 or worse.

Tom,
The next one is tonight at 11:10 PM EST with registration at 11:00PM. Tourney # is 106229712. Its a late game for me but for you its an easy early morning game. Let me know if your going for it tonight and Ill stay up and join you.

Depending on the freeroll, you should notice that often the only ones to finish in the money are the top 1% of the players. For instance, Full Tilt runs games with 2700 players, only 27 get money. Even the SitNGos that have 180 players only give FTP to the top 2 (less than 1%). Pokerstars is similar with maybe 7000 players and the top 72 get entry to another tournament.
Typical cash tournaments will pay the top 10%, or even as high as 15-20% of the players for some games. So, you can see that it is much more difficult to cash in when playing a freeroll, even if players all play the same.

Freerolls play a little bit different than regular buyin tournaments. There are many weak players that can be exploited, which is what we're going to try and teach you in this strategy tips series.

Exploit the money bubble

The 'money bubble' is the point in a tournament when there are only a few players before the rest of the field gets paid. Suppose 20 places get paid in a tournament with 250 players. Once you are down to 25 or 30 players you will notice everyone is suddenly playing a lot tighter. People will not call raises so often and weak players will not even raise anymore themselves but just limp in, trying to see a cheap flop. This is the perfect time for you to acquire a lot of chips. The theory you should keep in the back of your head is that you are not trying to 'squeeze into the money', but you want to make the final table where the real money is. If you are short on chips, do not be afraid to get it all in when you have a decent hand. If you have a decent stack of 20 big blinds or more you should be raising any hand when you are in late position and it gets folded around to you. If you get re-raised you can be sure you are beat (because you are raising with trash) and can just fold, but you will see that most players will just fold, trying to survive and make the money. If you get called it's certainly not all bad, because you are in position. Now if the flop comes all low cards and the caller checks to you, it's extremely likely that they will fold to a continuation bet on the flop so you win an even bigger pot. Because it is late in the tournament there are likely also antes added to the blinds, so each pot you grab will be pretty big and will help you reach the final table with a nice stack. Keep a close eye on the number of players left, because as soon as the bubble 'breaks' the strategy turns around 180 degrees ! All the short stacks will stop trying to hold on and move in with any decent hand, so make sure you are now raising with a hand that can call the re-raise from these players. Once most of the really short stacks are gone, you can start raising with a wider range of hands again as the battle for the final table is a kind of bubble again (the final table bubble) that you should exploit. Do not be afraid to raise on the cut-off or the button with any 2 cards, just remember you are trying to build a stack to give yourself the best chance on the final table.

Example hand :

Imagine it's late in a (*&^*&) Poker freeroll and you have a stack of 35000 chips. There are 25 players left and 20 will get paid, but only the top 3 will make any decent amount of money. The blinds are 500/1000 so you have 35 big blinds. Most of the players at your table have a stack of 10 to 20 big blinds. You are one seat before the button (the cut-off) and the players to your left each have about 20 big blinds left. It is folded around to you and at this point it really doesn't matter what your 2 cards are, you HAVE to make a standard raise here of around 3 big blinds. You hold 5s8d and make it 2800 to go, the button and the small blind fold but this time the big blind decides he's not giving up and makes the call with Ad6h. Now the flop comes 7h10s2d and of course the big blind checks here because he completely missed. You bet 3500 (about half the pot) and now he folds and you win a pretty decent pot. Remember your opponent will only connect to the flop about 30% of the time and even then he still might not feel confident enough to continue with the hand and he will rather fold and try and make the money. If the flop was 6d10sKh, he might still check fold with bottom pair and give the pot to you..