Freerolls: Building or Eroding Skills?

I'm interested in gathering opinions on freerolls regarding whether they are a positive or negative (or for that matter neutral) factor in their effect on a good player's skills. With nothing at risk, some players in these donkfests accellerate very quickly to large stacks, while fields of several thousand are trimmed by over half in a very short time. Of course this is NOT characteristic of real money games, so I'm wondering: How does playing freerolls affect one's skills? Is it just a matter of adopting a set of tactics exclusively for freerolls, or should one stick to the basics on their playing style?

when i first started playing online poker (about 9-12 months ago) i found them useful. They helped me build up my patience and just get a general feel for online poker. I also used them to learn how to play omaha high and even won the omaha event. But once you get the basics of poker, then they will only start to erode your skills as you are playing vs people who dont know how to play poker and are mostly kids

If you can avoid enough landmines and get through the first hour, half of the field and most of the real donks are gone. At that point the play is not much different than low stakes ($2 - $5) poker.

If nothing else it's good practice for people that play those stakes.

Freerolls are definitely very different from a real money MTT, but not hugely different from the smallest stakes MTTs. If you play good patient poker you are often rewarded, but you need to take gambles you wouldn't normally take in order to win.

I would say their effect is neutral or slightly positive for someone who keeps their freeroll strategy separate from their normal play.

I would say they are bad for me. My bankroll is slim to nothing much of the time so i play alot of freerolls. So my play is at freeroll style (takeing to many chances) and i cant seem to get myself out of that kind of play. Its driving me crazy. This is why i joined CC.

Freerolls are a test in patience.....it's really hard to not go up against that guy at your table who goes all in 5 times in a row when you have ace nine.....

Now if you wanna do an experiment.....watch that first person to 10k and see where he is when the tourney is over....I'm betting he's not in the top 50 of a big tourney.

Freerolls teach you patience and the basics of poker.

I find there are numerous differences and play styles I use. Where I seem to have the most conflict is going from online to live tables. I play live here locally as often as possible and notice there are times that I know I've played a lot online and tend to back off too far in undoing the freeroll play style once the cash is on the table.

Good point. I hadn't considered into the question the effect of transitioning to brick and mortar as well as online real money.

I have done much better live at the casino than online. Am starting to think i shoould just play live? My biggest cash live $1 $2 nl is $900. Biggest cash online tourny is like $1.20 lol.

Same here. I can get to final tables here where there is several hundred up for grabs. I can place well too online in MTT's, but usually wind up in the 50cent to $5 range. Also one heck of a lot less time on the live tables and a very small minefield to navigate.

HMmmm... maybe I should replace online poker with something productive like browsing facebook or myspace pages - lol.

if u use them as study and genuinely leanr the game fine. If you use patience, you may end up with something for nothing invested, other than time.

but i believe the best lessons learned in life are with real cash

if all you do is play freerolls, then you may start to lose faith in the game and think that donks are harder to beat than pros, which os definitely not the case

I am a continuing FRW and i think they great ways to build up needed poker skills, esp patience and how to take a bad beat. A couple years ago when i started poker, i was one of those who had to wait to rebuy play chips on pkerstars. now play money games are like stealing from children and i now regularly go deep in freerolls and other MTTs with almost $500 in just freeroll winnings. I know it's frustrating when the donk going all in preflop with 59 off cracks your kings, but that doesn't mean playing in these things can't help you work on your own game. Like it was said earlier, that guy won't make hour 3 but if you play good poker, you probably will. As always this is just my opinion.

how can u hope to better your skill at the game when most freerolls we play consist of 4000 guys playing any and all hands cause they just dont care?even if u play a tourny the way u normaly would u have to take the bad beat hands into account.so if u raise 4x the big blind with aces and get a caller the flop comes 8 9 2 three suited and he goes allin b4 u u call he has 8 2 offsuit and turn is 8 and river is k u lose to junk when playing well. ive seen it time and time again 80% of winning hands in big freerolls are hands that would never see the light of day if the people had actually spent money on the tourny.........

imho,
if you're just starting out in poker, playing freeroll is fine, who knows you might just take down the tourney and build a bankroll from there. If i'm not wrong, Arnette_15 started with a $9 bankroll (not sure if its from a freeroll )
You learn how to be patient player, how to handle bad beats, how to read people cause some players played their hand so obvious that you'll know exactly what they have, how to handle maniacally-aggressive players, how make use of player's very obvious tendencies eg. some always bet when checked to, some dont give up hands even if u check-raise them substantially twice-in-a-row, some who likes to super overbet the pot post flop but if you called the bet, you can just take the pot away from him with a decent bet on the turn, there are just too much examples. Therefore, playing freeroll is kinda nice as it lets you see a variety of players when you are just starting out.

I think any experience to a poker player is a positive. As long as you can step back when the free roll is done and adjust your game. Do i think free rolls are a good place for a poker player to learn? Not a chance.

If your patient and you play your good hands, you can take advantage of the donks that push with anything and trap them with monster hands like AA or KK just gotta be patient and don't let the tendencies of the donks start to wear you down

Great feedback and observations so far, but just to clarify...I'm not asking whether freerolls are a good place to learn, but rather do you think that playing too many freerolls will positively or negatively affect an otherwise GOOD player's game? Because of budget I'm limited to freerolls for the time being and wondering if this is helping, hurting, or not really likely to affect my skills in the long run when I eventually return to real money MTT's. As for SNG's and ring games, those require different strategies and tactics so I'm not sure how they'll fit into the equation after this long haul of restricting my play to the donkfests.

I doubt it's hurting your skills at all, sometimes you have to play lower stakes or for your situation no stakes lol but I guarantee you depending on the amount of people and variance you still need to be on top of your game to pull the freerolls down