To Be A Maniac in Freerool??

from time 2 time i saw dude with a maniac strategy bulding up a huge stack very quickly. when i try it, i always busted at an early stage.. how to be a maniac in a freerool tour?

What you're seeing is mis-leading. All you are seeing are the occassional maniacs that are building up the big stacks because of dumb luck. But watch closer and you'll see all the maniacs that are also busting out because they play like crap. And those same guys you see doing well on rare occassion are busting out regularly playing the same garbage that you just happen to be seeing them win with.

Granted you'll need to play a little looser in a freeroll than a buy-in tourney (since the players in a FR have no risk involved), but loose does not equal maniac.

Yeah my free roll strategy consists of waiting for a hand to trap a maniac with. A good way to do it is wait for the all in fest to end (usually two or three hands) then come in raising real loose. Do standard raises, nothing you can't get away from if you get raised. Then bet the pot on the flop, hopefully it's enough to take it down. Get myself a couple hundred extra chips (and a nice loose image to boot) and hopefully you'll catch a nice hand before too long, then you can wait for them to play back at you. For me in the beginning of a freeroll, if I'm in a hand, I'm one aggressive mofo, otherwise I have noreason to be in it.

Yep, i do something similar to what Emperor is doing. The first few hands where the crazed crowd goes all in with 23s i avoid, then i bang away at the pot for a bit, depending on the table. Normally loosing a bit of my stack. Then its tight belts till a hand or two shows up.

The crazed monkeys that score big stacks in the beginning are often feeders for later. Look at them as lunch bags for the middle part of the mtt

If you or anyone can perfect a freeroll strategy that will guarantee a Final Table 80%+ of the time, then let me know, so I can take this strategy into a re-buy tourney

The maniacs you see at the beginning of freerolls are building their stacks due to pure luck, and they will be gone sooner than you think. For me, the best strategy is just to play really tight for the 1st few levels, and trap one of those maniacs.

Usually when I play as a maniac in a freeroll and I go from like 1500 up to 9000, I then sit out for about 15 minutes. That way the other true maniacs weed themselves out. I still have an above average stack. And you most likely get moved to another table where they don't know that you were playing like a maniac and then you just play normally.

I think if you get good cards early on or if there just falling on you thats where the big chip stacks come into play.I mean if you dont have the cards and just keep pushing you will likely get knocked out early

My two cents here is that you have only two extreme tactics in a freeroll...don't play anything but AA or KK for the first two hours, or play anything resembling a decent hand based on your table position. I can tell you that I've tried both avenues with an equal lack of success, but if I had to choose one, it would be the latter. Simply for time value. Play tight and waste three hours waiting for the inevitable suckout bad beat. Play aggressively and either build up a strong starting stack or bust out early. When you look at the payouts of an average no-add freeroll, it's just not worth four or more hours of hard grinding to finish in the money with chump change. For that reason, I'm starting to come around from my previous hard stand for tight play to a looser "make or break quick" approach. Which is not to say I play rags and pray. But I'll play more middle pairs, unpaired paints, and suited connectors. There's no getting around the fact that freerolls are 90% dumb luck lottos which are much more about how stupid bad the other guy is than how good you are. All you can do is grab as many checks as possible to give yourself the best chance of winning.

Timing.. it's all about timing baby!

In freerolls when blinds are small you should wait for a big hand and then trap the maniac in his own trap.

Hope it worked better for you. Tried to re-raise a bully, got pushed all in so I backed off. Then got caught on a blind/bully raise steal with J10s, figured it was a decent hand if I was called since it's got good drawing capabilities.

Well, I got called by the bully, who I had beat by the end of the hand (he called with like 9/6 os or something like that) but I also had gotten called by pocket Queens, so I was out.

I know who you are talking about. She got her hand burnt from putting it in the cookie jar too many times. I taught her a couple of times it wasn't nice to do that.

You wait for the right hand. And play a little looser against them. It helps.

When a freeroll starts, i sit out for about 10 to 15 minutes and let all the stupid players go all in to get lucky. When that time is up i come back and play really tight, and wait for a high pocket pair, or good flop to where i can trap somebody, and i just go all in and hopefully they call with a draw or something, then they double me up. Works everytime, probably why i have won so many freerolls.

when I first started internet poker a few years ago, I played in the massive party poker $5000 freerolls( they only paid 50 spots, with 50th paying $50.00) Since I was new, I ONly played premium hands, cashed twice and got 51st once(YUCK! 6hours) out of ten tourneys with at LEAST 6000 players. I play way more hands now in a freeroll simply because I dont have the TIME to be as patient. of course I usually bust out. One way I slow down however is play the freeroll, and open up a cash game or sng and play both... that lets me ignore boredome and bad hands in the freeroll

I agree with the majority here. I play really tight until all of the "all in" players are gone. I will call with high pocket pairs, but tend to fold AK, AQ, etc. I don't sit back for an hour or two because you can build a big stack off these players.