Building a bankroll from freerolls

Has anyone ever built a bankroll off of freerolls ?
If so , How ? How long did it take ? Please give full detail . Thanks in advance.

I'm currently in the process of building from freerolls.

There are a few ways to do this.

Qualify for CC games.

This is fairly obvious, CC provides great freerolls for members and you just have to make 65 quality posts. Once you qualify you get to play twice a week on fulltilt. Then you just have to play enough to make a deep run.

Other Private Freerolls

Keep an eye out for any private freerolls with a descent payout. If you can easily qualify, then there is no reason not to give them a try. There's only one other private freeroll I'll play besides CC games.

FT- Sit and Learn Freeroll is great... 5000 dollar prize pool. 1500 entrants and the top 540 get paid. This just happened yesterday, I finished in the top 180 for 7.50. Runs once a month, quailfy by completing a FT academy Sit and learn.

Build your play chips
Grind your way to a few million play chips, and then play the daily 500k 40$ freeroll. Fairly easy to cash, 60-90 play, 18 get paid.

Best way for me to build play chips was through the step tournaments. Work your way to step 7 and then just keep repeating the process inorder to gain a reasonable amount of play chips.

Public Freerolls.......Maybe

Worth a shot, but their a crapshoot. My best finish was 5th or 6th out of 7500, it took 6-7 hours and I got 6 dollars. I got lucky, and whoever else cashes in these also get lucky. That's all public freerolls are, luck.


I've been doing this for a year or so. I play all of the freerolls listed above, besides public, I gave up on them. Right now I'm sitting at a BR of $20.40. Made most of that over the last few days grinding 2nl. It's possible to get aBR started, but there will be many days when your BR sits at 0.00. All you need is one break through, run good run from a FR cash and your set. Hopefully I run good for awhile to build a reasonable BR from my freeroll winnings.

matt0216 posted some great advice and thats basically all the things that u can do to build from a freeroll

One thing though that i do when i was playing with play money is to play till step 6 and then enter into the 100k HU sng. Its Extremely easy to win and a great way to build play money chips to enter the $40 freeroll for 500k

Yeah matt0216 pretty much told you everything you need to know. My advice is stay on here and qualify for the CC freeroll club. Im just now becoming a member but I have looked at the tourney info on there freerolls and they are good deals.

I would also recommend on Pokerstars to play in the Sit and Go freeroll tourneys. You have to win your 6 person table, when you do that you have to win the final table of the Sit and Go tourney which is also 6 people. When you do that you get a ticket for a NAPL Rooke Freeroll. Its a little better than a public freeroll, not a lot but a little. You can also do funsteps on Sportsbook/Carbon Poker. You have to finish in the top 3 in Funstep 1 and you get a Funstep 2 coupon. Then in Funstep 2 you have to finish in the top 2 to get a Funstep 3 coupon. Then if you win Funstep 3 you win a dollar. I have finished 2nd in Funstep 3 twice, one time it was as gay as it gets.

I started my bankroll placing in a freeroll and now im up over $400. I wouldnt suggest playing more than you need to. To get a roll started you only need 50cents. play many freerolls,, preferably the private ones until you cash in one. use this tiny roll at the .01 .02 tables and see what happens. There is no point in having a tiny bit of cash in your account if you arent going to use it. If you run out then play some more freerolls. but there is no point in playing in the nearly impossible to beat freerolls unless you need to.

I built my BR entirely from freeroll and at the moment I have almost 2.5k. I fooled around with practically almost every site that offered good freerolls. I once came third in the Cake freeroll and won 80 bucks, then blew that in a week. That's before I learnt Bankroll Management.

Since then I played in only Full Tilt and Pokerstars freeroll. I won two bucks off a UK freeroll. I then grinded 1 buck SNG for a bit. (Not really recommended since the rake is so high, I'd rather take thunder1276's advice and put those winnings at .01/.02 tables) and got lucky by coming seventh in the 10c tourney, netting me 53 bucks.

It took me almost a year and a half since I won that first two bucks before I reach the current BR. In fact my BR really took off during the last seven months. Back in March my BR languished from 90 to 120. Then I started doing well in tourneys, and the money started to come in. I also learnt how to play cash, which in itself is a much more steady source of income. I'm still a breakeven cash player, but I'm trying to get better and better.

My advice to you would be to grind freerolls until you have about 20 buy-ins for 2.25 STT. Sit and Go is generally the easiest form of poker to learn. Or alternatively you could take your little freerolls winning and play cash games. That's how I did it on Pokerstars. (But my roll there is miniscule, like 40 something bucks, so I rarely play there)

Good luck grinding the freerolls. The hardest part is always to get that first hundred. Once you get past that, you'll have a lot more choices in your game selection.

I have built a $300 bankroll starting with freerolls to each the first $100
Since then I have set a daily goal of one dollar and used various vehicles, SNGs, razz ring and heads up NLH but also avoiding going up the limits, each time I have my bankroll has suffered.

My main game at the moment is heads up holdem $1.10 buy-in, I have won eight straight, this may or may not be my game.

I will try 100 of these as 8 wins proves nothing yet at this limit.
There's some great heads-up information available, if you are interested search around for it, most of it is free.

The CC freerolls have very skillful players and building a bank using them may be very difficult, the good outcome is that great play is rewarded, unlike the public freerolls where suck outs rule.

I agree bankroll management is the key to building, and also staying grounded. A small winning run means zero, as it can easily be overwhelmed by an ongoing losing run.

Remember it is a grind, it has taken me 14 months to reach $300.

Hi all,

I've starting playing on Full Tilt with playmoney and freerolls since september. The playmoney is fairly easy so I try'd freerolls which are far more difficult ( and you encounter some realy crazy players ) Anyhow I've succeed in collecting 8 dollar. At first I got lucky at the 0.01/.02 and could grow to 18 dollar in 2 weeks. Until that day I 'tilted' and blew the full 18 dollar.

So I believe you can build a BR via freerolls, but you need to continuously improve ( and read or discuss ) so you understand the signals when you got a downswing or a tilt or ...

I hope to join the CC freerolls when I've fullfilled the necessary inputs .

See you all at the tables at FT (freerolls for the moment because BR = 0 )

It's just not worth it to navigate through a field of 3000 at least to get paltry money. On Carbon, only the top handful get cash, then it's just satellite entry for the rest down to 24th. That means less than 1% of entrants get anything. That's a lot of time spent for likely nothing. I've tried a few of these and people are going all in with Ace rags all the time, but if they hit that ace, your KK, QQ are no good. Even with AA, you might get 4 callers. All it takes is for you to get unlucky one time.

KK is only about 7:3 vs. Ax.

With the smaller MTTs, i.e in the hundreds, I've done ok. I've won about $90 in the Carbon MTTs that were either freeroll rewards for initial deposit or VIP points. But if the field is in the thousands like the open freerolls, I rather just deposit a few bucks to start me off.

Not from freerolls. From $8 or so I grinded $0.25. Never interested me doing it from freerolls as there aren't enough to play so you would be at it for months and months ! I admire anyway who does/can.

When online poker first came out I put a few hundred into the game and built it up. I wound up coming in 12th in some $200 buyin game that I won a few qualifiers to get to, and the payoff was $23k+
I wound up pulling all of my money out (via a debit card) and stopped playing for a few years (online anyway). Taking money out of your account changed quite a bit so I was worried about some of the regulations hitting the pike. Now that there's some wiggle room... I'm making my comeback

It depends what your talking about as a bankroll.

I placed for a dollar in a FR.
2nl
Take 2
5nl
rakeback
10nl
iron man
25nl
coaching
present day

Tryin the impossible dream myself at the moment and finding myself between $0 - $30

had a few good results in freerolls but mostly private ones but it can be done i hope lol

inti

It took me almost a full year to win about a thousand bucs. Mostly on freerolls but it wasn't untill I started playing some smaller private freerolls. And and small buyins and a shot at some bigger games going slightley over my br mgt once in awhile.

This is how I built my roll. Well only the playchip steps weren't available yet. IMO stick with the playchip SNGs and learn all you can about SNGs. Winning SNG strategy will not change from playchips to cash ofc playchips will be easier to beat. Oh and I wouldn't play the 500k tourney until I had atleast 5 million playchips. Its all about proper BRM and if you can do it with playchips nm playing for cash.

Okay this might be a stupid question, but I just won a Tournament Dollar in tonight's 'Satellite To The Ferguson' on Full Tilt. It's my first ever freeroll win. Trouble is; I don't want to play in the Ferguson. Can the tournament dollar be used for other purposes?

Ideally I would use it for the $0.70+0.10 BLT SNG. Can this be done?

yea go to the ferguson. you should be registered and just unregister and u get $1 tounrey doller. gl

i built a BR of $4k on carbon from $1 made in a FR. a good portion was made playing backgammon. i dont remember how long it took exactly....i think about 2 months.

My advice here:

Building from a baby bankroll

In relation to the question a few posts up, I also got a tournament dollar ticket from the satellite to the ferguson. But when I registered and unregistered, I still only had a tournament dollar ticket. Is this is good as a tournament dollar? Can I convert these into actual cash and play cash games?

well, my $35 bankroll is mostly from freerolls, Ive built it up in just 4 days, Ill try to do some nice bankroll managment to have some profit. It was not difficult to build it up, there are some really nice freerolls in full tilt which I play almost every day... freerollchamp for example, in which I took second yesterday and 3rd two days ago.

use the link oz posted...and everybody that wants this question answered in the future should be directed there

It can be done!!! If you give yourself 2 solid months of devoted play to free rolls then you will be surprised what the outcome will be. You cannot spend it until the end of the second month. I made $14 and waited. This will teach you to watch out for those landmines...

It´s possible to build a bankroll from freerolls only.
In my own little Fergie challenge i made since 21st of august:
$163.28 in 354 freerolls on Full Tilt.

well, i didn't make it via a freeroll, but pokerstars gave me 5$ for free, took those to 2nl 1 year ago, never looked back.

so if you get a few dollars i suggest taking them to 2nl. also you might want to google and find about some sites that offer free money. last week i got 75$ for free on ipoker, small sites trying to get some action going. does not work if you are from usa, it's good only for europe.

Lots of good advice above..myself i would stay away from play chips that route is time consuming and teaches you to play bad if you ask me...stick to private freerolls where the number is lo. Or public ones where the payout is decent enough to make it worth your time if you do cash. Personally i wouldnt play in a publically open freeroll (unless just killing time) unless first place was at least 100 dollars . played for several years winning a few and always getting drunk overplaying my BRM or lack there of would be a better word for it seems like i would consistantly win about 30 bucks or so average than have one too many on the weekend and blow it like clockwork on the weekend while drinking. about six weeks ago got tired of the same cycle so i made a spreadsheet to keep track of everything. Been sticking to my BRM plan 5% max buy in for ring games and 2% max buy in for tourneys...and yes i still get drunk but only allow myself to play on freerolls while drinking because i play like a dumbass when i do. Been working pretty well so far in the last six weeks
starting with a $3.50 win on the public Bodog 500 i currently have got my bankroll up to 438 dollars. granted it was spread out over several sites (but mostly on three) have had little trouble moving it around. via freinds that are willing to trade cash on one site for cash on another (dont recommend this , unless it is with someone you are confident will follow through with the swap) so been playing several lo dollar buy in mtt (with a chance at a decent payout in relation to my bankroll) and playing ring games nlhe and plo/8 between tourneys. Also another rule i have made for myself buying in for 100bb to whatever ring game fits into my BR if i end up more than 2 buy ins for the day i quit and just play freerolls or points games...for example...my bankroll is $438 so that limits me to a max buy in of around 20 bucks into a ring game(10c/20c max) if i were two lose two buy ins consecutive or end up 40 bucks down for the day . I would quit cash play for the day and just play freerolls . My theroy on this is if youre running bad enough to drop 10 percent in one day it probably isnt your day and your mind frame is probably going to be a little upset at the loss. So just quit regroup and try again someother day...usually though if i lose one 5 percent buy in i will move down in my stakes. to like 5c/10c ring game just to avoid being stuck playing freerolls for the rest of the day. Ive done what i think is ok for me the key for me was to start charting my action on the spreadsheet after i did that i realized what an idiot i had been blowing my little roll consistanly playing drunk. which if i hadnt god only knows what it could of been over the last several years.

This is great info. Thanks

PKR freerolls are the way to go. A lot of people might not agree with me. But there 10 cent giveaways are a great way to play for money with no risk. 10 players, first gets $0.06 and second get $0.04. You can play 1 every 20 minutes as long as you have less then $1 in your account. Then they got 12 cent buyin level 1 SNGs. 1st gets 40 cents, and 4th gets 12 cents back. Plus u get a PKR point for every cent of rake.

Building a bankroll from freerolls definitely isn't easy. It takes good poker playing to do so.

Playing the CC freerolls would definitely help especially with the $200 prize pools and how often they are.

The key to freerolls is to outlast the donkeys and play good poker until the end.

Good luck with your bankroll and I hope you can build something decent.

I've built my whole bankroll from freerolls, got up to about $650. So, it is possible. Here's some tips:

First, build your bankroll up a little bit before you try to play real money games. At least to about $5 or $10.

Second, now, this will seem weird and you probably won't want to do it, but before you play real money games take a little 5-7 day break. Why? Freerolls and real money are a lot different. If you just jump in you'll do a lot of the same things you do in freerolls and you'll get crushed. Even if you're a good player when you do things enough they become habits and you want to get out of your freeroll habits.

Third, follow good bankroll management. At first, it will be impossible, but once you can, you need to follow it. It's easier said, then done, because you feel likes it's free money, but if you don't follow bankroll management then you'll be back to playing freerolls.

Hope that these help.

BelgoSuisse would be the one to talk about building a bankroll from nothing, here, as he actually did the Ferguson Challenge and went from $0 - $10,000.

Me, I've went from $0 - $450 by following correct bankroll management and the advice from some of the best threads here.. but ended up losing most of it by straying from that path and entering into a lot of the MiniFTOPS games last year in the fall, and not cashing in one of them.

Two of the best freeroll games to get into on Full Tilt Poker:

1) CardsChat Freerolls: Absolute best freerolls there are. Good quality players with an average of 130-150 players during our Tuesday and Saturday freerolls. They are $200 freerolls that usually pay out the top 18, sometimes top 27 if there are enough players, and the first one out ITM gets $2, with the winner getting either $46 or $54 (again, depending on the amount of players)

2) Full Tilt Facebook Freerolls: Full Tilt's facebook holds 400 player max $100 freerolls. About 10% of the field cash, and would give you a nice little addition to your baby bankroll. You have to keep an eye out on their facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/fulltiltpoker

Yeah I cant wait to become a CardsChat Freeroll member, but until then I have to learn to play properly play poker, I think I'm going to lose so easily.

Freerolls aren't easy there hard...especially the 150$ public ones. You got to be pretty damn lucky to win those.
I'd suggest playing freerolls until you reach 20-50$ or just deposit money. 50$ is really not that much. If your not a winning player I'd suggest you don't even play.
Unless you play private freerolls, public freerolls are a waste of time.
When you get 20-50$ Grind 1$ SitnGos til you get 200$
Do the 100 buy in rule because everyone has downswings and its varience.

It may be worse to have no confidence than too much confidence.

Either way an experienced player will pick up on weaknesses, and exploit them.

good luck

A great bankroll builder is the series of 50+ freerolls that Full Tilt has been running in conjunction with their WSOP Fantasy League each summer. To get in, you have to pick winners in each of the WSOP events. The top 2000 fantasy players in each event get to play a freeroll with a $1K prize pool. Many players don't show for the freeroll, and it's usually 300-400 players competing for 90 or so cashes.

I suck at picking the WSOP winners but I usually manage to get into 5 or 6 of these freerolls every summer and make $30-40.

Use your tournament ticket to play the Daily Dollar, more prize money and more cashes/entries.