Early Bankroll

Hey Everyone,

I am relatively new to online poker and would like to build up my bankroll. Only problem is that I don't really feel like depositing any money online. So I guess my questions are:

1.) What freerolls would you recommend? strategies would be nice too...
2.) Once I do cash in a freeroll what would be the quickest way to build up my bankroll? Would you suggest Ring Games or SNG's? maybe wait until I win more money in freerolls?

Any thoughts would be helpful!

I would play as many freerolls as possible. set a goal to make off the freegames. say $30 Do not play for cash until you have reached that goal. then institute the Chris F bankroll management strategy. I however have no self control and horrible BRM so maybe you should hear some other people's advice also. good luck

and welcome to CC there is much to learn. enjoy.
There is an article on BRM in the beginner forum.

Well my guess is that you should stick to strategy,and there are sites that sponser you if you dont want to deposit any money into a site.
Sit and go's are good ,small buy ins,Dont play ring games easy to lose your money due to tilt.

It kind of depends on what you're good at but I would avoid cash games at all costs early on. If you are good with MTT's, I would recommend playing some of the $1+.0 (no entry fee) tournaments as you're getting the most bang for your buck. I'm not sure about sit and go's but on full tilt, they take $.25 fee for $1 sit and go's which is a lot and may not be worth the investment.

definitely wait until you have a somewhat decent bankroll before you start playing with it. i've gone broke from that several times, and it's really difficult to get anywhere. if you want to give it a shot though, i'd say that sngs are the safer way to go, as they don't cost you as much, but ring games can make you more money faster but also can risk a lot of your bankroll. it's a tough call, but the more you have to start with, the easier it will be to stay alive.

The thing to focus on isn't where to play, but improving your game. Nothing against freerolls; I started with them myself and still play some every week. However, it's impossible to make much money from the open ones. If you don't believe this, check out how slowly Chris Ferguson started out when he tried to get to $10K from 0 on Full Tilt. And even in private rolls, if you're decent enough to make say $1 or $2 an hour, then you're decent enough that you'd almost certainly make more playing buyins.

depends how much money you won at freeroll. if you dont have at least 50$ my advice is to dont go to a cash table cous is very dangerous and you can lose all your money in 15 minutes. my advice is to play small MTT(max. buyin 5$) and small sng(max.5$).

Register to fulltiltpoker, play these normal 100$freerolls and play tight.. And when you get hand, bet, raise, go all in with it. In evening, theres scandinavian freeroll, italy freeroll, german freeroll etc, there are less people in those freeroll than in normal, and its same prize pool. In scandinavian freeroll, theres like 1200players everyday in it, sometimes 1000 or less.

I've done good at ps playing the freerolls. top 99 win a ticket to the weekly round 2 with a prize pool of $2000. I won a ticket, then made it to the money and won about $2. from there I played micro mtt's till I had $10, then went on to make $15 playing ring tables, just to go on tilt and lose it all at the ring tables.
eventually I just made a $25 deposit and i've been playing sng's and mtt's and staying away from the ring tables. I've more than doubled my br.

oh yeah, the 10cent-$50added and the 25cent-$100added are the easiest micro mtt's to cash in. the 10cent 180 sngs are usually a waste.

I disagree. Most people who start out depositing lose, then reload! The freerolls are a perfect place to learn the game. Most donks are out by the first break anyway and that's where you're start to learn how to play poker correctly. Also, grinding into a bankroll should make you play better poker because you know how hard it is to make earn money without depositing.

Play freerolls as much as possible, stay away from playing for real money until you have a decent bankroll, try out both ring games and tournaments and see whih suits you best. I prefer sit and go's as they are the more entertaining form of poker, however, many people prefer cash games, as, in the long term, they are prfitable if you are a good player.

Play in private freeroll tournaments like (CC at UB or FTP). Get into some micro-limit games and consider reading and applying the article Chris Furgeson has at FTP. Just be patient and it will develop.

also ive been playing in the .25 no rake 90 man sit and gos on pokerstars so there are places you can go on little bankrolls and not deplete them you can try a few of them and not be out much but you have to grind out a few freerolls to start a bankroll but after that there options.

i won't give any advice except don't go to fast and get pissed off and lose it all in one sitting, if u get bad beat or bad run of cards etc... just walk away and live to play another day. but somewhere u can get great advice for early bankroll stages is from http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/chris-ferguson-challenge and http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/pro-tip/ChrisFerguson/100 i will try using these tips next time i get bank roll

Well for me when I was tring this method,I played private freerolls,like the great cardschat freerolls.
They tend to have far less people than public freerolls and usually pay a bit more as well.
If you happen to win one of these freerolls you would have say 30.00 to 40.00 in your bankroll.
How you invest it depends on what style playeryou are,ie,"if you are a cash game plaer or a tournement player".
I prefer to play single table sng's.
If you play the one or 2 dollars sng's your bankroll off of one freeroll win should be big enogh.

play all the freerolls you can even after you get your bankroll started. then play some sng's. there is a lot of info about this stuff here.

I'd set a goal first say $50 then once u have reached that amount,try MTT or SNG..also i would stay away from cash games just a suggestion..peace

It seems the consensus here is to stay away from ring games until your bankroll can handle the huge down swings that may come from it. I've been building my bankroll through 1.00 and 3.00 SnGs on Pokerstars.

If you don't want to deposite money, you'll never be able to get money out... (keep that in mind). Stick around cardschat, they have freerolls all the time. They pay ~50$ for first place and the one on fulltilt pays 18 places on average.

Get to a bankroll of 25-30$ and you can start playing the 1.00 SnGs without much problem of a huge downswing. good luck

Lets say you were on Full Tilt (where I play), I love doing SnGs however, the lowest ones Full Tilt offers are 1$ with an added .25! (25% rake) which is unheard of! so if you started out I would keep away from the low SnGs until you have reached I would say somwhere near the 10$ + 1$ games.
Honestly, I would just completely avoid the low buyin SnGs at Full Tilt and just keep playing private free rolls until you have enough to buy in to a higher one (make sure you practice those SnGs a million times with play money so you get the jist of how to play them)

Good luck!

If you are not going to deposit, which I am the same way, that is fine, but it comes with its own set of rules. Think back to when you were a kid and you wanted a new bike, video game, skateboard, etc. and you were forced to save your allowance until you had enough to get it. Same way with freeroll money. Public ones usually don't pay too high, and if you immediately go and play with it, you're most likely to lose it.

I say save it up until you get to that predetermined amount, then start playing with good bankroll management.

I would recommend 0+0,10$ 1k$ guaranteed FTP tournament, very nice payouts if you make to the money. I personally never rebuy, if lose - then lose, one rebuy costs as much as almost weeks entries, so why bother. Also lots of donks play there, so not too hard to get to the money too.

I think a good way is to find sites that have double up or beginners sng's generally the top 5 in a 10 sng toury double up on their buyin I generally place in 2 out of 3 that I play in just takes a little patience something you will need to learn anyway

I would recommend signing up for some of the online forum challenge freerolls. These can be rather significant prize pools for a freeroll, over the usual $50 - $100 freerolls.

are players from other countries allowed to play in these though?

hello I agree with most, play as many freerolls as you can , when you win the amount you fell comfortable with play sng. you have to play good poker to build your stack . good luck at the tables. Tina

I know how you feel, not wanting to deposit. I'm working on playing freerolls and getting up to 500,000 play chips to get in that $$$ tourney. then I'm going to play some $1 MTTS and hopefully build it up

Freerolls is where it's at until you become more familiar with the game. No need to go in playing cash and losing a lot of your own money. It's a lot of fun playing freerolls and there are plenty of them out there if you take the time to get into them. I wonder what the percentage of people that play on line actually deposit money into an account for real cash play?

Do yourself a great favor and check out some of the threads about freerolls and how to play them. There are quite a few of them around. You'll learn a bunch. This will definately help you with the learning curve.

There are a zillion threads about playing freerolls, so I would recommend using the search function at the top of the page on the right and you can read all the advice you could want about the topic. (Same with building a bankroll, actually!)

I will tell you that you WILL NOT learn how win at poker by playing in open freerolls. There are just too many players doing too many stupid things with bad cards in those tourneys.

You would save yourself a ton of grief and time to read through the advice on sites like this or maybe a few books, deposit $25-$30 bucks in a site, let them give you a first-time bonus, and get into the game. If that is totally out of the question, then go ahead and slog your way through the FR's until you can build up enough bankroll to move forward, but be studying the game and learning to play while you're doing it. It will take a while, but you will appreciate what you've done once your BR grows!

Good luck! (And use this forum to learn! There is a wealth of good information on Cardschat for new players--you'll learn which people to pay attention to and which to ignore!)

My advice would be to play a lot of freerolls until you have about 15 or 20 dollars. Then start playing real money games. Deciding to play ring games or tournaments is up to you, it depends what you are good at. I personally would start with ring games to increase my bankroll some more. Then do a mix of ring games and tournaments. Don't use more than 15% of your bankroll on any one ring game or tournament. It takes quite a lot of self control and patience to do this. And a lot of skill and some luck to increase your bankroll. Things that Chris Ferguson and other pros are blessed with.

play as many freerolls as u can there are way to many to list cc has some good ones go to the calender to find what days played and once u hit for some cash your best bet is to start with micro sitngos and try to build ur br up and as u increase ur bankroll u move up in stakes at the sitngos some times it will not go your way but keep plugging u will win cash.

Trucker,

You've got some good advice there, but mix in some PUNCTUATION, bro!!