how to build stack in a free rolls

I have played many free rolls on full tilt mostly the tournament free roll and the us free roll. I have learned i can hang in till about 400 or 300 people which is pretty good seeing that there is 7500 people in those tourny The thing i have trouble is cashing in those free rolls i can build my stack by playing the top ten hands. I dont know if i need to just play every hand raising and keep raising no matter what i have. Or just play tight and wait for the nutz.

I find playing tight in freerolls is the way forward.. there are many people who are happy getting their chips in after hitting almost anything on the board. Just keep an eye out on the really loose players and try and get into a nice spot against them.

Another tip is to watch for the people who are sitting out. When the blinds become quite healthy it is always useful to steal from the players sitting out.. just watch for the players that insta-fold and have very similar stack sizes.

So yeh, just try and be patient and i'm sure you'll get a feel for the players you should be targeting. Hope you get a cash sooner rather than later!

Those large freeroll fields have a very high variance, simply play solid abc-poker like if it was a normal tourney. And try the smaller ones (private freerolls), there are better chances of cashing. Freerolls are great - you can´t lose, only win - and a good training tool for beginners . Good luck and have fun !

I'm not sure whats more depressing - Spending 4 hours to get knocked out 100th place, or spending 5 hours to snatch a measly 1 or 2 dollars...

Spending 6 hours and grabbing the 15/18 dollars would feel good though. I've only made the final table one time in a FT freeroll and it was back when they were all 2700 players.

i stopped with freerolls sadly. they were a good way to begin and i won when they were 2700 on FT. helped me learn the omaha game very well. i'm doing the US freeroll tonight on full tilt because work has gotten slow and i dont have the money to deposit. but my theory is i'd rather try to get my chip count up in the first hour so i dont sit there n as u said miss the cash but play for 4 hours

i went from $0 to $1500+ near the end of 2009 playing those freerolls.

in less than a week !!!

i basically had to play every freeroll all day long incl.the weekly freeroll sat and the canada 100$ and the T$ ones . On day three I got in 6th and made 6.75$.

The next day I bought into a daily dollar and got 2nd. $1654.43 giv'er take

it took some intense focus.

mostly limp folded unless I hit sets(which i was hitting) or hunted nut flushes on the cheap . basically played like a scared noob . never aggressive unless raising the nuts . ne way that's my story.
I hope it helps in some way even if only to give you hope .

I really haven’t played too many full tilt freerolls since they switched to 7500 ppl. But id still suggest to play a tight solid game to improve ur tourn game and to become more consistent. Yeah its 300 or whatever but its consistant and that’s good. That’s a start, as u get better ull find urself getting deeper in the tourns.

Also, to expect to cash in those is setting urself up for trouble because only less than 1% of 7500 ppl cash and that’s crazy.

Id tell u to shop around for freerolls and promos, not just at full tilt but other sites, especially Pokerstars. There are more freeolls and opportunities than just those astronomer freerolls to the weekly freerolls open to every1, but u gotta look for em.

But if ur stuck on only playing at full tilt, the 500k freeroll is a better chance to cash than the other freerolls. It has less than 100 ppl and the top 18 get paid. So instead of playing 4+hrs in the other freerolls try the playchip tables and build a playchip bankroll. It takes patience but to me its easier and u can rely on that tourn to get paid a lot more than the other full tilt freerolls. Full tilt also has other freerolls that require a lil effort but will offer u better payouts than less than 1%, but again . . . u gotta look around and do a lil work.

GL

Why not just deposit twenty bucks and play the lowest limit cash games. They are extremely easy to beat provided you know what you are doing.

I started with fifty on Carbon Poker in May. Now I am over $200. I won $70 in the initial depositor freerolls (field of about 160). So I've won $80 in the cash games at the lowest limit. I only play one table at once and average an hour to two a day. Some days I play more, so days I don't play at all. So if you play more, you can build an even greater bankroll.

Beats wasting hours at the freerolls.

Surely, everyone has at least twenty bucks.

1. Lower your expectations. Cashes comes, but never as often as you like.

2. Early on you can play tight and wait for big hands, but once the blinds go up you need to start stealing blinds, and take chances.
Once stealing blinds and antes would add 15% or more to your stack you should consider going all-in every decent chance you get.

very nice achievement,

but i wouldnt tell any1 to deposit 10-20 bucks, because its not really enough to do anything and really start playing. and an advanced beginner -intermediate player really shouldnt have trouble getting that amount from playing freerolls in a short time anyway.

and if ur a beginner, it might just be a better idea to play the freerolls and playchip tables to get a feel for the site, learn about playing micro/lo players because the ppl playing playchips are very similiar to them and u also dont have to pay for lessons u coulda gotten for free anyway.

i have cashed in a few in fact most of my bank is free roll money well i have never made a deposit . well any way to the point when u get a larger stack play a litle looser than top 10 try some draws trust your gut dont be scared to gamble but dont go nuts make other ppl respect your bets by showing down a few winners than u can push a few around good luck

I do not think there is a right or wrong way to do this. Sitting tight and only playing top 10 hands like you do is fine but it does take a lot of time to get to where you are getting and then find yourself out. Lots of guys will just go with almost anything early on and if they double up a couple of times then tighten up and try and build on it. I prefer to play poker rather than bingo but there is no doubting the value of freerolls to get a start.

I think sitting in freerolls playing tight is like waiting for winning the lottery. I think even from the beginning you can start and play agressively. The problem is you need to know when do that and agaisnt who. The most difficult thing in freerolls is getting to know your opponents on the table very quiclky. And again it is so tiresome since you can be consistent and never cashout when only 45 out of 7500 gets paid its 0.6% chance.

Yea this is my dilemma, staying in a a FR and almost making it to the money but get blinded out by playing too tight and wonder if it would of been better for me to get more aggressive earlier and if I busted out, it would be better than spenind another 2 hours with out anything to show for it. The real heartbreaking one for me is the Cake 1K satalite FR (which I feel are one of the better FR deals going) but you gotta make top 7 in this satlelite to play on saturday for pretty good money, but I have had so many top 12 to 8 finishes and its like WOW I guess when there were 75 people left I should of really played more hands and tried to get the chips I need as I know over and over appox 40K in chips will be enough but 22K is only gonna lead to a close but no cigar deal

Yep - As has been mentioned by many, the freerolls with the best odds will be private freerolls like the CC ones. Also there are a ton of private freerolls on full tilt. A lot of them require that you do stupid surveys or sign up for SMS type services that cost you money - but if you buy a pre paid phone you can sign up for all the sms stuff and get a bunch of gift certs for full tilt and pokerstars.

I've pretty much abandonded the idea of taking down a 7500 player freeroll. Not worth the effort.

There is a really great FTP academy freeroll that run on the second sunday of each month(something like that). All you have to do is get on the leaderboard for the Sit n' learn quizes which is pretty easy. It has like a 5k prize pool and only a few thousand entrants every month.

Other than that, work on your tournament game here at the forum and eventually you'll be able to play in the CC freerolls. That's my primary freeroll focus right now.