Freerolls - Fun or waste of time?

Hi,
I would like to know your oppinions about the freerolls in general. I enjoy them and play to practice and learn without loosing money. But sometimes I ask myself if Im stupid playing 4 hours against 1000 or more players to win 20 cents!? Do I meet at the Freerolls players as good as in sngs or cashgames or the good players are not playing freerolls at all?
What do you think?
Saludos
muck

I've been playing all the time freerolls, lately it seems like a waste of time you really have to get lucky, many times.

It's not even practice, because when you play money tourney its a totally different game.

Well I think it depends on the number of entries and the payout.
After at least 3 hours of tight playing I would like to be awarded. And to be honest, the award is in nearly all cases not lucrative.
However, luck is real big issue in Freerolls with many entries and its most likely to get sucked out at some point. So I do prefer to play money tournaments or private freerolls as well. The normal freerolls are in my opinion like playing lotto.

I play freerolls constantly, They aren't always the best way to, "practice." but they can be fun when you have time to burn and don't feel like spending money to do it, nd mostly i play on fulltilt so the Min i'm winnin is 2 bucks in alot of there freerolls unless i bust out b4 the cash either way, they are a god waste of time

I think of them as practice. Unless you have the bankroll to hit the 1K+ tournaments, you will meet up with all sorts of players. You need to learn to adapt to the type of players you are facing. Obviously you have the more reckless players at the lower levels, but with satellites to nearly every larger game now, you can play the higher stakes and still be playing the guy that won his entry with $1. As for lucritive, I wouldn't say so. Some private freerolls can be, but mostly you will be playing for a few dollars. If you don't have the ability or desire to deposit freerolls can build your bankroll.

I like freerolls, its the only place where I can feel I am actually better than some of my opponents.
About the time wasted compared with the profit: u r absolutely rite, its a waste of time. But winning big bucks isnt everything, at least not for me.

I think if you gain a lot of money early on and sit out while the all-inners do their thing and make it to top 100 you can stand a decent chance to cash out.

i think the freerolls are a good way to practise poker and earn some money without risking our bankroll... if you reached the final table, prices are really interesting, however its really difficult to get there.... but lots of people start from 0 and make a decent bankroll starting with freerolls so they werent a waste of time...

Freerolls can be fun, and they do waste a lot of time.

CC Freerolls are fun and DONT waste time...otherwise yeah, generally a waste but u can start a roll to get into other, bigger games

Also, if you are going to play them against the big fields--try and stick to freerolls like the bodog $500

Playing the various site $50 Freerolls with 1000 people - you just as well should hang yerself

freerolls area great way to learn how to play poker. you dont get 30 out of 7500 players buy just donking out, and until you get to that level of placing 30 out of 7500 people on a consistant basis i wouldnt really play more then low limit poker

i really enjoy playing freerolls beacause it also takes alot of the stress out of poker, not only do you not lose any money if a donk sucks out on you but you also risk nothing to if you place in a saturday or high up in a week tourney, to win alot of money

IMO, the best strategy is to do well at the start, then sit out to let the crazy players die off.

I play alot of freerolls because I was very inexperienced when I had cash to put in and now my credit card is maxed out (lol).

I have set myself the challenge of building a bankroll from freerolls and what a challenge it is!!

Anytime I win I seem to blow it straight away.

For this reason I have decided to aim for about $20 and then start playing 1-table SNG's.

I have a feeling this will work well for me but I only have $0.19 built up so far.

The daily dollar will also be played if I get to $20. Hard to beat 10,000 players but the rewards are impressive if I can pull it off

Freerolls are fun to kill time and if you get lucky win. Only bad thing about them is there are a lot of players at the start that bet all or nothing every hand, till they bust.

In my opinion.

Everything can be used as a Tool.
If you enjoy Free Rolls, why not take down some Free Cash.

If you have played Free Rolls for sometime and are getting board or asking why am I playing this.

Maybe it's time to step up a notch and play Low Buy in SNG's or Small Stakes Cash Games.
Progression
Nothing wrong with that .....

Free Roll yourself into Millions.

i think freerolls is a good way to learn poker for free and win some experience..cash too,but not to much...anyway to play in a freeroll is not a waste of time..is just a way to become a better player.

I do a lot of freerolls and yes they take a lot of time and patience for winning some cents, but it gave me practice and this way I started a bankroll without any deposit

freerolls are fun and its pretty easy to cash something, 50% of the freerolls I enter i manage to cash some cents, sometimes entering the final table and then you can get some full $$
but its defently a time killer and sometimes it starts to be boring so i just sit out if my stack is big enough

If you are going to play freerolls play the ones related to sites like this or other poker forum sites. You still get some poor play at the start but in general these freerolls are pretty good quality. You will always get players being a bit looser in freerolls, even the good players, but sometimes this can make for a better game. My attitude is to try and play my best game regardless of the buy in. I think if you adopt this and do your best you will be okay. Stop worrying about what others do and keep enjoying.

I think time vs. payout = waste of time has been established, but i still liketo play em now and then. I don't like to play them often because i noticed that i start to play more donk like if I play too many freerolls. When I do have time to sit down and "invest" several of hours to practice on a freeroll, I do get alot of satisfaction winning, making final table, or even placing in the money on a field of up to 2700. I am suprised and impressed with myself when i play my "A" game and see just how often I make final tables on a field that big. It's a great confidence boost for playing in real money tournaments. But like i said, if I play too many, i win the freerolls less and play more loose on real money which results in loss because I lose when i play too loose. (i used loose, loss, and lose in one sentance and used the right one each time!!! LOL).

They are both
fun (chatting) and waste of time 20 cent in 4 hours
some people have a lot of free time and have nothing else to do!!!

if you need money than get a job or rob a bank

they are only a waste of time if u dont learn anything from them u get to see a lot of different styles of play if u go deep u can improve on your check raise n bluff game its a matter of what and how much time u have to spend if u got no br thats all u got is freerolls

Depends Is The Answer

Freerolls r alot of fun as well as a huge waste of time. The real question is y do u play them.? For money of course, but very rarely r u goin to hit itm, so y else? I play them because I enjoy the huge donk offs through out they make me laugh and sometimes they piss me off, but thats the fun in it for me. Also I am ADHD severly so I cant just sit still for very long so I use them as a tool to use up some of my AGG so that I'm not playin to wreckless in the tourneys that matter a little more, as they all matter of course. As far as using them to get rich or learn just make a deposit and find out if u have what it takes to hang that way, because unless ur the next Daniel N., C. Ferguson or a few of the elite here on CC its a pointless run.

I usually have a freeroll running as a second game in the background. I don't pay much attention to it unless I see a big hand, or I start getting close to the money. I like to set up a challenge for myself, like taking out the table bully.

I think this has been discussed before!

I personally enjoy freerolls, but I don't treat them as a learning tool.
I have whiled away 1000's of hours over the last couple of years, but have been successful enough to cover the cost of a mp4 player, an external hdd plus several other treats, and most pokersites I play have a reasonable amount of $ just in case I fancy paying for a game now and again

It's amazing how those cents add up in the long run!

good luck at the tables

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned using freerolls to practice multi-tabling. With all the sites, when I was playing freerolls to build a bankroll, I was sometimes in 5 at a time.