Do freerolls and microstakes really teach you about poker?

I played two freerolls today on Absolute Poker. One was a PokerPl limited to 72 folks who had taken the time to register on a site and get the password. The other was the general $50 freeroll open to all AP players.

Comparing the quality of play on these two makes me wonder if open freerolls can really teach you good poker. The private game was much more what I guess is "ABC" poker. Consistent play and not a lot of crazy play. The open freeroll was exactly the opposite.

I'd love to hear from people who started from the very bottom and worked their way up playing freerolls and very microstakes. Is there really any chance for me to try to build a bankroll from nothing? Or, if I want to be a serious "casual" player, do I really need to take some real $$ and play small stakes with folks that play more consistently?

Freerolls can't teach you good poker. People will go with any 2 cards at any time, because they have nothing to lose and they can just register for another freeroll. The games really don't compare at all to real money games. I could see them being useful for learning the very basics of new games, but that's about it.

Sure, you could waste the time building a bankroll from nothing. It's totally possible to do. Many people have done it. Just you'd save alot of time and probably progress faster if you deposited and played real money games.

Also freerolls continue to get bigger and bigger. I can't imagine sitting thru some of the 10,000 player freerolls just to win a few bucks.

Patience can be learned, if you have the money deposit.

After this one, I quit playing public freerolls.

Tournament Dollar Freeroll Win

It just took too damn long. It wasn't worth the reward.

More than you would think. I was one of the people who grinded my ways from freerolls and now sit with about 700 bucks. Not a lot of money by any means, but I'm a bankroll nit .

Think of freerolls as free training. At least in the freerolls you will learn a few postflop betting basics once most Johnny all-ins are gone.

I still wouldn't recommend building your bankroll from nothing playing in large freerolls. On full tilt, I won my first two bucks from UK freeroll (A field of about 1000 people, but I believe at least 200 of that were sitting out). I didn't have much luck in pokerstars or Absolute freerolls where a large number of entries means infinite variance. Once I won that two bucks the skills I've learnt from freerolls gave me a head start in micro tourneys and SNGs.

To conclude, don't underestimate the usefulness of freerolls, but don't count on them being able to provide quick few bucks to kick things off either. I had spent at least 4 months splashing around in freerolls before I had a decent bankroll to no longer rely on them. My advice is to play a few freerolls to make yourself comfortable with the fundamentals, then deposit.

GL at the tables

There will always be a few players in any freeroll who say "what does it matter it's free" and push constantly with atc

starting at the bottom myself I take what I can from freerolls and try to put it into practice in my money games (stuff like hand selection, folding top pair and bluffing)

and yes you can make a br from $0 it just takes time and more than a little patience

inti

It depends on the freeroll. The freerolls that cardschat puts on have a few really good players that participate in them. You always have a few idiots but there is a combination of skill levels that play these.

So public freerolls are usually a waste of time but the private ones available are worth the effort you have to put in to reap the rewards, and be able to participate in them. whatever you decoide to do Good Luck.

The freerolls teach you straightforward play, patience, abc-poker, and a variety of possible poor plays of your opponents ("how not to play"). The private ones are better than the open freerolls, smaller fields and somewhat better players. But in all freerolls there are relatively good players in the latter stages of the tournament. The donks won´t last long. In freerolls you only can win - don´t forget that. You cannot lose - only time. It´s defintely +ev !

teaches you patience at least, and you wont succeed in poker without patience.

You can start with freerolls and win a lot of money; e.g. Annette Obrestad

As for leaning from them, there's an individual element in that different people have different optimum mixes of learning methods, and one's mix isn't necessarily the same at all times.

In general, the amount you can learn just by playing is limited. Most of the time, most people learn faster and/or better when they have things they are working on learning / improving.

You won't learn anything beyond absolute basics from freerolls, largely because bluffing is virtually non existent. If you never bluff in cash games, you'll get eaten alive.

building up from zero.

Hey guy! Thats what I have been doing, Scratching from nothing to having a litte something to play in micro stakes cash game/ and cheap sng`s. Last night In the $150 razz tourney I made it to 23rd and Itmed a whopping $2.25...lol. But it`s something. There was a total of 6,323 players in the field .So I think I am doing something correctly. My goal is to be at $250.00 by the 1rst of January via micro-cash and freeroll play.That`s a realistic goal. Alot of effort goes into my building so I`m a cautious player in micro,and very Tag.

I think anytime you can see cards is a great time for learning. Even if there are below average players they are every where and every stake. So if you can learn how some of these bad players play and sometimes how the cards could fall you can learn something. Every time I play cards I feel like I can learn something new no matter what.

Yes they teach you how to play poker better. However, they have their limits. Freerolls especially will only teach you very rudimentary skills, as the play in them is typically horrible, that you only need to be non-terrible and you'll beat them.

you will learn alot more from some of the private freerolls with ok prizes then you will in the totally public 7500 players freeroll which is definetely a donkfest for the first few levels at least

my BR is currently $110 from zero (taken approx 1 year)
this has come from fulltilt public freerolls,
the uk freeroll, micro sng and micro ring (1c/2c)
i have posted a thread called
'my last month of freerolls' on here.
i intend to play more money games from now on (november)
but after some thought the freerolls are useful
for trying different styles of play (hyper-agg,tag,lag etc.)
tag seems to work best for me but you can have fun making various plays.

sometimes the variance and donkey play
drives you nuts but this gets you accustomed to bad beats,
which we all have to come to terms with.
you can deffo build a BR coz i have, and i am
learning all the time.
good luck.

I personally feel that you dont really learn a whole lot unless you are playing the higher stakes. People in the freerolls tend to call with anything just in case, as opposed to if they had 100 bucks on the line. Although it will teach you patience and when you get down to just a little bit of people left, people start playing tight.

forsakenone said:

teaches you patience at least, and you wont succeed in poker without patience.

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I like this bit of advice right here. I'm just a beginner and being patient and playing good cards has literally kept me going off my winnings for a few weeks. Sure there's a lot of donks out there and yes you will have bad beats here and there but taking what I've learned so far and being patient I've been able to transfer that knowledge out of the online poker world and onto the felt which IMHO is the only way to play poker, face to face w/ your opponents. Not to say that online games aren't fun by any means but when someone has their cold hard cash on the line and a stack of REAL chips they have to push in, they think twice about playing garbage. That is unless they're in a tourney and their backs to the wall w/ no other choice or they just flat out bluff you lol! Either way I'm still a beginner but patience and playing good cards has helped me gain more confidence and taught me quite a bit about the game so far.

Thank you

I really appreciate the comments. I think "patience learning" is a key, especially at that point in mid-tournament when I'm getting bored or tired. Or when I get frustrated by someone who keeps shoving and then I finally shove back out of that emotion.

I'll also say that freerolls give me an opportunity to experience lots of hands at, as one poster said, absolutely no $$ loss to me. I'm looking forward to having a chance to play the CC games in a bit. Then you can teach me more at the tables!

I think its possible to learn something. Like patience, for example, and think also is possible to distinguish between a good player and a donk player. Then, if you win in a freeroll, you can make the intent in micro stakes cash game/ to make up your bank.

If you are new to any game, the easiest approach is to play some play money games to learn the mechanics. Freerolls are fun to play, but you really need to play a different strategy than money games. The freerolls don't reward aggression since the opponent has no down side in calling. Time is money when you are playing and trying to build a bankroll and your hourly win rate will really take a dip if you just play those alone. Private freerolls are the closest thing to money poker and those games can be rewarding if you finish in the top three.

It took me 1 year to realise that i am still a donk and that the fish bring money to the tables. Freerolls, smallstake cash tables, small sng buy-ins are the only way to learn poker. I mean really learn poker.
Only and only if you beat them you can go to higher lvls.
The thing a beginner needs to learn is how to beat the variance and make profit . That's what poker is all about. And that's about a lot of patience, educate yourself to pass the bad beats without tilting, and of course study a lot.
Every player that wants to grow money from scrap, plays freerolls. My advice is to play freerolls like those that CC offers because there are not too many donks so your game has to be at highest every hand you play, You do not need to go all in every hand preflop untill most of the donks are out, and the number of ppl registering somewhere below 150, .
Second advice is study the postflop play. I saw a lot beginners that think if they learned how play preflop they are done with studying. That's the biggest mistake ever. Preflop play is only the first chapter in all the books. Here we go again with the freerolls. You can play cc freerolls without puting you money down, and apply, or at least trying to apply what you've learned.

And finnaly , the advice every good player here can give you. Patience, patience, patience. You will go too hell and back untill you'll grow a decent bankroll if you are patient. But you will never grind without patience. There is noone that lucky to not experience bad beats , swings, variance and i think 95 % of the ppl out there do not do well with the variance.

FreeRolls!!!

Keep it Free and you don't have to worry about losing nothing but your time. I agree with the posts that point out that private freerolls like cardschat has much better play than public freerolls. Private freerolls would be best to get some practice.

swingro said:

It took me 1 year to realise that i am still a donk and that the fish bring money to the tables.

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I really appreciate your point about post-flop play. I think that all the games I've played until now have helped me be fairly savvy about the math of which cards and which positions I should play. Then there is the nuances of betting pre-flop. That's my next step to fully master. But the post-flop is, I think, what separates the winners from the losers. Knowing how to read other players, knowing how to bet (and when), knowing when to lay down TPTK. The more I read the more I realize how much I have to learn. On the whole that just makes me admire this game more.

I'm coming at this from a different direction. I started back in 2003 before I had wife/kids/house responsibilities, and I played at much higher levels than I currently play. What makes people crazy about the freerolls/micros is the total randomness of some players actions. I agree that it can be frustrating to get your set busted by someone calling down a gutshot with bad pot odds, but don't worry about it. These are the people you will make money from. Keep studying and playing, skill beats luck in the long run, and that's what poker is, a long run, not a sprint.
I agree with swingro, the CC freerolls are EXCELLENT - a good test of where your skills are, and lots of friendly competition. The big public freerolls are good for trying things out - like when you're learning to stop-n-go or stack-a-donk. Otherwise, the sheer number of players compared to the payouts just makes them not really worth it.