How to win a Freeroll ...any advice ?

Hi !

I am quite new to the poker community and I am just building my bankroll.

Therefore I like to use the freerolls for it as I am not really deep-stack in money right now.

I have tried to play a few on PS and PP but without any major success.
( Had like 3 small cashing in 14 tournaments )

I do really try to play TAG as most of the players are even LAG or Bingo players who are able to call AI with almost any two cards.

But even when to do honestly play TAG they call my AIs (I go with premium onlyAA, AKs, KK,QQ...or sets after Flop) with lower pairs or A4os and somehow managed to hit on Turn or River which is killing me ....

Any advice please ... Or are the Freerolls only for Loose and Bingo players who do not care about hands and math ???

I would really appreciate any suggestions !!! or should I forget about the FREEROLLs as they seem to me as the depend too much on LACK FACTOR ???

Thank You all for your help !!!

Keep posting here till you qualify for the CC freeroll club. They are tough to cash in, but the fields are smaller & you can work on playing solid poker while trying o cash. Friendly folks to chat with while you play, instead of the normal infantile name calling is another very nice benefit.
As far as regular freerolls, not much I can offer, other than they are largely a waste of time, people who have no money invested tend not to treat these seriously.
Good luck

Well if its a free roll ,some players are gonna push/play anything in early stages.You are better off to play position, especially early stages of a free roll tournament.It will give you an opportunity to see how many players are in the pot.You do not want to push all in from early position with multi players 3 or more in the pot before you especially if they have 3 bet 4 bet It can be dangerous even with a premium pocket pair.I was playing a free roll game the other night on full flush .I had a set of Q's on the flop.I pushed all in on 2 players from BB the player with pocket 5's called me another player called also with A/Q.The player with pocket 5's hit a runner runner to have quad 5's on the river.Took me out of the free roll. I would avoid all ins in early stages unless you have 2 or less players in the pot early stages.Lots of patience can win you free roll cash outs.

Best way to win a freeroll? Get lucky all the way through and win a ton of flips.

never an easy win,
but keep playing tight (and aggressive when you have a hand)
but loosen up as blinds get large, especially near the bubble-
too many player get too tight just trying to min cash and thats a great time
to steal chips (always table/villian dependant)

3 small cashes in 14 games on the big sites is actually quite good considering
gl

easy recipe:

villain has a top pair hero will hit the set

villain has a set, hero will make a straight

villain has a straight hero will get a flush

villain with flush n hero obtains a full

and if quads are needed then hero will get it too

if having aces someone will have kings and so on

then all the big pots will go to hero´s side

and it has to be from the first hand to the last and then it´s garanteed that hero will win

I made $250 from freerolls in a month last year. What I did was I found clients where the field size was low and the opponents weren't serious, e.g. iPoker Network, or just any site where they had password protected freerolls and the prize was over $100 or over $100 in tickets split between the field. I came second in a $500 I won tickets for and 1st in another weekly freeroll for $500 which I played regularly and learnt how the opponents likely played.

I played on average 2-3 freerolls per day, I kept track of profits even if I won $0.01, also what hands I went out with and what times were good play, what times were bad play, and what times were 50/50 based on the opponents or blind levels. The main advice I'd give is just enter as many as you can and play your game as tight as possible. Be honest if you could have played a situation differently based on what you can expect your opponents to do and their motivations.

Don't listen to anyone who says it is all luck and you might as well donk it completely. They are the people you make your chips off in the long run. I've noticed the final tables still generally consist of familiar names who know how to play freerolls well. As long as you focus on the long game and that $0.01>$0.00 you have a head start over those trying to win whatever the prize is in the first hand. Before you start, if you are prepared to last for 3 hours you will be ahead of 90% of the field - this is why some players will recommend investing 3 hours in something that could give you a better hourly return but if you are just learning the game and don't trust yourself with a bankroll then it is a good practice of dedication, variance, and bankroll management in my opinion. Aim to cash about 1/3 of the time throughout the month and don't be disheartened if you played well and lost your first 3.

Even heads-up at the final table your goal should be to out-last your opponent for an hour because chances are that is the last thing your opponent wants after finally avoiding suck-outs all day. Patience is the key - if you haven't gone out of the tourney with a 50%+ chance or a complete cooler then chances are you aren't paying attention enough to what your opponents are doing. Even when really short-stacked you need a decent pair or an Ace with a decent kicker in a decent position before you can justify going out with the worst hand.

Don't just call people's raises because you think you might have equity some of the time. If you have an A9o and the guy beside you goes all-in chances are you gotta fold that shit (unless he has shown a history of going in with less). Two donks don't make it right - you, at best, have a 45% chance 50% of the time.

See, overall, it is about learning the game. It is a different game to cash or other tourneys. You gotta only play when you feel like playing to succeed. Take a break if you are ever in the wrong mood about the goals. It can't be a completely results oriented process, although your results can sometimes point where to improve (just remember an improvement in freeroll poker is not always an improvement in deep-stacked poker at other stakes).

As a beginner, it's far more important to focus on learning to play a decent game than on winning freerolls. The big picture is that even if you win a few hundred dollars in your first few months, it's just a drop in your bucket compared to how much a player with a modest win rate can make over his poker career, even just playing recreationally at low stakes.

Blobweird123 said:

Best way to win a freeroll? Get lucky all the way through and win a ton of flips.

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Exactly. Pick your spots and shove early with high value hands and against those you know are playing any 2 until you build enough of a stack. It's pretty much a donk fest for the first hour. If you can survive that, you'll be able to actually play some poker.

Dude -- I just got in the money for my first free roll. It CAN be done. Just play super tight, like tighter than super tight. Fold 80% of your hands. Forget single digit suited connectors and let the donks play themselves out. You should be focues on either 1) stealing blinds or 2) raising your hands. You can accomplish both with a simple raise. And remember, higher blinds mean you must raise more, don't be afraid to take a step toward an opponent. Fold equity is HUGE.

I think you need to stay very tight and play only very strong hands to make it to the final table in a freeroll. When you get down to the top 20% of players left, you will see that the SHOVE MONKEYS will have, for the most part, been eliminated from the tournament.

To make it to that top 20% of players, you need to get more aggressive as blinds go up BUT, stay very tight if you happen to have SHOVE MONKEYS at your table. Don't let a SHOVE MONKEY convince you to go all in with less than a TOP 6% hand. The thing about SHOVE MONKEYS is that the one time you DO call their bluff could be the time they have the nuts. So you have to really be careful.

That said, you can't just fold your way to the remaining top 20% player pool. You must keep an eye on average chip stacks and make sure you are near and around the average as much as possible. If you see you are below average, you may have to take a risk to get to average; unfortunately, that risk can severely cripple your chipstack. But try NOT to let that risk take you out of the tournament altogether. Sometimes, unfortunately, this is not possible and you must try again in another tournament after busting out.

If you survive and make it as one of the final 20% left, then you can probably start to play poker again until you reach the bubble.

once the bubble is reached there are different strategies depending on the person. If you want to take the riskier route, you can take advantage of players' general fear of hte bubble and build a nice chipstack on that fear. But make no mistake, doing this puts your tournament survival at risk every time you do it. In this way, you can really set yourself up for a great position, chipwise, on the final table; CONVERSELY, you can also be setting yourself up for a quick exit from the tournament without passing go and without collecting your $200.....

The other route when reaching the bubble, of course, involves sticking your head in the sand and trying to make it past the bubble without taking any extraordinary risks. This can be done but only effectively and nonchalantly if you are deepstacked.

One might argue that when you are deepstacked, you want to dominate the bubble and become even more deeply stacked. When you are deep stacked, you can do this without necessarily risking your tournament survival. But you can also jeopardize your "LOCK" on getting to the final table.

Once at the final table:

If I am shortstacked between 10BB and 15BB: I would play only the top 6% of hands until I could no longer wait for those hands and my stack size depletes to below 10BB. I would be going all in with those hands if I did happen to catch them.

If I am shortstacked less than 10BB: I start going all-in with any facecard-x.

If I start a final table DEEPSTACKED: I'd be aggressive when everyone is loose, and loose when everyone is aggressive. Maybe wait and see what happens to the shortstack before I get too involved: chances are he'll either be doubling up soon or exiting the tourney. As a deepstack I'd defend my blinds quite often and try to steal the blinds from small-stacked players. But when I steal, I need to be sure to have something to fall back on (be it a small pair or a draw of some sort).

that's basically how I attempt to tackle freeroll tourneys. You ahve to constantly switch gears at different points int he tourney. change your actions if you are less than average chipstack; change your actions if you are shortstacked, change your actions if you made it to the top 20% of players, or if you are at the bubble. Change yoru actions at the final table.

Switching gears is an important skill I think every poker player must become really good at. freerolls are no exception....

If you're talking about free rolls with like 1k+fields than really playing Nitty isn't the way to go (I'm serious), it would be more +EV for you to be more loose/passive (while it sounds like a bad way to get far in these games, you get to see more cheaper flops and thus could really hit big and hurt those that can't fold TPWK or something of that nature), with that said loose/passive has downsides to it, usually the pots in free rolls are blown out of proportion, thus meaning you'd be limp/folding a-ton which equals (over all losing play), but if you're in LP or the SB and they all limp just limp along is what I'm saying.

Your decent hands aren't really decent until the river, and if you can keep that in mind than you should be getting farther in free rolls in general

You can't play too tight, just play how you normally will (Remember that you aren't going to have much to lose!) I have won plenty of freerolls and then blown it in a cash game above my head... So now I am trying to win $20 in freerolls and then start playing $1 SNGs, I think that is what you should do too, everybody knows the 20 buy-in rule

Any victory is easy, at least everybody is sitting out , but you need to pay attention to some tips:

You should be super tight at beggining, because there are too many looser and donks, you need to be patient.

Dont bluff, it is too difficult to do bluffing at beggining tage of freeroll, because there are a lot of loosers.

In medium and final stage you should take some more risks, because you will need to have deep stack and probably the mst of the loosers were selected already away from the tournments.



I think you are doing well trying to make your BR by freerolls, but if you have some money you should to take the advise that Arjonius gave you above in comments.

Keep going, we are here to learn and help you

In freeroll easy win, when you have premium hands always size open 5-6bb, if before u villain raise 3x 3bet him , in ealy when blinds low you can more limp suited conectors and low pair, when your stack less 15bb, only shove 25% range hands... and more steal when blinds high with light range,,,,

Hi to all who contributed to my post and thanks a lot for you post and help !

I will try to inform you next month how it went and might get some info about interesting hands..

Good Luck @TAbles !

T0mmmi said:

Hi to all who contributed to my post and thanks a lot for you post and help !

I will try to inform you next month how it went and might get some info about interesting hands..

Good Luck @TAbles !

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good luck and keep us posted