Wanna get better at MTT games? Start with those free rolls.

Things I have learned the hard way, 101.

Free rolls are the best place to learn! Why is simple; Play enough, you will see every mistake that can possibly be made in poker.

Bet too big and get pot committed with no hand (high card only)? Check.
Shove with one pair into an obvious two pair? Check.
Shove with two pair into an obvious set? Check.
Call a shove with a 3 outer gut shot into a made straight and miss? Check.
Call a shove with a 3 outer gut shot, make it and still lose to a bigger straight? Check.
Call bets with a made straight right into a possible flush? Check.
Call bets with a flush right into a possible full house? Check.
Call big 3 and 4 bets with 3 or 4 people in a pot, with the 3rd or 4th best hand? Check.
Get constant calls with his probable 2 pair on a board with 2 of a suit, then on the river the 3rd suit hits, guy shoves and he still calls with only that 2 pair? Check.

What do I mean by “obvious”? Well, if you raise big preflop and your flop bet gets called, you really have to look at the flop and wonder “why did this guy call”?. If it’s an AK2 flop, you got AK, bet big on that 2 pair flop and get called, what could he have? Well, maybe better than two pair! Sure, could be a float bet to bluff you off later, but if so he’s clearly a horrible bluffer, especially if he limped in preflop and then called your raise. If he had AA, wouldn’t he 3 bet preflop? I sure as hell would. So, is he a weak player or a solid one? See, you got to pay attention. Maybe he is weak and has A-x and you're about to make a lot of checks come your way. Maybe he is solid and does have 22 and now is trapping you. Of course, it could be a member of the equine family...not a Horse...What do you call those?

Put the IPOD down, and pay attention. You will learn more than you could even if taught by a “pro” and a lot quicker! My best advice? Try getting into a game and only making one move - all in with any big pair. Spend the rest of the time just watching others and try to read hands and predict outcomes. In other words, have no intention of actually winning. Just watch.

If it is merge and you don’t see all the hands at the showdown, remember that the hand history will show you what they all had at the showdown (not just merge, but most sites have this in one way or another). This makes it way better than NOT entering and watching a game. You might spend hours and only actually see a few hands. Or, enter the game and walk away, then when it’s over review the hand history. This can teach you a lot about betting tells. I promise you will find at least one person who clearly bets more with big hands and less with small hands, or vice versa. Soon, you can confidently pick off someone who is c-betting with air and actually bluff them off a pot. That’s almost unheard of in these types of games!

It’s not easy, but how often have you lost and had a donkey tell you “well, it’s free”? I agree, but instead of making donkey calls, I prefer to watch and learn. So, good Luck!

Ok folks, 206 views, not a single comment? Even if you don't agree, tell me what you think, your experience with freerolls, anything. Do a drive by posting for goodness sakes!

I personally don"t think playing free rolls will get you better at mtts regardless of how bad the players are.

I think starting at the micros, studying and doing hand reviews will actually improve you MTT a lot more than seeing tons of mistakes and gambles we see in free rolls. Even at micros, where the investment is small, sure you do get tons of bad players to see what are bad plays. However, they are no where near as crazy as they have some money on the line and I think you see by far enough mistakes in the micros to improve your game whilst also getting a better feeling for mtts in general.

I think free rolls in general are a terrible place to learn, unless they are private free rolls, other than that they are a waste of time and you learn nothing.

I started from freerolls.

Frankly I don't think they are a good learning tool except for experimentation on different strategies for when the field drops to around 4x number of prizes. It is laughably easy to get to there using a rudimentary strategy.

They are pretty similar to micro stakes tournaments though although there is a slight increase of quality there (but the fields are much smaller).

Well I also play some freerolls and especially like private ones for sure.
I think you can learn some things in them, but you have to keep in mind that a lot people don´t care about the play and just gamble in them.
As soon as you builded up a (small) roll I guess its important to start playing in low/micro limits, because the play will be different when peole have to pay a buy in.

Too many people in freerolls don't care so they play crazy. Not a good learning tool IMO. I've experimented a couple times in them with shoving EVERY hand. I made it damn near the final table once doing that LOL

Hello all,
I play a lot of free rolls, but, on those i find all kind of players, with this i mean a bunch (not say almost all) of idiots and "jokerstars". I cant play like that! I always get to the money but cant go further cause for example, i have AA and other "jokerstar" have K2, wich one will win the pot? After some re-raises i went all in, and guy wins the pot with 3 k!!!!! amazing

think they are great practice, you can try new things, and it probably helps you to learn to handle tilt

I think freerolls are a decent place to start and get practice calculating odds and seeing hands, but in the end if you want to really learn don't you have to play against people who are better at poker than you are? For example, if there's a specific situation where you wind up spewing chips more often than not when you are up against a better player, wouldn't that be a good place to start analyzing and see if you can find a leak?

To me it seems hard to try and employ a typical strategy such as pricing out draws against people who probably don't even know what pot odds are and will chase any draw. In a larger sense, what kind of strategy do you use against people who don't have a strategy? They're impossible to read because they often don't even know what they are doing or why. You pick up AA and raise 5x BB or more, and somebody calls with 62o then comes a J 6 2 rainbow flop. You think you have the best hand because a player with any amount of skill at all would have folded pre-flop without a second thought. Now what? Somebody's going to double up off of you.

It depends on your goals and your tolerance for risk. If you don't mind the risk of real cash, go ahead and deposit a sum you're comfortable with and skip the freerolls altogether. You'll probably learn real poker faster that way.

Thanks for the Input..I have one more question about MTT games.

Ok, well thank you all for responding. It seems i'm in the minority on starting at free roll games. Fair enough! For me it was a great way to play without losing any money and getting discouraged. Plus, after seeing so many mistakes, I am now able to avoid many of them. Then again, many of the mistakes are so lame, I am no longer sure this is valid. Even I know not to chase a straight into a flush, etc.

Which brings me to a question I would like some input on:
At what buy-in can you find an MTT where they do not play, well, like a free roll? I have been in games up to a 5.50 entry, (not much, I know) and still see a lot of this. At first I thought, "well, I got just got outplayed, by a better player"; then I started sticking around to see how far they get. It's never very far, they make the same donkey play they made on me that they do on someone else, only they are not so lucky that time and are soon gone! I do realize there is no game where you WILL NOT run into wild men sucking out to the chip lead and then giving it all away, I'm just finding there are far more of these types than I expect!

Should I move up to $10.00? $20.00? I figure at some point you find a game where the people playing it do so like they would actually like to make the buy-in back, at least. My greatest success was at games where the prize pool consisted of $110.00 to $5.00 tickets for better games. The players actually gambled much less with speculative hands and played like they wanted to win.

If you're not a complete beginner, don't bother yourself with freerolls. They can be good for a total beginner and help him practice a bit. But if you have some experience and bankroll (at least decent one), try to build it up as much as you can through SNG or cash games, and then try with some low-medium buy-in MTTs ($10 min).

ramdeebam said:

I personally don"t think playing free rolls will get you better at mtts regardless of how bad the players are.

I think starting at the micros, studying and doing hand reviews will actually improve you MTT a lot more than seeing tons of mistakes and gambles we see in free rolls. Even at micros, where the investment is small, sure you do get tons of bad players to see what are bad plays. However, they are no where near as crazy as they have some money on the line and I think you see by far enough mistakes in the micros to improve your game whilst also getting a better feeling for mtts in general.

I think free rolls in general are a terrible place to learn, unless they are private free rolls, other than that they are a waste of time and you learn nothing.

Click to expand...

Fully agree.
The only things that freerolls can give you are a small starting bankroll,
in case if don't want to make deposit, and some fun time.

yes ,that s why i play freeroll .

fishseller said:

Fully agree.
The only things that freerolls can give you are a small starting bankroll,
in case if don't want to make deposit, and some fun time.

Click to expand...

I think being a complete novice at the game, where you need to actually see mistakes that many of us just assume are obvious, makes freerolls the best way to go.

The object here is not to start building a bankroll, but to better learn the game by playing live opponents before you simply deposit money and jump in. IF this idea means you expect to lose that initial deposit, then you are simply getting off cheap to start. Therefore, it stands to reason in my mind, that seeing the horrible plays and learning why they are horrible helps tremendously, and costs nothing. Once you have seen how a game goes, learn the basics, actually see why you do not chase a st8 into a flush, chase a flush into a paired board, etc; this will then stand out in your mind much more.

And lets not forget I am talking about MTT not cash. Just like you start off in cash games at the lower buy-ins, you start of in MTT at the lower buy ins, or ie; free.

How is this bad advice?

Playing free rolls is what definitely helped me improve my craft at poker. You learn how to play a wide variety of players of the spectrum. I used to grind fun steps on Merge because I refuse to deposit post black Friday until we are finally regulated by our government. Until then I will try to complete the Ferguson challenge aka zero to hero until then on every skin available to US players.

Thank you

NateVest said:

Playing free rolls is what definitely helped me improve my craft at poker. You learn how to play a wide variety of players of the spectrum. I used to grind fun steps on Merge because I refuse to deposit post black Friday until we are finally regulated by our government. Until then I will try to complete the Ferguson challenge aka zero to hero until then on every skin available to US players.

Click to expand...

So, I am not off base here. Thank you. I agree.

The funny thing about Black Friday was the lumping in of online poker with gambling. Sadly, many sites also offer blackjack and forms of true gambling, so it took them all out. But it is coming back. Just hang in there!

BTW, hate to break it to you, no more fun steps on merge. Sorry.

Your analysis is good but the freeroll is more luck than good play, the issue is that free admission when many throw all in with bad hands and worst of all, you have good luck! If you look at a freeroll tournament and a tournament entry order anything for money really being selected hands which are played all in.

freeroll and a game that we can analyze the game more to move towards micro mtt and tournaments, but only analyze not help much but we can study and discuss the hand a hand.

Michael Paler said:

I think being a complete novice at the game, where you need to actually see mistakes that many of us just assume are obvious, makes freerolls the best way to go.

The object here is not to start building a bankroll, but to better learn the game by playing live opponents before you simply deposit money and jump in. IF this idea means you expect to lose that initial deposit, then you are simply getting off cheap to start. Therefore, it stands to reason in my mind, that seeing the horrible plays and learning why they are horrible helps tremendously, and costs nothing. Once you have seen how a game goes, learn the basics, actually see why you do not chase a st8 into a flush, chase a flush into a paired board, etc; this will then stand out in your mind much more.

And lets not forget I am talking about MTT not cash. Just like you start off in cash games at the lower buy-ins, you start of in MTT at the lower buy ins, or ie; free.

How is this bad advice?

Click to expand...

Another point, bad as the play can be in freerolls, it's still levels above what you find on the play money tables.

Hey, maybe you won't see the best play. In fact, you'll maybe see the worst possible. But, I've freerolled up. Others have. You can earn money while enjoying yourself without too much pain and while furthering your understanding of the game. Worth it IMO

Kenzie 96 said:

Another point, bad as the play can be in freerolls, it's still levels above what you find on the play money tables.

Click to expand...

Yes, I tried play money tables, but that was just super crazy. Might as well play SORRY. Better strategy, lol.

Henreiman said:

Hey, maybe you won't see the best play. In fact, you'll maybe see the worst possible. But, I've freerolled up. Others have. You can earn money while enjoying yourself without too much pain and while furthering your understanding of the game. Worth it IMO

Click to expand...

The nice thing for me was seeing the totally wrong plays over and over. Really drilled into my head what to watch out for. Plus, it is where I have gotten all my money so far.

And who doesn't like free money? Yeah baby, yeah!

I would start by playing some low buy in 90man or 180man sit and go's. Basic tournament strategy will work for the eariler levels. You also get short handed and final table experience playing these.

timchuk said:

I would start by playing some low buy in 90man or 180man sit and go's. Basic tournament strategy will work for the eariler levels. You also get short handed and final table experience playing these.

Click to expand...

This is the phase I am in now.