I've finished 1st in 4 freeroll tourneys of several hundred players or more, lots of firsts in smaller freerolls of 200 or less, like CC freerolls.
I won 2 of the PS $100K VIP freerolls (I really miss those), the first one was over 9000 players and the 2nd was 17,750 players (I remember it clearly as it was on Christmas day and it was one of the last of those games as PS got rid of them in the new year).
I also won a small $200 freeroll on
888, about 4000 players and just a few days ago I won one on Playnow, only a 476 player field, but for winning it I got a $320 entry for March 11.
This is the only one recent enough for me to have a pic.
I like to start very tight, but very aggressive with with premium starting hands or big flops.
You get a lot of action early in freerolls while the "any 2 cards" crowd is still around in numbers. If I get off to a big start I'll go back to ABC poker and if I start getting deep it kind of depends how the cards are running and my stack size, I can play super tight trying to level up or aggressive and stealing blinds and getting involved in lots of pots.