Of course not.
Freerolls are different from real money.
You must have lot of luck at freeroll to go deep since entrants are huge.
For real money, must possess many strategy skills aside from luck to go deep.
I'm like yeeeeahhhhh, mmmmmm but nnnooooo.
So I'm sitting there trying to think of a way to explain it. It's like I agree. But then again... I don't so much disagree, as maybe I'm looking at it from another angle.
Of course freerolls are different from real money tourneys. But everything is different from everything. Tournaments are different from cash games. The nosebleeds are different from the micros. A $1000 GTD tourney is going to be different from a $100,000 GTD. Even the sites are different. Freerolls on one site might be completely different from freerolls on another site. And that's when it hit me. I don't really play very many freerolls anymore. So when I think of freerolls, I think of the ones I used to play back when we had different site options here in the US.
I have played freerolls on some of the new "US friendly" sites, and they are much different from the ones that I used to play. These sites have freerolls starting just about every hour, which sounds great at first, until you see the format. With small starting stacks, short levels, and aggressive blind schedules, they seem to have the perfect recipe for beginning to end shove-athons. Like I said, I've played in some of these, cashed in some, and even won one. I consider myself to be a pretty good poker player. But even in winning one of these freerolls, I didn't feel like it was my skill that carried me to victory. If these are the types of tournaments you think of when you consider freerolls, then no, I wouldn't consider these to be a test of poker skill. In fact, some of these sites might as well write a lottery algorithm that they could run hourly to randomly award prizes to a certain number of players based on the number of entrants and not even bother with the cards.
Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad. But I have played on some of these new sites, was not impressed with the level of play on them, didn't care for them and therefore don't play on them very much at all. So if these are the freerolls that you're thinking of, I can't disagree with anyone who says that they are not an indicator of success or skill. Not only that, but these games aren't going to help you learn or improve. In fact they may do more to hurt your game by instilling bad habits and encouraging a
gambling mentality. So if you are inclined to make a deposit, I would just go ahead and do it and not bother with these freerolls. But not all freerolls are like these.
I do feel like success in freerolls can be an indicator of skill. Of course my perspective is not based on these donk-a-rific freerolls on these new sites. Like I said, it's been a while since I really played freerolls with any kind of regularity. So when I think of freerolls, I immediately think of the ones I used play in prior to Black Friday, on UB/AP in particular. These tournaments used to average about 3500 players and sometimes up to 4500 on weekends. In a way they made me think of the Main Event where you can be sitting next to a circus clown on your left, an Elvis impersonator on your right, while Phil Ivey sits across from you. That is to say that you could face some extremely good players and incredibly awful players. Even the very best of players would have to get lucky somewhere along the way to make it through a field that large. But the deeper you went, the higher the level of play got. Just like the
wsop, a skillful player may have to get lucky here and there, but I couldn't see a lucky player making it through that many players without some skill. That is until someone mentions the name Jesse James Sylvia and my whole argument falls apart.