Totally get you here. I've been playing a good few of the Full Tilt ones over the last couple of days and I feel the same. I think the thing is that you can play as many as you like because you're unconstrained by a bankroll. So if you're dilligent and patient and try and make the best decisions you can, eventually you can get the right combination of luck and skill to cash in one (particularly the FT ones as they only pay like the top 1% or something). Keep trying and get up as much of a roll as possible, grind 1c/2c and you never know where you might end up. Personally I try and keep it ultra TAG in Freerolls.
I recently had the bright idea of building an online bankroll (I have always played live) and have spent the last week or so grinding the fulltilt freerolls, admittedly I haven't cashed nearly as often as I'd have liked to. Their Round 1 sattelite tournaments seem to be the best bet. 1) They offer 250 seats out of 10k players as opposed to their other freerolls which pay the top 45 out of 7.5k players. 2) The weekly 1k freeroll that you win a seat in is extremely soft, most of the players don't show up and the ones that do are freeroll players. The total field is up to 30k but really there's probably less than 7k active players.
I notice that the players in all of the fulltilt freerolls who seem to be trying to use some form of strategy (as opposed to donks playing to get lucky) are all weak tight. I'm actually seeing about 30% of flops (almost invariably as pre-flop aggressor and either on the button or with tight players behind me) and finding this by far the safest and most effective method of accumulating chips, I'm also finding that when your stack is moderate to big you really don't want to play for all of your chips even against some of these guys whose range is ridiculously weak. It's just too high variance and they'll let you steal pots (pre-flop and with c-bets mostly) like crazy. To do this: play from position, if there's no sign of strength before you then raise just about anything that there's a good chance will give you some kind of draw on the flop. High cards (QJ or better) will likely give you overcards (assuming you msis), SCs, including suited gappers... hell, J7s in the CO or better is as good as a premium hand in these tournaments. Make all of your pre-flop raises either 3x the previous raise or if there are a lot of players who've limped, make your raise about 80-90% of the pot size.
Notice that your opponents are almost all betting way too small relative to the pot, abuse this. They let you draw cheaply because they don't price you out, and they get no value for their hands because they're betting like 20% of the pot once the blinds get high. Overbet for value on the river often.
Also pre-flop even with a lot of raggy hands if you're say on the button and 4 people limp, assuming blinds of 1k/2k there's now 11k in the pot, make a bet of about 10k and all of these players wont want to harm their precious stacks and you'll get folds easily enough to make this immediately proffitable. People will occasionally call but you really have to force yourself to c-bet near 100% of the time in these things, you keep telling yourself that they have to adapt to you... and that guy just re-raised you so he must have figured it out... no, he had a hand, these guys are brain dead, believe it and just keep pounding away with your relentless c-bets.
Remember: Play the
odds that the pot gives you. That is the major exploitable point in these tournaments, huge pots and small bets from players who will be scared away by a 2/3 pot bet in the later stages.
Sorry that none of this is really clear or organised, but it's nearly 2am and it's been a long day so I'll get the content down but there's no way it's going to look organised.
Anyway, c-bets, basically you're looking to c-bet with a huge frequency but it is highly dependent on the board texture. For instance "safe" flops like 55J are gold mines because your opponents just don't play back at you, they didn't hit, you probably didn't hit, but they aren't thinking that far into it or are too timid to do anything about it, so take their money. Also any flop where you have say a 20% or greater chance of improving by the river needs a c-bet almost every time simply because fold
equity is huge if you size your bets properly and when they do call and you do hit your draw you can take their stack a very high percentage of the time. Remember: value bet bigger rather than smaller.
Also, as a last couple of notes:
1: Most of the above applies to mid to late stages with moderate or better stacks. Early on you can still play fairly loose, but whether you play TAG or LAG here you're aiming to catch some kind of hand and find an opponent dumb enough to donate his stack. Waiting for big hole cards will be a dissapointment (they'll come rarely and hold up even less), see some flops from position with a wide range including all good hands and some implied odds hands (not trash but good implied odds hands). If in the latter stages you're short, then you're playing shove or fold, although I have noticed that the stop and go/go and go plays work very well in these tournaments.
2: Like I said at the start of this post, I haven't had the success in these things that I'd have liked. I think I've played a grand total of about 15 and placed in 3. I'm putting that down to small sample size though, these tournaments are definately beatable.
3: If anyone follows any of my advice, expect occasional runs of bad luck where your opponents keep catching cards, it will happen but not nearly as often as they keep folding to you.
4: Occasionally you'll run into an aggressive table, this is just a whole bunch of idiots who put some bad beats on people and managed to get big stacks and they're throwing them around just begging to go bust. At these tables, tighten up and play good hands. You will proffit in doing this, but not as much as you will from your relentless stealing, however you'll be moved to another table before long anyway and you can be the bully there.
With that said, 15 or so freerolls was 15 too many for my liking and I decided to smarten up and deposit instead. I would recommend this if it's at all possible for you.
