How To Win At Freeroll Poker

Disconnects

2006-08-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

A fairly easy way to win some extra chips is watching for disconnected players.

These players are people who signed up for the freeroll, but then forgot about it or found something else to do. they can be annoying at first as some clients wait for them to time out, but they can also be harvested as they will fold any bet.

What to do then? Simply wait until they post big blind or small blind. Then if you have at least a semi-good hand, call them. If other players join in, just play the hand as usual. If you win, you get a tad more chips. Of course, you need to be avare of the game and not get involved if you have a lousy pocket.

There are some that speculate in disconnecting themselves. Some know they have a steam problem at the beginning of the game, maybe they've lost a lot of games against lucky fish, so they simply sit out until the worst fish are gone. I can't really recomend this, as you lose out on good chances to get chips.

One word of advise: Be sure that your opponent IS disconnected before you raise him. Might turn sour if he suddenly decide to join up.

Survival

2006-08-09T02:06:00.000-07:00

You're in a freeroll no, facing about 999 other people. Now you need to stay in the freeroll. What do you do?

The quick answer is "play it safe".

The not so quick answer is this:

First of all, most of your opponents are bad players. Very bad players. But there are too many of them for you to survive taking advantage of this. For instance, if you hold QQ in your pocket you might feel tempted to bid half your stack. This should throw off most poker players with half a brain, but not these guys. They will go all in with a single ace or king, forcing you to either call or fold. If you call, you risk that other players with a some other lame pocket calls too, and suddenly your chances of winning are going fast. An A or K in the flop, turn or river and you're out, or some clown get a lucky flush or straight and you're out too. All you can do is shake your head and be happy in the knowledge that the idiot will be gone soon too. But you won't be around to see it. I estimate that at least 66% of the players are idiots. Don't try anything fancy before they are gone. Simply call your QQ and take it from there.
Keep bluffing to an absolute minimum. You need to know players before you can bluff, and you get switched around too much in big tourneys, so you never get to learn the playing styles of your opponents.
Before the 66% bad player pool are eliminated, the only pocket you should raise on is AA. If someone raises that with all-in, then call it. If you feel comfortable with the table, raise on AK and KK too.
Keep an eye on the chipleader. You don't want to duke it out with people with more chips than you.
Mind the people who keep folding and never raise. If they bet after flop, then fold, unless you got a nut flush or a very good chance at getting one. I'm talking K or A high here.
Keep folding until you get something useful. You can call with lesser pockets if you're feeling comfy at the table you're at and if you are on the dealer button. Fold if the flop is not giving you anything.
Don't get married to your cards. An AK pocket is a good pocket, but a flop with no A nor K means you didn't win. If someone bets, fold. If not, then call and hope that an A or K comes.
When in doubt, fold.
Always assume the other guy is NOT bluffing.
If the guy after the blinds bet, look out. Unless he's a very bad player, that means he has something. Something good. Likewise, never bet in 1st position, unless you got AA, AK, or KK.

There you have it, the Ten Commandments of survival in freerolls. If you live by these rules, you can't go terribly wrong.

Picking your fight

2006-08-08T01:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, so you realise you're going to spend 3+ hours playing a freeroll. Now you need to decide where to spend them.

There are several freerolls out there, but some aren't all that free. Some require you to deposit real money before you can play, and some require "points", ie, you have to play for real money before qualifying for these. These freerolls does have a good players vs payout ratio, but they aren't exactly free, so lets skip those for the time being.

What you want to look for is regular freerolls that have few players and high payout. A good example would be the daily freerolls at Prestige Poker. There are different flavours, but they all have a capped number of players. The best one there is the 200$ freeroll rebuy tourney. A rebuy tourney let you buy yourself back into the game should you exit early, but this is hardly advisable, as you get relatively few new chips. But this tourney has a cap of 1000 players and places 1 to 100 wins money. That is the top 10%, which isn't all that hard to reach. You don't win much if you finish #100, though, a mere 25 cents, but it's something.

Some sites offer freerolls every hour, like Poker Champs . These have a low payout and a 2500 player cap (in the case of PC) and a low price pool. Only 1 to 28 get paid, and although you get 1$ minimum, it is very hard to get there. These tounaments are fast, however, but this adds more randomness to the results, as you are forced to play semi-good hands before blinds and ante eat you up. Should you have time to kill between other freerolls, then try it out. Otherwise don't bother, there are better odds out there.

In conclusion: You want few players, high price pool, a good stack of chips, slow blind progression.

The tourneys to really search for are the special promotional tounaments. Tourneys like Paradise Poker's Free Million freeroll, where they hand out, yes, a free million. Now, I'm not going to tell you you can actually WIN these, but the chances are there, so why not try? The realistic promos are the ones that come from newly started poker sites. These are desperate to get the attention of players in the jungle that is online poker, so they usually have some real good offers. Keep an eye out for those.

The best advise I can give you is to listen to your poker playing buddies, either on- or offline. There are many newsgroups, forum, groups, MySpacers etc, that discuss the offers out there. So listen to the beat of the street. Find out what's happening.

Happy hunting.

Buyer Beware

2006-08-07T02:17:00.000-07:00

If you come to this place I assume you want to win some money. This is all well and good, but before you get too carried away, remember this universal truth:

There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Freerolls are free, this is true, but you pay for them anyway by spending time. As you know, Time is Money, and you're going to spend a good deal of that if you want to win. You will even spend time not winning anything at all.

That being said, Freerolls DO offer you a cash price for just playing poker, and excitement along the way. It is good practice too, should you want to venture into "real" buy-in tournaments.

In the following posts I'll discuss some of the basics of playing freeroll poker. So stay tuned for more.