Freeroll Tournament Strategy

Freerolls are an excellent means for new poker players to start building a bankroll online because they are free to enter and reward the top players with real cash prizes. Most poker sites’ freerolls have between 50 -200 entrant with a prizepool of $50 to $200.

Full Tilt Poker runs a special weekly depositors freeroll worth $100,000 which is definitely worth signing up for!

How to Win Freerolls

Freerolls are very similar to regular multi-table tournaments however because there are more fish and new players in the event you’re going to find a lot more action early on with opponents shoving all-in and playing ridiculously weak hands.

Because of the added aggression and maniacal play of freerolls, some professionals recommend choosing one of two strategies.

1) Play Extremely Tight – Because of aggression, you should aim to tighten up in the first few blind levels of freerolls and let the idiots bust themselves out themselves. It argued that there’s no point in you limping out of position with pocket pairs or sometimes premium hands like AK because so many other opponents will call to see the flop and the odds of your winning are massively reduced. Even with a dry flop such as 5-7-10, the chances of someone hitting top pair or a set when there are multiple opponents involved is fairly high. Thus, you can be prepared to sit out 95% of your hands and let the fields narrow down during the first blind levels.

2) Double Up Early – The rewards of doubling up early in tournaments are massive, since being chip leader by the middle stages once the antes have kicked in means you can start controlling pots, stealing the blinds and stacking off smaller opponents without any risk. So big are the advantages in fact, that some players recommend the “all-in with any two cards” approach for the first few hands of freerolls. If you double up early from 1500 to 3,000 chips than you’ve given yourself a massive boost, where as if you bust out straight away than you save yourself from wasting any more time.

Whichever you choose, you can be happy to note that both of these strategies have proven themselves over time by players such as Annete Obrestad (youngest ever WSOPE winner), who at onc point was winning freerolls without even ever looking at her whole cards!

Asides from these differences between freerolls and regular buy-in MTTs, the main principles are the same. Because you only have one stack, you want to limit the hands that you play out of position. Only try to call the blinds with your top 90% of hands including AJ+, JJ+ and pocket pairs. As you get through to the middle stages it’s very important to amp up the aggression in your play. You need to be prepared to blind-steal and 3bet opponents from LP when there are tight players sat on the blinds. You also need to learn to bluff more pots, stack off against loose players pre-flop and learn when to double or even triple barrel the river. Remember that the best types of cards to double barrel on the turn are overcards to the board (e.g. K to 8Q2).

As you’re heading towards the bubble, the game will probably tighten up a lot since players don’t want to go out at this stage (also due to ICM tournament principles). This means that you should also tighten up, but at the same time you should punish others for tightening up. You can do this by light-shoving hands such as 67 suited or low pocket pairs and re-raising opponents who’re clearly bind-stealing from late position.

Finally, as the game becomes short-handed you need to open up your start hand range and be prepared to call small stacks moving all in with your top 70% of hands including Ax, Kx, broadway cards and high suited connectors.