Playing Poker Freerolls – Is It Worth It?

Playing freerolls is something nearly every beginning player will do. But is it really worth spending time playing poker freerolls if your goal is to make money playing poker? A big resounding no! And I will explain why in this article.

Before discussing the pitfalls of playing poker freerolls, I would like to highlight some of their advantages because there is some benefit to playing them. If you just signup to a new poker room, playing on the free money tables and in the poker freerolls can be a good way to familiarize yourself with the poker software before you start playing for real money. In terms of functionality, the poker freerolls are no different to how the poker room is setup for cash game tables, sit and goes, and multi table tournaments. If you experience laggy software or don’t like the site layout and graphics, or whatever else, you don’t have to deposit your hard earned money on the site, and you discovered the poker room doesn’t meet your requirements without spending any money.

So what if the poker freerolls are fun and you like the software. Should you continue playing them to try building a bankroll from playing poker freerolls? You may have read about the Chris Ferguson $10k Challenge and think its very doable. Chris Ferguson AKA Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, a Full Tilt Poker pro poker player, turned a zero dollar investment into $10k poker bankroll. He obviously didn’t do this for monetary benefit, he’s a professional poker player and earned millions of dollars playing in large buy-in tournaments. So why did you do it? To prove that it’s possible to generate a sizeable bankroll by starting out with freerolls. Naturally, this experiment spiked the interest of many new players, so you could say the experiment was great marketing for Full Tilt Poker.

However, what novice players and many freerollers fail to recognize is that Chris Ferguson is a pro poker player, so it goes without saying his poker skills are far superior to anyone new to the game. More so, even for this poker pro, it took Chris over 18 months of hard work and grinding to turn a $0 investment into $10k. There is no doubt this is a great achievement, but 18 months is a heck of a lot of time. If you are playing online poker to make money, you surely have to place some value on time.

Playing in poker freerolls can be fun, but if you are good enough to beat poker freerolls, then imagine how much you could potentially be making if you were playing real money games, whether it be at the cash game tables or tournaments. If you have a small bankroll, multi table tournaments are your best option – where you have the possibility to turn a small buy in into a big score. If you have a bigger bankroll and confidence in your game, then ring games would probably be your best option, you can make a very decent win rate playing cash games where at the low limit games there are a lot of weak players handing out their money.

Playing freerolls will only frustrate you, as the games play completely different to real money games because you are not playing for real money, so naturally this attracts the fun seekers and what is referred to as the all-in syndrome. Players will go all-in with any two cards to try and double up. If they lose, who cares, they didn’t spend a cent. There is no way you can bet to get your opponents to fold when there is nothing on the line. You will see your pocket aces get beaten more often then they should, because freerollers will call with their junk hands and you will get to showdown more often. Getting dealt pocket aces, shoving pre-flop, only to get called by 5 other players isn’t much fun, especially when you get beat by a 72 offsuit. This will still happen in real money games (ok, maybe they won’t call with 72o, but there will be fewer callers when you are aggressive, so less chance someone will suckout on you). No strategy will work against freerollers, and this can be really demoralizing for beginning players.

If you want to improve your game, you should play in an environment similar to that when you are playing for real money. The same can be said about any professional sport. Athletes practice in environments which simulate the real games. When playing poker to get a better understanding of the game, you need to practice against players who are at least taking the game somewhat seriously because there is something on the line, so there is a chance they can find the fold button if you sense some weakness.

Something else to consider is that playing in poker freerolls has the potential to make you over confident. After playing in and winning a few freerolls, you may think you are so much better then the majority of other freerollers. While this may be true to a certain degree, that doesn’t mean you should assume you are better then real money players, where the games are completely different and you start playing more experienced players. This ego boost can prove to be a costly mistake.

Instead of playing in poker freerolls to try and turn nothing into something, play at micro stakes ring games or tournaments. There are many online poker rooms where you can play micro stakes games for as 2NL – so not having a big enough bankroll is no excuse not to get started.

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