Using Freerolls to Build a Bankroll
Many successful online poker players have never made a deposit to an online poker room. How is this possible? Through freeroll tournaments.What is a freeroll tournament?
Freeroll tournaments are one of life’s few chances to win something for nothing. Some online poker rooms, such as Everest Poker, regularly hold freeroll tournaments (one of their current promotions lets players take their shot at a $2,500 prize pool without having to risk a penny). This may sound too good to be true, but there isn’t a catch. It really is possible to win real money playing online poker without ever having to risk a dime of your own money.
Warning: Grinding Required
While it’s not hard to win money through no-limit hold’em freeroll tournaments, it can be hard turning those winnings into anything meaningful. Cashing in a freeroll tournament will often yield a payout as small as just a few cents. It can be very challenging turning a handful of change into a significant online poker bankroll.
For starters, play the lowest stakes available on the network. If you win $1 or $2 in a freeroll tournament, you can use that money to play $.01-$.02 no-limit hold’em. Since players at these stakes tend to be generally awful, one could conceivably build a $1 bankroll into several hundred dollars provided they are very disciplined.
Sit-’N’-Go Approach
Another way to utilize one’s freeroll tournament winnings is to roll the dice on a sit-’n’-go tournament. Many online poker rooms (Titan Poker and Gnuf to name a few) offer extremely low buy-in sit-’n’-go tournaments. For example, at Gnuf, they have tournaments with buy-ins that start as low as $.10. These can be a great way to parlay a few cents into a workable poker bankroll.
The sit-’n’-go approach tends to have more variance than grinding cash games. It’s not uncommon to have a streak of 10 or more tournaments where one fails to win any money. So if your first couple of tries in a sit-’n’-go are unsuccessful, try not to be too hard on yourself. Remember, even Phil Ivey goes through stretches of losing in tournaments.
Strings Attached
The only downside to online freeroll tournaments is that everyone is chasing the same free money as yourself. On some of the larger online poker rooms, freeroll tournaments attract thousands of players. To combat this, many poker rooms require players to exchange a certain number of “points” for entry into a freeroll. Usually, these points are earned through participating in real-money games on their network. Of course, to participate in real money games, one will either need to make a deposit or win money through a freeroll. One option is to make the minimum deposit (some poker rooms allow deposits as small as $10) and play low stakes games to collect a lot of player points. Once you have enough player points, you can start joining some of the more “exclusive” freeroll tournaments void of hoards of freeloaders who have never played real-money poker before.