Freeroll Strategy – The Optimal Approach

By Author: thomasgalvin
Total Articles: 612
Comment this article

Well, I'll just pretend I was playin' with someone else's money.Annabelle in Maverick

Playing a poker Freeroll might just be a relaxing way to waste some time. You risk nothing and if you get lucky you might win some free money. You might have played a lot of freerolls or just a few. No matter what you are probably getting tired of going bust in the freerolls just before it is getting really fun. Here I offer you couple of very strong tips how to improve your freeroll strategy and eventually win a freeroll. But don’t kid yourself it is not easy to win a freeroll or any other tournaments for that sake. A lot of freerolls have several thousand players and you need luck to get to the final table – even if you get it all in every time with the best hand – it takes luck to dodge suck-out cards. That said there are freeroll strategies that will improve your chances of winning radically.

Playing with your balls

A lot of poker players think poker is about being macho. This misconception probably origins from bad poker programs on TV with incompetent ...
... commentators – to be honest I have never seen any serious programs. And I have watched a lot – quite entertaining though – and guess I am unfair versus the commentators as their job is to be entertaining and not experts. There is though one particular spot where it is correct to play with your balls and not your rationality. This is in the beginning of a Freeroll – or as I would recommend in several freerolls. What does it mean playing with your balls in poker? Basically it means you don’t care if you are ahead or behind and if the other players are going all in and you look down at a pocket pair of 2’s you join the all in show. Why? If you hit one of the two remaining 2’s you are most likely going to triple, four-double or more. Good hands to join these all in’s with are suited connectors, any pocket pairs, suited aces, big aces like A10+ bad hands are weak off suit aces like A4o, JQo and the like.

With your new huge stack you are able to control the game in a long time and you don’t have to risk any significant part of your chips. This strategy is a unique freeroll strategy and shouldn’t be used in a normal tournament. The reason for this is simple. You risk nothing playing a freeroll therefore you can accelerate the progress for getting a big stack fast, this is not a good idea in a normal poker tournament, as you risk a stack that you actually paid for.

One freeroll or many freeroll tournaments

For this specific freeroll strategy I recommend playing several freerolls. If you can’t handle more than one or two freeroll tournaments at a time I still recommend joining more than you can handle. Pick the ones that you find most attractive. Play the crazy maniac style in those ones – go bust in them one after one – but when you get lucky and make some massive doubles – then it is time to change freeroll strategy.

Tight is right

Continuing a maniac style all the way through a freeroll is suicidal. Let’s face it if you followed my maniac strategy. You got lucky and that was basically the plan – to get lucky. Don’t push the luck. You have completed and succeeded in the first freeroll strategy. Now it is time to proceed to another freeroll strategy. This freeroll strategy is a more classical poker tournament approach. Key phrase is: Tight is right. Bottom line is: play few hands and when you pick up a strong hand, play it hard and don’t turn your hands into bluffs. For example if you pick up AK and raise before the flop and a lot of players calls your raise and the flop is low – just give up or if you picked up QQ and again there are a lot of players who called your raise preflop and the flop comes AKx – again just give up the hand. Don’t bluff. But on the other hand if the Ace or the King hit when you have AK then bet it hard and all the way same with QQ on a low board just go crazy.

The Power of Position

Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it.Colin Powell

Poker is about cards. But it is also about position. Position is actual the strongest social power in poker. It is that strong that there have been created different game types based on the power of position – Full Ring, Shorthanded and Heads Up. We are not going into details about these different game types here - but just stating that relative position changes the strength of cards. Or rather for some people the perception of cards change for example if a player on the button opens a hand with a raise this represent a way larger range hands than if a player in a full ring game opens from Under The Gun (UTG) who represent a very narrow opening range. Ok what does that mean for you? Let’s say you are UTG and look down at a pocket pair in 10’s and you have a huge stack. One player folds and the next one a deep stack as well reraises you all in. Everybody else folds – what do you do? Easy fold – except if you got a very specific read on this player that he only does that with weaker pocket pairs or something like that. So in general just fold in this situation. Another example is you sit on the button – you have a deep stack. Everybody folds to you. You raise – small blind folds. Big blind with a deep stack reraises and shoves all in. What do you do? Unlike the other situation this is not an easy fold. He might have you beat. And if you have a read on him that he is a total nit. This is a fold. But unless you have that read. It is a crying call. There are so many pocket pairs that would do this especially when it comes to weaker poker players and you see a lot of naked aces in this spot as well. And you are only doing really bad versus overpairs. Versus two random overcards it is a coinflip. But because you have to add a lot of naked aces and smaller pocket pairs. Your equity in that hand is to strong. Understanding this is understanding the power of position.

When to turn up the aggression

In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool.Katherine Dunn

When playing a Freeroll you need to know when to adjust your game. Adjusting your game is basically playing more aggressive or less aggressive. We are not talking maniacish like in the first part of the freeroll strategy when we are turning up the aggression. On the contrary when there are certain spots where we need to turn up the aggression it is because we can steal blinds and antes without really risking a lot. This is a situation that comes in different two different spots just before hitting the money and just before hitting final table. It is called bubble play. There are actually a lot of bubbles in between but most poker players tend to ignore those. Every time you are about to advance in the money is called a bubble. But only the bubble before you get into the money and before hitting the final table is very significant. The reason for that is people want to end in the money and they want to play the final table. You should take advantage of that especially when you are in a late position. You don’t need to raise like 4 x big blind to steal somewhere between 2,1 to 2,5 big blinds should be more than enough to steal. Why not only 2 big blinds? Even though there in practice is no difference between 2,1 and 2 big blinds a lot of players respect a 2,1 big blind raise but they don’t respect a 2 big blind raise and calls all kind of very marginal hands in big blind. And as you probably have a marginal hand yourself as you are trying to steal the blinds – you want your opponents to respect your raise – instead of facing some weird postflop spots where you have no idea where you are at in the hand. When is it a bad idea to turn up aggression in bubble player: basically when you are raising into either maniacs or loose passives. They will either call you down or reraise you preflop. So versus these unpredictable players you don’t steal – you raise for value – even though you are on the bubble.

Winning the Freeroll - final table

Well done you just made it to Final Table in the freeroll. That is hardcore! Now it is time to make some new adjustments. Arriving at Final Table does most often change the game a lot. How Is in my experience from final table to final table. Some tables becomes extremely nitty. Others explode. The last final table I played lasted for 30 minutes and then I took it down. The second last final table I played lasted for 3 hours before I busted on 3rd place. When I focus on this it is because it in my opinion extremely important to take a step back on focus on what is happening now. That is naturally only if you are pretty well stacked. You might have to go all in on any opportunity – but if you are pretty well stacked – just play tight a round or two and observe the other players behavior – who are nits, who are calling stations and who are the maniacs. Of course it says it self you don’t steal without a substantial hand from calling stations or maniacs. But you should certainly do that versus nits. But remember poker players are not only categories they are also humans. And unlike categories humans are able to adjust to different spheres. So be aware that the nit might start playing back at you if show extreme aggression versus him and the maniac might adjust and be scared of you if you haven’t raised his blinds at all and then finally does it – then he might show you respect. Your job as a good poker player is now to adjust to your opponents’ adjustments. Yeah I know poker is tough business. That’s the beauty of it! Still a general two-rule approach where the tight-aggressive style combined with awareness and exploitation of position is extremely important. When your opponents one by one get eliminated from the game you should increase your activity. Especially in late position. And if everything turns out right you should end up heads up and take down 1st prize.

Find Freeroll related information at poker-freeroller.com