Newbie's Guide to Free Rolling
Let's get to the point of this guide. This guide is for beginners with little or no bankroll (a bankroll is your total amount of money or chips you have to play with). Therefore you must start your bankroll by playing in the free rolls. A free roll is a tournament that does not require you to pay an entrance fee. The prize money and the number of entrants vary widely from poker site to poker site. If you have a small bankroll you can start by finding a site that offers large initial deposit bonus. Don't worry there are some listed for you later. Tournaments are a good way to accumulate money and gain experience. One of the major benefits of playing tournaments is that almost all the tournaments, you don't have to finish in first place to win money. Tournaments offer a prize pool in which the prize money is split between
a pre-determined number of places. The amount of places paid depends on the tournament and poker site. You can easily find this information when you are registering for the tournament. Making the money, or in the money refers to finishing in one of the paid spots.
Almost every site will have free rolls. Some more
than others and of varying prize pools/entrants. You should
join a forum to get the scoop. Join ours, there's a link to
the left. Every now and then there will be free rolls on
some site that will be well worth your time to play. Usually
you're looking to get into a free roll with a nice sized
prize pool and even better if the entrants are low. For
example, a free roll with a $50 prize pool but has over 1000
entrants wouldn't be a good free roll. Free rolls with 300
or less entrants and a prize pool of at least $100 are good
Playing the Free Roll
The point of playing the free rolls is to grow your bankroll. To grow your bankroll you need to finish in the money. Therefore you don't necessarily want to win it (come in first), you just want to make it to the money. Keep the following points in mind when free rolling:
1) Pro's and semi-pro's do not play these as it is a waste of time and effort for them
2) Regular players play these when they lose their bankrolls
3) People like us looking for free money to build their bankrolls
4) People use these tourneys to practice the basic principles
5) To make the money takes about 3-5 hours depending on the amount of players and the poker site
6) The first priority is to make it in the money not necessarily coming in first.
7) Play as many at one time as you can. On a 17 inch monitor with 1024 x 768 resolution you can open 4 windows without having too hard a time flipping around windows. Although keeping up may be a challenge at times.
8) Most free rolls are of the no limit type.
Since we are in a no limit game, games are won most often pre-flop or post flop. If there is still betting after the flop and turn then here are the scenarios: your opponent is chasing, has a small pair
and/or slow playing you (meaning they have already made a hand and is confident that you seeing the turn and river card is justifiable in order to win more chips). You can usually tell if your opponent is slow playing you if he checks his turn but calls your bets no matter how much you bet or if you're in a limit game and your opponent checks then raises your bet (known as check-raising). Check raising can be used to bluff as well.
Most free rolls have a lot of entrants so you will need to build your chip stack as big and as fast as possible and holding them for as long as possible. To do this so, let's split the tournament into three stages: Early game, Mid game and Late game.
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