Freeroll tournaments have a peculiar place in the poker world hierarchy of play. Because they don’t require the players to put up money to play, you can often see extremely bad play characteristic of such lack of risk, like the play seen in play money games on the Internet. On the other hand, because the prizes are real, you can see extremely solid play as well because people want to win the prizes. These players can rival some of the good real money tournament players, so you’ll need to beware of them as well. Here we’re going to look at how to use freeroll tournaments in the best way possible by keeping these two player types in mind.
The first thing you need to do at your table is try to figure out who is playing the game like it’s free play money games. These people are important to identify because they will be playing a lot of hands, calling down with garbage, and not really caring about the results of the hands they play, or the tournament itself for that matter. Because of this type of behavior, if you’re able to play a lot of cheap hands in position against those players, you’ll often be able to accumulate a lot of chips quickly before they bust out. With a lot of chips, you can be in a great position to go deep in the freeroll and get a lot of free money.
The second thing you need to do to make the most out of a freeroll tournament is to keep up with which players seem like they are taking the tournament seriously. These are the players you’ll want to avoid playing a lot of pots with unless you have position or a good starting hand. This is the case because they are the biggest threat to your stack and tournament life. In the early stages of a tournament especially, you should avoid these tough players and play pots with the bad players at the table instead. By avoiding the serious players at the table, you’ll make the most of your freeroll tournament by avoiding the types of situations where you’re likely to have a small or non-existent advantage that can put your stack at risk without a good reason to do so. If you lose a lot of your stack early, it’s much more difficult to pick up big pots from the bad players at the table.