Well tomorrow will be the second freeroll tournament I’ve played in in years. The last one I was set to at least place before the break, then lost interest. From years past, Pokerchamps had the toughest to place in, something like 1,000-2,000 players at a time with only either 27 or 18 places paying (I forget which, this is years ago.) USA / Titan had the best freeroll tournaments online, too bad they banished US players from playing on their site. It was something like 400 starting players with 40 getting at least enough to start playing at the 0.01 /0.02 tables. Earned a nice paycheck from them before they closed their doors to me. Anyway, let’s go over some freeroll tournament tips I have lodged in the back of my head from yesteryear.

Typically the first 20 minutes or so of the tournament is full of a bunch of people who either A) know they have zero chance of winning so they’re just trying to see how many all in’s they can win before being eliminated or B) since they didn’t pay any money and just remembered they have to walk the dog, or cook dinner, or whatever the case may be want to be knocked out immediately so they can leave and go do other things. There is a group C as well, which is all the players who signed up and forgot they signed up, so they’re set to auto fold until they finally sit back in front of their computer. Long story short out of the ten players at your table you probably have between 4-6 real opponents and the rest fall into either A, B, or C. So, for the first 20 minutes I would advise not playing anything, even if you have a monster hand. If you watched the WSOP on television you heard the pros refer to it as a marathon. Same applies to any type of no rebuy tournament. You don’t want to lose chips early, and you don’t really want to build too large of a stack early either.

Why don’t you want to build too large a stack early? You’ll become complacent and will start calling away needless chips. Believe me, I know from experience. If I wind up winning too early, arrogance kicks in. When arrogance kicks in, well, you make dumb decisions and go out quicker. If your climb is more gradual you’re on your toes more and thinking clearly. I need to win a pot here or there to stay in the running to win. If you have a huge stack you start thinking to yourself “Well I have Queen Ten offsuit, I can afford to call this guy’s all in.” The difference in psychology of the chip leader and the grinder is like night and day. For a real life example think of the WSOP. Think of the chip leader for say day 1 or day 2 or even day 3. Do they usually win or do they usually lose? Nuff said.

Why don’t you want to be playing a lot of chips early on? Everyone has a lot of chips in relation to the blinds. The blinds are small, your stack is big. You want to have a proportional bet to the strength of your hand and your opponents chip stack. A bet of 40 with the blinds at 5/10 is indeed 4x the big blind but when your stack is at 1,000 or 1,500 that is a fairly small bet in relation to stack size. Now let’s say the blinds in round 4 are 40/80 and you still have your 1,000 chips whereas opponents have been limping left and right and have somewhere more in the ballpark of 600. Now your bet of 320 at 4x the big blind looks much more intimidating compared to their stacks and you have the opportunity to win more chips from the same hand.

Patience is key. That’s why I lost the last one, I got bored and became inpatient with playing. Prepare yourself for about 3 -1/2 hours of play. That’s typically how long a freeroll tournament lasts. The final few tables start somewhere around the 2-45 maybe 3 hour mark, at least in previous experience that’s when they started. Just wait for your chance to shine, you’ll get it. Freeroll tournaments can be easy to place in, depending on how many spots pay.