As we have seen in the analysis of the Indian poker rooms, all of them do offer freerolls to incentivize players to signup and start to build a bankroll out of nothing.
Freeroll are indeed free money offered by the poker rooms and if you have the right attitude towards them you can make a considerable amount of money playing against very bad or deconcentrate players. Let’s see some tricks to get the most out of these occasions.
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Pay attention!
Although it’s a free tournament, it doesn’t mean the the prizes aren’t real. Treat the freeroll as a normal game and play it at your best. In the meanwhile, pay attention to your opponents’ styles and attitude, because most of them will not be able to play the free tournament as if it was a paid one, so use this leak to your advantage and play every decent spot at its most.
Tight is right
Most of the players will get bored very soon, therefore there are not reasons to play more hands than necessary. You can play a tight aggressive style, but even a nitty approach is not wrong in these cases: your opponents will just throw chips away badly do get involved in hands only with a strong combo and make the most out of it.
On the same page, playing tight also doesn’t leave much space for bluffing. In a context where opponents do not care about their chips, bluffing is not a good idea because you are going to meet marginal calls just for the thrill of seeing a showdown.
Keep your head down and bet for value; for the most part of the tournament it will prove as the best strategy.
Notice the evolution of the tournament
Usually freerolls have hundreds or even thousands of players enrolled and the first stages are just a constant stream of busted people and bad all ins. When the tournament gets closer to the bubble and to the in the money zone, the styles will change and players will tend to become more conservative because out of a sudden it’s not about a free entry anymore, but it has become about winning real money “for free”.
Use this phase to put a bit of pressure on your opponent and build a big stack for the next phases.
Play it for the big prize
Money is money, but the juicy prizes are always at the end of a tournament, so play it to reach and win the final table and not to score an ITM flag. Winning a freeroll might indeed start your poker journey with the right foot, while arriving 15th is likely not going to change much about your poker career.
If it happens that you win it, or in general scoop a big piece of the cake, use your winnings wisely: it’s a perfect head-start for your bankroll, so manage it carefully rather than going to gamble to a random high stake!
