Freeroll basics

  Learnin

 I spent a long time playing in free rolls with little success, due to the fact I had never before played poker for real anywhere. (I can only recall 3-4 times I had even played around when I was a kid and we didn't even know what the hand breakdown was by strength)  I just watched these guys play on tv and became interested. At first it all looked like luck, and a few lies, was all that was required. After a little while though I started seeing patterns about when to lie (bluff) and when not to. Of course I had the advantage of seeing both players' hole cards. But just as important as that was seeing how the players reacted according to the betting action on the table.  I think people today have an advantage over those just a few years ago with tv and the popularity of the game. We can actually see what world class poker pros do to make a living at their trade, where in the past people had to be beat out of a lot of money to learn their winning strategy.

  Pick Your Battles

 The trick to winning free rolls is getting your money in at a good time and not getting involved when you don't need to "chip up" unless you really do have a good starting hand and you can see a cheap flop. What I mean here is in tournament play, be it free roll or buy in, there is a blind structure that must be respected. When you start a game you only have to call the big blind (bb) to see the flop (if no one else has raised already) but as the game goes on the blinds get more and more expensive.  On top of that you will have to pay both big and small blinds whether you want to play your cards or not, whenever it gets to you. So in a 10 handed table you will have to pay 15 chips (in a 10 bb)  every time the dealer button comes around, every 10 hands. So it's costing you 15 chips to see 10 hands even if you don't play any of them. Then later in the game there will be an ante on top of the bb and sb (small blind) and the ante is paid by all the players at the table every hand, so if you were at a table and the bb was 200 the sb would be 100 and there would be a 25 chip ante for each hand. So 100 + 200 = 300  plus 25 a hand = 750 chips a round. If you only have 1000 chips left you won't see too many more hands before you go out. This is where chipping up comes into play.

   Forced Action

  Even if I did well early on and got myself a few chips, I would still be forced to play when I couldn't afford to see too many more hands without the blinds using up all my chips. For this reason a lot of people go all in with almost anything early on in the hope to get a chip lead to get ahead of the blinds for a little longer or to be more intimidating to the other players on the table. They know I am less likely to go all in against someone who can put me out of the game because they have me covered with their chip stack. I would much rather be all in against someone I have covered ( just in case they have a better hand than me;) so I can live to fight another day.

    Give Yourself The Best Odds You Can 

Where I think most free roll players make their mistake is getting involved in hands that they don't need to. It's been said a thousand times " The biggest mistake new players make is playing in too many hands " and this is especially true in free rolls. If I am going to go all in it is most likely to happen in the first few hands, and then only because I have a few more games running at the same time or in the near future. Most of the time I will not even play in the early action even if  I have AA because I have been put out of so many tournaments in like 5 seconds by one of the 6 people who went all in on the first hand with really bad cards.( 7 2 off suit)  AA is the best starting hand in no limit hold-em but the odds of it winning against 6 other random hands by the time you are looking at the river are pretty slim.  In my opinion going all in in the first 5 hands is a pretty big mistake. You are just starting the game and you don't have any pressure from the blinds at this point because they are only 20-30 chips a round to your 1000-1500 chip stack. You still have plenty of time to catch a hand when everyone and their uncle aren't  fighting for the pot and you can set up a situation where you are against one or two other players with (hopefully) a substantial hand.

   The Bigger Risks Don't = Winning Tournaments

 Now don't get me wrong, it is a nice feeling to be sitting on a table with 4x the chips of your biggest opponent after only one hand. But the odds of going out that early in the game are too high for me to want to waste my time, signing up 30 min to an hour early (some of the bigger rooms fill the games so fast you need a high speed internet connection to even see the register button appear before the game is full), finding the games, and generally the aggravation. It also seems rare that a big stack in the early part of the game lasts to the end. Most of those players go out before the blinds are even big enough to make you want to try to steal them.

   Spend Time Don't Waste it

 I see people write in the chat box "it's only a free roll" all the time to answer for their bad play. I think this is a little odd. Most people consider their time to have some value and would refuse to do a job without pay. But for some reason people seem fine with the idea of waiting for an hour or more sometimes to start a game just to go out in the first five hands. Much less playing recklessly later in the tournament after they have already spent 4-6 hours of their time getting this far in. "it's only a free roll" Yeah but it's my time and my life. I don't want to waste it. 

 So I guess the moral of this post is it is a bad idea to go all in too early on in a game.