For the beginning poker player, the biggest advantage of playing the freerolls is the fact that they are free. After all, why should you risk your money when you’re at a clear disadvantage? Even if you’ve read all the poker strategy books you could get your hands on, your knowledge is still strictly theoretical, and you don’t really stand a chance against the average opponent. But that advantage turns into a disadvantage once your poker skills have improved. Now you’re spending your valuable time playing freerolls, fighting for hours to make ridiculously low amounts of money, when you should be better utilizing your skills, and perhaps building a real bankroll for yourself. So how do you know when it’s time to move on? When are you ready to leave the comfort of your freeroll nest, and fly off into the real world of money buy-in tournaments?

Before you fly anywhere, you should be aware of the main strategic differences between the two. First and foremost, the primary stages of a freeroll are largely characterizes by loose play. Many players are utilizing what we like to call the kamikaze strategy. They do so by going all-in frequently, trying to either double up fast or die hard and move on to the next tournament. Though similar moves can be found in real money tournaments, they are much less frequent. It’s healthy to assume that if someone is going all in during a real money tournament, he or she is usually holding the cards to back their call. In a freeroll tournament, however, standards are much lower, since no monetary investment was made. The only thing players invest is time, and they would rather quit the tournament fast for a chance to double up, instead of making it to the late stages with not enough chips.

That is why after about an hour of freeroll play, or when roughly half of the participants have been eliminated, the players who are still standing will usually tighten up. The kamikazes have flown away, some with more success than others, and now the game has become more serious. So even if you regularly make it through the first hour of a freeroll, that fact in itself is not enough to ensure that you are ready for real money poker play. You could be surviving simply because you play super-tight while everyone around you is constantly going all-in – a good strategy in itself, but not one that says too much about your poker skill, since you probably participated in a minimal number of hands, and just watched from the sidelines as your opponents knocked each other out. The real question is – how do you play from this point on?

With only half the participants remaining in a tournament, people tend to tighten up and start playing seriously. This is when you should test yourself. See how well you do at these stages of a freeroll. If you stick to your over-tight play for too long, you will soon be crushed by the escalating blinds. As time goes on, and the game nears the ‘money’ stages, the intensity is equal to a real money poker tournament in every aspect – mainly because there is real money at stake. This is the true advantage of playing freerolls as a beginner – if you make it to these stages you are participating in a game that is almost equal to a real money tournament in every aspect, even though you don’t stand to loose a dime.

If during your freeroll play you regularly finish in the money, then you don’t need this article to tell you that you’re ready for the big time. Even if that isn’t the case, but you do find that you can regularly keep your cool throughout these intense final stages, and that you play your game well without being intimidated by your opponents – then you are probably ready to take it to the next level. By participating in tournaments with as low as $1-$5 entrance fee, you will greatly improve your game, and also make much more money than you would have after hours and hours of freerolling. Hope to see you at the real money poker tournaments soon.

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