I understand your point, and I agree that poker sites need players who deposit — that’s how the business works. But I’m convinced that if I want to take poker seriously, I’ll eventually need to make a deposit as an investment in a possible poker career.Poker Orifice said:
However, the process I’ve set for myself doesn’t allow me to deposit unless I’ve reached a certain stage — either by finishing my study plan or proving that I’m a winning player. If I can’t build and maintain a decent bankroll starting from freerolls, then honestly… who would stake me? No one! And I wouldn’t stake myself either 😂
Right now, I’m making progress, but I’m only investing time — not money — until I’m convinced I can win consistently. Once I reach that point, I won’t just deposit; I’ll actively look for staking opportunities and show potential backers my game where is worth investing in.
And just for a moment — do you really think PokerStars looked at my specific account and decided that my practice wasn’t working for them, so they changed their strategy?
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This is because, from the beginning, you’ve seen yourself as a good player — confident in your ability to win and make money. But for me, it’s very different. I’m not confident in my game yet, and I don’t have any consistency. I’ve just had some lucky moments here and there and won a bit of cash. That’s part of my process.Poker Orifice said:
I remember hearing Phil Ivey say something like, “If you want to treat poker as a business, you’ll need to invest money.” That message stuck with me.
So I believe that if you want to start a business — any business — you need to be prepared. Otherwise, you’ll just go broke.
I logged into PokerStars two hours ago and checked how many players were online — around 20,200! Then I set the Buy-in filter to include everything and browsed the tournaments from top to bottom. Very few players, and lots of tournaments with no one registered! It's a shame about this site — I played here for many years...
They didn't 100% guarantee the Weekly freeroll would be the same every week though did they? They may change it loads more times over the time that have this promotion.Robbie1583 said:
You assumed, as probably most of us did, that it would stay the same. Maybe a future change may be better than the first ,who knows?
I think you do have a right to be critical, we mostly, have free speech. Unfortunately using the word scam in incorrect, as words have a meaning.
If you said I 'feel' scammed as I spent ages plaing 1000 hands, then OK fair enough, but still at no point, I don't think did GG say it will be 100k T$ every single week!!
GarotoMaroto said:
huh? Speaking of simple... 🤔
Why not just have the poker site transfer $50 to each of our bank accounts, and nobody even play the freeroll?
hjuosh said:
You won't learn how to beat $10 mtt's by playing freerolls. Sometimes it costs money to get better at the game.
You can learn a bit playing in freerolls (a bit more in some vs. others)... although these days I don't think there are many (any?) where the general skill level could be considered 'good'.
In the beginning I didn't see myself as a 'good player'. I was new! But within a week of signing up I was finding forums (including this one) and asking members for resources that could help me get better at the game (back then it was books and training sites). So I did both. I read over 50 books my first year playing poker.
In short time I probably did think I was better than I actually was (< this is common for newer &/or novice players). I actually placed 2nd out of close to 1,000 entrants in the very first MTT I played online and yes this gave me a false sense of being better than I actually was. So I lost for the next 2 mos., at around roi -10% for Sng's and for MTT's I just didn't get a good cash again for awhile. But then I focused on SnG's for awhile, reading some good SNG Guides at the time and two books that were about sng's (one was written by the guy who did the CC 30-day course). And then sure enough, I was a winning player at micro stakes SNG's ($5 games). And then I branched out to multi-table sng's and small field Private league games (there were TONS of private leagues then... sometimes on a weekend I could find 25 MTT's to play that had leaderboards, Ca$h-Added prizepools & loads of prizes, across a couple dozen different sites. There were a couple hundred players playing in those tourneys so you'd get very familiar with each player and how they played... so I worked on making adjustments to each type of player and worked at exploiting them to the best of my ability).
So.... I didn't start out seeing myself as a good player BUT I was determined to be a good player (or good enough to win the games I was playing at the time).
Pretty much the only thing I wish I had done differently is >>> I wish I had taken more risk by attempting to move up in buy-ins sooner than I had.
Today my goals are much different with poker... but maybe they'll change again in the near future 🤔
I think your process sounds very interesting.Poker Orifice said:
I’m not playing only freerolls — but I’m still not investing my own money to play.
In two years I won maybe on all platforms combined about 2k what I invest in back on same platforms. Playing and trying all kind of levels and buyins.
I’ve been trying out the $50 NLH cash games and a couple of $50 buy-in tournaments, just experimenting and exploring those fields.
I’ll make a deposit when I feel confident in my game — and maybe at that point, I won’t need to go back to freerolls anymore.
I still play a few. If I'm not playing a session of poker. If I'm doing other things on computer at same time. If I'm super tired but still feel like playing poker. These are times I'll fire up a CC Partypoker freeroll.hjuosh said:
When I started playing online poker I also had this idea, that it would be "irresponsible to gamble with real money", since I had family obligations. So I spend at least a year on a play money site, where I became one of the players with most fake chips. I also read free strategy articles and watched free training videos.hjuosh said:
When I finally came to my senses, I deposited $100 on PokerStars and right out of the gate I was beating 2NL and 5NL cash games. I think, the most, I was ever down, was like $10 or so. So if you have been playing for 2 years already, I will highly encourage you to do something similar and get out of this "freeroll trap", where you win some money here, but lose them there, and play a little bit of everything.
If you can afford to spend money on an evening out with your friends or your girlfriend, then for sure you can also afford to invest $100 or even $50 in your hobby. If you dont want to go the cash game route, as I originally did, then PokerStars still have SnGs, that run 24 hours. As I wrote elsewhere, they recently simplified their multi table SnG offerings, so its now 8-32 mans all the way from $0.5 to $25.
$50 is more than enough to start grinding the $0.5 game, and if you want to skip that one, then $100 is enough to start griding the $1 game. And then as your bankroll grow, you can start to gradually add more MTTs for variation especially during weekends. As Poker Orifice say, you are not going to get good enough to beat $11 MTTs by playing freerolls. So if you want to make some money in online poker, you have to make a deposit and get into a grind.
I think that since it's a promotion with no extra cost to participate, in my case I play all 100 hands of cash games to get the ticket. Regarding the ticket prizes, I would also prefer cash prizes, but if something is being "offered" we should just be grateful for having another tournament to play, because it's also better to have these kinds of promotional tournaments than to have nothing interesting for free, as has been the case for some time on the GG platform. Since I play micro-stakes, winning any of the 100k free prizes is still worth it for me! lol GL!!
And now back to the main topic 🙂Robbie1583 said:
Even now, with 2000 tickets it is usually enough to enter the qualifier in the end of late reg and not to play a single hand to get into the 2000 and get a ticket. With 2500 the best tactic was not to play at all no matter when started. It is really not surprising they nerfed it.
You can complain and nothing will change. You are expecting them to give you free money for what? It is already a freeroll, mate. C'mon! Stop complaining, and take 1 Dollar nd enter a turbo or something. Did you ever try to run a big company? Do you unterstand what it takes to structure all the different departments of an online poker site? To organize, paln, maintain all of this? Do you feel better now after writing your complaint? Write your complaint to the GG support team.
Yah. I agree. The new prize payouts are lame AF! It's top 1% or nothing!
I'll play it if I remember to (I remembered once so far in 2026). It's not like it takes a ton of focus away from other games. If you've got the screen space by all means add it, BUT it is pretty bad vs. how it was in the past.
I'll play it if I remember to (I remembered once so far in 2026). It's not like it takes a ton of focus away from other games. If you've got the screen space by all means add it, BUT it is pretty bad vs. how it was in the past.
I don't know who Ivan Basic is, my name is Ivan too and I won one of 150 in a raffle, the bad thing is that I didn't make it to the 2nd phase 😆😆G0930 said:Then you need to look up what a scam is. So? It got a little harder to get the weekly ticket but still not particularely difficult....
If you struggle with freerolls I might recommend some studying.
CC has a great course which helped a lot of people here being able to transist from losing to winning player
CardsChat 30 Day Poker Training Course
Become a winning poker player in 30 days with our free online poker course.www.casino.us
Regarding the change of prizes I don't get what's so bad about some tickets. the initial value of the 100K Weekly is still 100K and most prizes still are in C$
@Ivan Basic scored a 150$ ticket and is playing the GGMasters today... so scammy right?....