Building a bankroll from scratch through Freerolls - What's your best advice?

Hi everyone,
I am relatively new to the online poker community and I'm currently trying to build my poker bankroll from absolute scratch using only freerolls.
I've noticed that player behavior in freerolls is often very chaotic, with a lot of players going all-in with random cards during the early stages.
For those who successfully built a bankroll this way, what was your main strategy? Should I play extremely tight until the bubble, or try to take high-variance spots early on to build a big stack?
Looking forward to your insights and advice. Thanks!

My advice is to not do this, since its not an effective use of your time.

Thanks for the perspective! I agree it’s a long grind and not the most efficient way to make money. But right now, it’s more about learning the game and building a bankroll safely without any financial risk. Once I get a small cushion, I definitely plan to move up to low-stakes micro tournaments

Building a bankroll from scratch through freerolls takes one thing above all: patience.
The biggest mistake is treating every tournament like it has to change your life overnight. Freerolls are a grind. The goal is to survive, make solid decisions, and slowly turn small wins into a real bankroll.
Play disciplined, avoid tilt, and protect every dollar you win. It’s not glamorous, but consistency is what gives you a chance to move up.

Cardchat freerolls offer great opportunities; there are not many players in Silver and Platinum levels either — at 888, a field of about 100 players will clear out in about 3 hours. These are great options.

The CC Freerolls are a good way to built a bankroll.

Patience is the key in most freerolls not only the CC ones.

Thight is mostly right with adaptions to observations made at the table.

Some note taking may help also.

If sites offer a limited HUD, 888, GG and others be careful these are only preflop stats.

lyounssi said:

Hi everyone,
I am relatively new to the online poker community and I'm currently trying to build my poker bankroll from absolute scratch using only Freerolls.
I've noticed that player behavior in freerolls is often very chaotic, with a lot of players going all-in with random cards during the early stages.
For those who successfully built a bankroll this way, what was your main strategy? Should I play extremely tight until the bubble, or try to take high-variance spots early on to build a big stack?
Looking forward to your insights and advice. Thanks!

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I think the best approach is to play tight in the early stages and let the wild players eliminate each other. There is no need to risk your tournament with marginal hands when people are shoving with almost anything. Once the field gets smaller and players become more disciplined, I start opening up my range, stealing blinds, and looking for good spots to build a stack. Patience and good bankroll management helped me much more than chasing every all-in.

,🙂

Play your A game , you have to play looser than usual in freerolls , many play ATC especially early , shove easily . They will try to bliff more , cause they have nothing to lose as it's free . Carefully aggressiveness is needed

Set a goal and pursue it. Consider a typical bankroll ratio, such as 100:1; for instance, if you plan to play $1 daily tournaments, you need at least $100 to have a reasonable bankroll.

Yes, it’s possible; I made 150 dollars—it’s really quick and easy. You just need to focus on your pre-flop and post-flop play; that alone will bring you a lot of money. And always keep studying poker—always.

Freeroll tournaments are a great way to start. I usually play very conservatively in the early stages and let the all-in madness work itself out. Patience is one of the biggest advantages in these tournaments.

It takes time, and patience for sure.. Im just starting playing again, so just play and post here!

Freerolls are a great way to build a bankroll if you have the time. Don't try to win every single freeroll; they rely heavily on luck. As you noted in your post, many players play erratically, so you need luck to come out on top. Eventually, luck will go your way, and you'll secure your first bankroll.

I am currently running kind of the same thing so here's what I am playing :
Coinpoker - every hour 10$,20$,50$ freerolls. Very soft and they pay top 10 players, respectively 1$, 2$, 5$ a piece.
888poker - all I can find, except those sattelites. The 100$ Freeroll and Daily 100$ Freeroll for romanians. (this one in particular is very easy, first place paid is 71c and you usually get there pretty easy )l
GGpoker - all i can find in the custom tab + The Daily Freebie.
NetBet - they have a nice system of all in shootout freerolls in which you get 25c and 1.25$ Tickets. It is easy to play this, just login, go to freerolls and register all you can, they run every hour.
That's my schedule for the side hustle which doesn't involve too much time and energy.
GL and hope you find it useful

My strategy was to play very tight early because many players go all-in with weak hands. Once the field gets smaller, I become more aggressive and look for good spots to build a stack. Patience is the key in freerolls!

lyounssi said:

Hi everyone,
I am relatively new to the online poker community and I'm currently trying to build my poker bankroll from absolute scratch using only Freerolls.
I've noticed that player behavior in freerolls is often very chaotic, with a lot of players going all-in with random cards during the early stages.
For those who successfully built a bankroll this way, what was your main strategy? Should I play extremely tight until the bubble, or try to take high-variance spots early on to build a big stack?
Looking forward to your insights and advice. Thanks!

Click to expand...

You have to do both. You have to take the best spots but not just play top of range vs players shoving weak hands. If a player shoves 65dd and you call with JTcc you have 62% equity HU if someone else called first but they play 87hh you are getting 2 to 1 on your call and you have 46% equity. 4% more equity than if you call with AKo

So you have to estimate ranges and then decide which part of my range will do best in this spot?

Equilab is a free program that is great for building range vs range comparisons.

fundiver199 said:

My advice is to not do this, since its not an effective use of your time.

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I have to disagree with that because I think playing freerolls as a beginner is the best way to learn bankroll management and stay away from gambling addiction.

I can only share my own experience. I'm not saying this is the only right way, but if around 90% of poker players lose money in the long run, then spending time on freerolls might actually be more profitable in the long run for beginners. And I guess he wasn't asking how to become a winning player in just two weeks, right?

In my case, if you look at the picture below, I have a bankroll of around $120, and I earned all of it by playing daily freerolls on GG or CardsChat tournaments. There are also two weekly freerolls for almost every country, so in the end it's all about consistency. I haven't reached my goal yet. My next targets are $250, then $500, then $1,000, then $5,000, and finally $10,000. Based on my bankroll, I never risk more than 5%, and I never want to gamble.

And yes, I never said that I don't use this money to play other tournaments. Of course I do. I sometimes play $0.50 buy-in tournaments. I also tried cash games once and lost $10 from my bankroll in about 15 minutes. I guess I wasn't prepared for that amount of crazy play in the microstakes.

So for now, I decided to spend more time reading strategy books, even if many of them are over 10 years old. I enjoy reading them because I like to understand how those players think. I'm sure some strategies are outdated, but instead of playing all the time, I also watch tournament videos on YouTube and study modern concepts like solvers and poker psychology.

So keep going and don't think only about the short term. I'm sure that's one of the reasons why only around 5% of players are winning players in the long run.

lyounssi said:

Hi everyone,
I am relatively new to the online poker community and I'm currently trying to build my poker bankroll from absolute scratch using only Freerolls.
I've noticed that player behavior in freerolls is often very chaotic, with a lot of players going all-in with random cards during the early stages.
For those who successfully built a bankroll this way, what was your main strategy? Should I play extremely tight until the bubble, or try to take high-variance spots early on to build a big stack?
Looking forward to your insights and advice. Thanks!

Click to expand...

If you want to build a bankroll playing freerolls, then your number one goal should be to become a member of our CardsChat Platinum Freeroll Club. This is a priority. Once you become a Platinum member, you simply need to play our freerolls every day and over time you will build up a large enough bankroll.
What do you need to do to become a member of our Platinum Freeroll Club?
Read more here:

You have to play as many freerolls as you can play, until you reach $100 for example, then you could play $1 tournaments, when you have $200, $2 tournaments and so on.
In freerolls you have to play for value because the players are too crazy.
You can improve your game by watching other professional players, on twitch there are several who play live and you can learn a lot from them.

It's pretty possible. I think playing freerolls until you have 100$ and playing up to 1$ tournaments is the move.

I started the same way a few years ago, playing only free tournaments. My strategy was simple: a lot of patience at the beginning, letting the riskiest players eliminate each other, and playing aggressively only with strong hands. Later, as the number of players decreased, he began to steal the blinds and play more aggressively. The key was to get prizes on a consistent basis instead of trying to double the chips in any situation.

Gipsystripsy said:

I have to disagree with that because I think playing freerolls as a beginner is the best way to learn bankroll management

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Playing freerolls can teach you some strategy, as can play money games, but they can absolutely not teach you bankroll management. Bankroll management means selecting games, that keep the magnitude of swings to your bankroll within acceptable levels. And since freerolls are - well free - you dont need a bankroll to play them, and you can never lose. So you dont learn, how losses affect you emotionally, and how to manage this part of poker.

Gipsystripsy said:

and stay away from gambling addiction.

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If depositing an amount like $120 onto a poker site makes you a gambling addict, then you have a serious problem, that you need to handle, and probably you should not be playing poker at all. Have you ever spend $120 on a dinner with your girlfriend, and if yes did this make you a dining addict?

Gipsystripsy said:

I can only share my own experience. I'm not saying this is the only right way, but if around 90% of poker players lose money in the long run, then spending time on freerolls might actually be more profitable in the long run for beginners.

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It protects them from losing. But if your long term goal is to have success in poker, which you kind of allude to later, then avoiding to deposit and largely avoiding normal games for a long time will make it far more difficult to reach those goals. You simply can not have success in poker with this level of risk averseness.

Gipsystripsy said:

And I guess he wasn't asking how to become a winning player in just two weeks, right?

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Probably not. But this forum is full of people, who have been stuck at the kiddie pool at the water park not for weeks but for several years. You can see this by checking their sharkscope profiles on various sites. Tousinds of games played over years and sometimes with positive results, but with an average buyin well under $1 and a large percentage of the games played being freerolls even after playing for all those years.

Gipsystripsy said:

In my case, if you look at the picture below, I have a bankroll of around $120, and I earned all of it by playing daily freerolls on GG or CardsChat tournaments.

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Those $120 is not a bankroll. In order to have a bankroll, you need to be a winning player, and you are most likely not, or at least you have no track record to prove it, since most of if not all the money came from freerolls. So its just some random money sitting in the cashier, which you could have earned a lot faster by working some extra hours in your regular job.

As I said already, you probably learned something, so its not like, the time was wasted. But you would almost certainly have learned a lot more, if you had deposited a reasonable amount of money and focused on normal games rather than freerolls. Instead of sitting and waiting for the CC freeroll to start, you could have played a session of games, where the CC freeroll was only one of them, and learned a lot more. Putting in volume is essential for learning.

Gipsystripsy said:

There are also two weekly freerolls for almost every country, so in the end it's all about consistency. I haven't reached my goal yet. My next targets are $250, then $500, then $1,000, then $5,000, and finally $10,000. Based on my bankroll, I never risk more than 5%, and I never want to gamble.

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The latter is a very problematic statement. Poker is gambling with a skill element, and if you can not accept this, then frankly the game is not for you. Say you make it to $5.000. Then even if you never deposited, or only made a minimum deposit of $10 or something, then this is still your money, and you could withdraw it and spend it on something. So if you instead choose to use some of it to buy into a $30 tournament, then you are gambling, and you are risking to lose that $30, that could have bought you a new T-shirt or something.

Gipsystripsy said:

And yes, I never said that I don't use this money to play other tournaments. Of course I do. I sometimes play $0.50 buy-in tournaments. I also tried cash games once and lost $10 from my bankroll in about 15 minutes. I guess I wasn't prepared for that amount of crazy play in the microstakes.

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Variance is part of poker, and you cant expect to play for just 15 minutes and then win. And yes 2NL can be a bit of a wild ride, but its also extremely soft and easy to beat. So play 50.000 hands or 100.000 hands instead of just playing for 15 minutes, and see how your results are then. After that you can decide, if you like cash games or prefer to stick with tournaments.

I began my poker career with cash games but transitioned to tournaments several years ago after finding 25NL a bit difficult to beat. But I still think, there is a lot to be said for learning the game via cash games, since they offer maximum flexibility, and you play with deeper stacks, which is important for learning turn and river play.

So if I had to make a general recommendation, it would be to begin with cash games and stick to these, until you can beat 10NL and have build at least a $500 bankroll. And then after that you can consider to transition over to tournaments. With a $500 bankroll there are far more interesting tournaments to play across sites than with a $120 bankroll.

Gipsystripsy said:

So for now, I decided to spend more time reading strategy books, even if many of them are over 10 years old. I enjoy reading them because I like to understand how those players think. I'm sure some strategies are outdated, but instead of playing all the time, I also watch tournament videos on YouTube and study modern concepts like solvers and poker psychology.

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Its great to study, but its not a replacement for practice. For the best results you need to do some of both. It cant be 100% play, but it also cant be 10% play and 90% study. Thats like trying to learn sex mostly by reading about it.

Gipsystripsy said:

So keep going and don't think only about the short term. I'm sure that's one of the reasons why only around 5% of players are winning players in the long run.

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Exactly. And in the long run, it wont matter, if you deposited and lost a bit of money in the beginning. Books are not free either, unless you can borrow them from a library or something. But since you now already have $120 sitting in your account, you dont have to make any additional deposits but can just start grinding cash games, until it has (hopefully) grown to $500 or more.

Building a bankroll through freerolls requires patience, discipline, and solid bankroll management. Play tight early, study regularly, and gradually move up using your winnings.

fundiver199 said:

Those $120 is not a bankroll. In order to have a bankroll, you need to be a winning player, and you are most likely not, or at least you have no track record to prove it, since most of if not all the money came from freerolls. So its just some random money sitting in the cashier, which you could have earned a lot faster by working some extra hours in your regular job.

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I love people like you who keep telling others they're lying. There is plenty of proof that I DO play winning poker simply because I learned the basics, which you might have never even heard of.
I also never said that I would play only freerolls forever. I specifically mentioned using just 5% of my bankroll to take the next step and keep building it. But my bankroll is built entirely through freerolls, so I first had to earn that $100 with PASSION, patience, and a lot of time before I could consistently play based on these 5%.

And honestly, I'm glad there are still players like you who think success is measured only by the number of zeros in their bankroll.
Before you can walk, you first have to crawl. A LOSING player dreams about sprinting while making fun of someone who's still crawling. Nobody is given success for free. You have to earn it through hard work.
If you want to make money with poker, you MUST master these basics first. Otherwise, you'll never reach the level you're talking about. That's exactly why my advice about freerolls could be very valuable for new players.

All my stats below were earned through freerolls. And GG offers daily freebies, which are fantastic for starting a bankroll.
So if my stats show $800 in winnings, I probably lost around 50% of it while playing. But that still leaves about $400, which is a lot better than starting from nothing.
A lot of poker pros started with just $50. I don't see any problem with that.

Ahh yes, I'm sure you still won't understand the message behind it. Some people just love to stay in their own delusions.
I PLAY POKER AS A HOBBY! It's a CHALLENGE for me. I only play a few times a week, so don't come with the usual "long-term blah blah."
Just look at my stats. They keep growing consistently, and if I continue following my bankroll management strategy, they'll look the same even after 100,000 hands.