Free Tournaments Are Good Practice

Houbi37 said:

Hello everyone,
Freeroll tournaments are a good way to practice without risking money.
They help improve patience and tournament strategy.
Do you still play freerolls or only real money games?

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That’s what I do for a living

I’d put it like this: freerolls are a useful tool, but with limited value. They really help at the beginning: building volume, getting used to tournament structure, and learning patience and basic discipline. Especially if you don’t have a bankroll or it’s very small, they’re almost the only realistic option.
But there’s a catch: the player pool in freerolls is often very chaotic. Because of that, you can develop habits that later hurt you in real-money games (for example, overvaluing marginal hands or underestimating opponents’ aggression). So if the goal is to improve as a player, it’s important not to stay stuck in freerolls only.
The optimal approach is to use them as a stepping stone:
build a small bankroll
move up to micro stakes
start playing against more reasonable fields
Personally, I wouldn’t play freerolls regularly if I already had a bankroll — it’s better to invest time in games where your decisions actually have “weight.”

I always add freerolls to buy-in tournaments. Sometimes I see players at tables who have won over $100,000 and they also play freerolls. Then I always think: Who am I to say no to freerolls?

Yes, free tournaments are good for practice. You can build up a bankroll, but the players there are unpredictable, to say the least))

Freeroll tournaments can be a good way to practice, especially for beginners.
They help you get used to different situations without risking money. I used them to understand basic decisions and gain more confidence.
At the same time, I think it's important to be careful, because the level of play is very different, and some free tournament habits don't work well in real money games.

If you get too used to freerolls once you start playing more serious tables you'll probably not know what to do when faced with a 3 bet on the turn or people not calling your 99bb raise in the third hand of the tournament.

I've played play money games IRL with far harder fields and more serious players. Most freerolls are donk fests, so I prefer to late reg for all the crazies to weed themselves out at the start. And when you start at level 4 and you see someone with a 600bb stack you know where you're going to be chipping up or busting from.

I think free rolls have another strategy then pay tournament, in free rolls you play free do what you want because you do not lose nothing expect time. In tournament where you pay your entering you play carefully. Good luck for everyone!

Freerolls give you good tournament practice. It is a bit of an artificial way of playing the game however as it is far looser and in reality more difficult to play as players throw in weak hands a lot. This is especially true in early stages as all ins are very common to get a starting stack built up initially in the early stages.

Not at all, lots of crap u will see there. Really good practice u will have at low limites like avg buy in 8-10$

Houbi37 said:

Hello everyone,
Freeroll tournaments are a good way to practice without risking money.
They help improve patience and tournament strategy.
Do you still play freerolls or only real money games?

Click to expand...

Freerolls really help players learn the game risk-free and build a solid bankroll from scratch. I’m still playing freerolls on CC to gain experience and steadily build my bankroll...

Good luck...

Being someone that mostly only plays freerolls for now, since I am still learning to play tournaments, I am curious how different the competition is in tournaments where you have a buy-in? Just reading through posts here, it seems like freerolls have a lot of loose agressive players who bank on getting lucky and winning bad beats, but how common is that in tournaments with buy-ins?