Freerolls: Leave the Fancy Plays at Home

There's not an episode of the WSOP or the World Poker Tour where you won't hear the commentators talk about a masterful play, a creative play that leaves the commentators speechless and the player's opponents chipless. Sometimes it's a bluff, sometimes it's a value bet, sometimes it's a sick read that results in a real hero call.

All of those plays have one thing in common: you should not, under any circumstances, attempt them in freerolls. While those sort of highlight reel plays are fun to pull off and even more fun to brag to your family about, they don't have any place in a freeroll.

Here's why: almost all advanced plays require that your opponent is approaching the game logically, with a rational mindset. The trouble is that, in a freeroll, very few players actually are approaching the game that way, and you have no real way of knowing which players those are. If you try to pull off advanced plays that require your opponents to have some sense of what's going on in the hand, you'll often find yourself disappointed, because the majority of your opponents aren't going to be following any plan whatsoever – or at least not any plan that would make sense to you.

Think about it – you can't bluff a person who has no concept of hand strength. You can't force someone who doesn't care about their tournament life to act in a way that corresponds with them caring about whether or not they get eliminated, because they quite simply don't. These players are not going to play according to the script you have in your head, because they don't have any script in their head at all.

Don't waste your time with these sort of plays. They will just go over the head of your opponents, and that's fine. Why? Because if you can't bluff these opponents, if you can't pull fancy plays off against them, that means they're just ignoring some basic fundamentals of the game. These are the leaks you should exploit, these are the weaknesses you should cash in on. Those leaks are where you're going to get your chips in freerolls, regardless of whether they are satellite freerolls, rush poker freerolls or just standard freeroll tournaments.

Sound boring? It may be, a little, but optimal strategy is never guaranteed to be entertaining, only profitable. Wait for solid hands and extract the maximum value possible from these opponents in freerolls. Take advantage of the small bets they make and the ridiculous calls they're willing to spew chips on. Be thrilled that their hands are, in many cases, face up to you. Play tight and freerolls will basically be free free poker money for you.

Playing proper strategy in freerolls won't allow you many moments where you pull off plays that Mike Sexton would wax poetic about, but that's fine. While you won't be making any highlight reels, you will be making progress on the one metric that really matters in poker – how much you profit.

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