Trying to get a bankroll started on freerolls

Originally Posted by aslectic

What are the best poker sites/tournaments to get a bankroll started on freerolls and is it even realistic to do anymore? I've had some success at pokerstarts but there's to many people playing the weekly sat/sun nowadays.

I don't know what you mean by "realistic".

It is, of course, possible to win freerolls, win money, and then use that money to build a bankroll.

However, to do proper bankroll management, you need to have a substantial number of buy-ins at whatever level you choose to start at (presumably $2NL or $0.02/$0.04 limit). And to do that, you will either have to play in a lot of freerolls, do very, very well, or get very lucky.

It seems to me to be much wiser to simply make a deposit, and take advantage of a rakeback program and/or a first deposit bonus to increase the size of your bankroll to ensure you are deep enough to play.

(Full disclosure: way back when I first started playing hold 'em, before I went to any casinos and before I really knew how to play the game, I ran through an initial deposit and bonus on PokerStars. I used my accumulated Frequent Player Points to play in a bunch of semi-freerolls (i.e., tournaments that charged FPP's for entry fees), accumulated enough in the money finishes (simply by playing extremely tight poker in these donkfests) to semi-replenish my bankroll, and then built it. I later discovered that my limit hold 'em game would make me much more money at casinos that I could ever make online. That said, I do have several hundred dollars in my PokerStars account that technically were built from freeroll play, if you count FPP tournaments as freerolls. But I wouldn't recommend even this for most players for a couple of reasons: (1) if you have run through your bankroll, it means there are leaks in your game that you need to fix before worrying about winning money, and (2) the semi-freerolls are time consuming (they have tons of entrants) and not very much fun to play, and it seems simpler and less trouble to simply pony up the money and make a deposit.)