Freeroll 2 Bankroll My personal poker blog on how I started with zero dollars, learned how to play poker in freerolls, and built a $6000 bankroll in one year without ever making a deposit. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 1 0 14 1009

Articles from Freeroll 2 Bankroll

Pokerstars 2007 WBCOOP 2007-10-03 15:54:00 I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.Registration code: 1251067 ...

Uncertainty Part II 2007-09-20 17:10:00 Another example of playing with uncertainty.The ultra loose cHp Freerolls qualifiers at hollywoodpoker. Usually about 150 entrants with the top twenty moving on.I won one!And at the next step, the quarter roll, I was third with 21 left. The top 20 moves on, so I didn't even need to play on and sat out.Easy. ...

Learning How to Be Lucky 2007-09-05 14:57:00 Thanks Klopzi, for prompting me to post.I've only played another 30 hours of live 4/8 limit so not enough for my next 50 hour live report.The reason I've played so few hands live was because I realized I was playing too timid for the game I was in. I wasn't playing right and needed to reset what I was doing. After analyzing my live play and how I was just breaking even and losing to the most incredible draws, I can now characterize the 4/8 game in online terms... preflop it's exactly like the online micro-limit tables (25c/50c or less)... after the flop the skill level improves for some of the players and is more like the online 1/2-5/10 6-max shorthanded tables.So almost anything goes preflop, and any draw is usually chased to the river irregardless of the odds, though given the number of players usually seeing the turn, the odds are almost always there to chase - thus the title of my post.Once I've gotten these thoughts into my head, I've... gone back to the microlimit tables ...

First 50 hours of 4/8 FL 2007-08-13 17:08:00 I've now played in just over 50 hours of live 4/8 FL Holdem...I'm down 8BB. So just $64...And I realize just HOW MANY MISTAKES I still have in my game!Which is a GREAT thing. No wonder I was 'break even' in my online ring games as well. Now online, I SEE the post-flop play better.The great thing about slow live play is that you have the time to reflect on the play of every hand. And the number of leaks that I have is so glaring when I put the time in to review my play.After one and a half year of play, I think I'm finally beyond my hand + flop possibilities and can start to focus on what distributions I'm against based on my table reads.My latest leak find is that I hate to have the dominating hand (ie AQs vs ATo) and villain draws out on the river on you... can I STOP paying off the extra bet on the river? ...

Random Non Poker Post 2007-08-10 22:42:00 Long life awaits me.How Will I Die QuizYou will die at the age of 106You will die of sunburn trying to beat the world record for nude sunbathingFind out how you will die at Quizopolis.comDarn, I missed one.Am-I-Dumb.com - Are you dumb? ...

Things you can't do online 2007-08-03 15:02:00 I've been playing overly tight live. But if the table still bets into you, it's VERY +EV.But if EVERYONE sees the flop, you're all of a sudden behind to all the draws out there; so what can you do?Well, I've found that ANNOUNCING how tight you play helps sometimes! The players in the know understand and get out of your way, and everyone else will still go on chasing their gutshots and two-outers.me: Wow! Nice catch! (low pocket pair catching trips on the river with a scary coordinated board showing)octogenerian chaser: Thanks.me: I wish I could do that, I'm not a good chaser. Only my made hands get caught. I never chase.octogenerian chaser: Then you'll never catch anything.me: Yeah, I hate fishing too. ...

Live Poker 2007-07-30 13:17:00 I've been in North America now for 5 months.And if you're a gambler, you'd know that there's now ALWAYS a casino just around the corner from you - or within a 3 hour drive at the most.With my online bankroll behind me, I've now played about 50 hours of live cash game poker. All limit poker - 2/4, 2/5, and now 4/8 limit.At around 30-40 hands/hour, that's between 1500 to 2000 hands. So still not much to determine any trend, but as I learn the nuances of live play, I'm ahead of the rake so it's nice to know I can hold my own playing 'for real' at these low limits.The play varies but on the whole, even at 4/8 limit, it is MUCH looser than even 1/2 FL online.The great thing with playing live is that all the poker 'wisdoms' gets played out on each and every hand and table. I love observing the different 'personalities' that show up.I find that though I play much less hands live, I've improved my overall decision making faster playing live. It has to do with the time availa ...

Las Vegas Trip Report 2007-07-18 08:30:00 I've made my pilgrimage to Las Vegas to see the WSOP live.It's my first time to really SEE the gambling in Vegas. I've been here before for the now defunct Comdex. But back then, I never gambled except in work and business .It's the first time I've see deepstack poker being played and I now have a better understand of what all that Harrington poker theory really means.Watching the randomness that is tournament poker play, I also realize that what I've been doing in my freerolls is actually NOT that different from even the main event! Especially poker play in the second half of ANY tournament. Seeing atrocious reads, committing tournament life with dominated hands, and 1-3 out river cards over and over again even in the main event and even on day 3 really shows the 'gamble' that's in tournament play.It was a great experience. Highlight for me was watching Scotty Nguyen play on days 2 and 3 with never more than 150,000 chips and surrounded by stacks 3-5x his - all targeting him ...

Independence Day in Anti-Online Poker Land 2007-07-04 21:16:00 July 4th in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.Watching the 'patriotic' fireworks right now.I wonder what 'non-patriotic' fireworks looks like.For the next couple of months, I'm planning to travel throughout the US, the land of anti-online poker.Neteller has already warned me not to even browse to their site while I'm in the States.Not too many freerolls for me either, so I'll be at the 2/4FL tables at pokerstars when possible. ...

Another Second Place 2007-06-27 23:00:00 This was played over a week ago so here the final hour and a bit in minimalistic style. Enjoy.At the second hour break there were 33 left of 486 entrants.WOW! Take a look at the first hand after the break.20 left, I'm in the lead.Final Table.I get lucky.6 left, I'm still very comfortable.4 left.3 left.I take the chip lead with a A6o vs 63o hand.3rd hour break.Heads Up.Catching the idiot end and coming in second. ...

3rd Cash in a Buy-in Tournament 2007-06-11 18:29:00 If you've been following this blog, you'll know that I rarely play any cash buy-in MTTs. For whatever reason, I just haven't started playing them regularly preferring freerolls.Looking through my blog, I realize that this is only my third ever cash in a buy-in tourny, previous cashes were last November and February.The MTT was one of B2B network's regular Wild West tournys. I took a look in the site lobby, saw that there were only 300 or so players...a €2 buy-in and a guaranteed prize pool of €3,000... I was bored and the MTT was starting in 6 minutes.. so I registered.I've never play in this tournament before so I made notes right from the beginning wanting to track how such a tourny works... here goes the recap!I missed the first hand of the MTT and when I got the table up, I did a double take... I only had 500 chips! Hummm... with a bit of checking, I realized that I've gotten myself into an UNLIMITED rebuy tournament. Not only that, but it's a turbo, 5 minutes per ...

Finally a Final Table 2007-06-09 02:56:00 It was just a 441 entrant Omaha Hi/Lo freeroll but at least I made it back to the final table. Unfortunately, we still had a lucky freeroll expert at the table and I was knocked out by a rivered Hi straight in 7th place. ...

Still working on my game 2007-06-08 16:15:00 Oh well 20th out of 1472... I played patient and with just 2 key doubling hands against freeroll experts (for those who don't know, they are players who play Ax Kx like they are the nuts), I easily got into the money (top 100).With 50 left, I got too conservative... with two big stack bettors preflop, I could have played QJs but passed... the xxxQT board against JJ and AT would have given me a final table stack.Passing on QJ with my medium stack wasn't toooo bad a move. But on my next playable hand, I should have pushed with JTs... I was now one of the short stacks at about 18th of of 25 left... but tripling would still have got me into the top 10...Well timid me passed again with JTs when two bigger stacks pushed before me... they showed A9 and AQ... flop JTx!After that, I had no more fold equity and faded to just make the 11th-20th cash level in 20th place.I gotta get my aggression back up when I have a medium stack in in-the-money play. ...

Poof! Goodbye UKBetting 2007-06-06 00:34:00 Out of the blue I get two emails on Monday June 4th from UKBetting and RaketheRake...UKBetting Shuts Down Today.So the site of my largest freeroll win ever is gone... just like that.The UKBetting email even had the gall to write "... we previously sent you an email..." which of course I've never received. I'm now slightly excited since after my win back in December, I thought it'll be nice to leave some of my winnings at the site to chase the monthly bonuses and earn the required points to play the monthly rtr freerolls. So I had close to £400 still at UKBetting on Monday... The question was... where's the money?I left it for a day... but with no further emails and not knowing where some of my virtual money is floating around got me, so I decided to do some more investigating. Back to the two emails...And I saw that further down the UKBetting email, they write "On 5th June your ukbetting account will change to a SkyBet account, and you should receive an email from them with th ...

Going Deep in Mega Freerolls 2007-05-31 01:20:00 I lost my screen cap of my 101th place out of 1498 in one of microgaming's mega freerolls. It was a PL 7-Stud freeroll thus the 'small' turnout.Here's the summary cap of my 126/4965 finish in a $1K HoldEm NL freeroll.It's all about patience. The play is just as random as 6 months ago. ...