Combatting the "freeroll" mentality

If you have played in freerolls on any site, then you are aware of the meaning of the title of this post. The all in early trying for the double up or better.No thought to the odds of the ranked cards played. Put simply "bingo" is the name of the game.
How then should A player combat this type of playing atmosphere? There is no winning formula. The upside is in poker anything is possible, the better starting hands get cracked all the time. The freerol is the "minefield" of on-line poker. It is A great way to sharpen your skills of patience, and hand selection. The rest as with any poker hand is in the poker gods hands. The aspect that has helped me the most is not allowing myself to be dragged into hands with marginal draws, and little chance of success. Ofcourse at times I too fall into the "freeroll" mentality and gho for it. It is just a aspect of the freeroll hiway, that "COMES WITH THE TERRITORY" no sense in fighting, or crying about it. Especially when you entered it you knew it was coming!!!

It's a freeroll... key word is free. This means running into all kinds of entrants in some that have huge fields also. Some that you mentioned are there for sure.. also is the players that are only going to play for a short time and have to go do ... whatever in a short while. They are in with any 2 cards... they aren't neccessarily that type of player.. they .. for that particular tourney... just don't care because they won't be around long enough to finish ITM anyway...sooooooo they just bet what ever when ever and go out or win... they don't care. You will have to fight through that also...LOL! Out of the many thousands at times.. there are bound to be some that are in that situation... any 2 cards will do because they are outta here anyway.

Get by all these and you could find yourself ITM.... just dodge the fast eating dogs... and your on your way. This seems especially true in freerolls... The bad beat will come, it's just a matter of when.

playing the allin bingo depends how i feel at the beginning of the game and do i have the next 4-5 hours to waste or possibely make it down to winning it. i have one victory that i am still proud of to this day. it was on Absolute Poker and was when they had like 5-6 $500.00 freeroll tourneys a day. i entered into one at 11:00 pm with 5000 people in it. woulded you know 4.5 hours later i walked away 1st place. was my biggest freeroll win with that amount of people. i haven t done it again since on there. now they have changed it to like 4 $50.00 games a day. i try to stay away from the bingo by just folding for first 15 minutes. they are usually knocked out by then. if not then i start taking some chances because am starting to lose interest. and just want to sukout like everyone else is doing.

FreeRolls

Are what they are.
You can Learn from them or play them just Fun.

Fun:
Play ATC (any two cards) at AGT (any given time).
Bingo it.
Push it all in a whim.
Donk Fest and Heeee Haaaaaw it.


Learn and Try to Beat the Odds:
You can learn to battle your way through FreeRolls.

Place ITM.
Make it to the Final tables.
Take It all down with a Fist place finish.

Suggestions:

Early:
Stay out of multi pots. (The more players in a hand more the odds increase of someone cracking your hand)
Identify the weak players and play against them.
Play TAG.

Mid:
Loosen up.
Increase your hand selection a bit.
Between LAG and TAG Style.
Tighter then Looser but mix it up or the blinds will start blinding you out.

Late:
The later stages can be very similar to playing Cash Tournaments.
Make sure you take your share of the blinds.
Loosen you hand range even more.
Play LAG.

Remember to many of the players that play them there just FreeRolls.
Especially the first 2 hours or so.


Over all:
Stay away from multi pots.
Stay away from the chips leaders.
If you don't have the Nuts avoid all ins as much as possible (this limits the number of bad beats)

Watch for the:
Maniacs
Weak
Folders
Calling stations
And use your skills to take advantage of their play.

Become the chip leader and utilize the edge.

In my opinion most if not all these suggestions can and do apply to Cash Tournaments to some degree.


TAG (Tight Aggressive)
LAG (Loose Aggressive)


Have Fun and Good Luck