Freeroll Tournaments: Conclusion

This is our final article on Las Vegas-type freeroll tournaments. These events have very fast intervals between raising the blinds and are mostly populated by small-stakes players. Most of the contestants are not playing to make money, they are playing to socialize with other players, get free drinks, win a bad-beat jackpot, and so on. They are just looking for a good time. They don’t relate to what is published about poker; they play mainly for entertainment.

Although your opponents in a freeroll event will be casual players, their styles may be poles apart. Since you are going to play aggressively, you need to size up opposing players as quickly as possible. Here are some ideas on reading freeroll opponents.

The classifications we use are taken from Dr. Alan Schoonmaker’s The Psychology of Poker. His categories are loose-passive, tight-passive, tight-aggressive, and loose-aggressive.

Loose-Passive Players: These players make up the bulk of freeroll players. They like to play a lot of hands and see a lot of flops. They like to limp, and their usual postflop style is to check and call rather than bet or raise. They often play any two suited cards, making flushes with bizarre hands like 9-2 suited or J-3 suited. They play these ugly hands regardless of their position. Most of the time, they will check after you do, happy that you did not bet. On the rare occasions when they do play aggressively, it is because they made a big hand. They have no real sense of pot odds, drawing odds, or implied odds.

In freerolls, they continue their practice of limping, although they are more sensitive to position and they will play tighter. Since they don’t bluff or semi-bluff, they can win only by making the best hand. They have no comprehension of fold equity. However, surprisingly, they are not the worst group of freeroll players — which leads us to the next category.

Tight-Passive Players: Tight-passive players play few hands, and they don’t bet or raise unless confident that they have the best hand. Two types of players use this style.

The first is usually a rookie to playing in live poker games, especially with people he does not know. He plays this style because he does not know how to play. Uncertainty and fear are a big part of his game.

The other type is usually an older player who has played poker for many years. He is often retired and living on social security. The only reason he is in the freeroll is because it is free. His specialty is finding the best promotions and poker rooms with the most giveaways. He has a strong attraction to bad-beat jackpots and high-hand bonuses. He plays not to lose. He likes to slow-play, and he plays a tricky type of game. He doesn’t bluff or semi-bluff, but he will check-raise when he has a big hand. Aggressive players annoy him, and he likes to trap them with big hands by check-raising. He will hang in there if he thinks you are bluffing or semi-bluffing. He will occasionally lay down top pair or even an overpair if the board looks scary.
Tight-Aggressive Players: These players play few hands, but when they do play, they tend to bet or raise, as opposed to checking and calling. This is the style of play that works best in cash games, and they are winning poker players. They normally don’t play in small-stakes games, and the poker rooms they play in usually don’t have freerolls.

Loose-Aggressive Players: These players participate in many pots and are usually betting or raising. Although this is a losing style in limit cash games, it is quite effective in freerolls. These players don’t just play their cards, but they play situations. They act with great aggression and often bluff and semi-bluff. They can be very difficult to read. The more successful ones are excellent card readers. Many of the others fail miserably because they misread situations, busting out earlier than they should because of being too aggressive at the wrong time.

A Sample Hand

The blinds are 200-400, and our hero is in the big blind with pocket eights and a 5,000 stack, which is 3,000 more than he started with. There were 100 players, and the tournament is down to 50. They usually chop when 20 players remain. The blinds will be going up on the next hand to 300-600. The loose-aggressive player on the button (with a stack of 8,000) opens for 1,400, and the small blind folds. How would each player react?

Loose-Passive Player: He would call. He figures a pair of eights is a good hand, and he might flop a set or an overpair. He is just calling because he wants to see what will happen. He figures if the flop misses him, he can fold and still have more chips than when he started the tournament. The majority of freeroll players think and play like this.

Tight-Passive Player: He would fold if he were an inexperienced player. He would be fearful of being knocked out and embarrassing himself. The experienced player might call or he might fold, figuring that he has more than doubled his stack since the start of the freeroll, so he erroneously believes that he is not short-stacked. He would recognize that the button could be stealing, but many of them do not want to risk their stack without a better hand.

Tight-Aggressive and Loose-Aggressive Players: They would go all in. They would recognize the raise as a button steal. A pair of eights compares quite favorably against the range of hands a loose-aggressive button raiser might have. When the blinds go up to 300-600, they will be very short-stacked. They figure about 10,000 is needed to get to the chop. With 2,000 in the pot, they welcome the opportunity to increase their stacks by 40 percent. If they get called, they are in trouble only against an overpair.

You can see the wide variances in the thinking of your opponents. An important factor in categorizing opponents is how much heat a player will usually take after he has called you on the flop. A calling station just keeps calling until you show him the best hand — or a bluff. A lookup artist calls you on the flop hoping to either pick off a lucky card or get you to stop betting; he wants to see if you are serious. If you bet a reasonable amount on the turn, he will fold a mediocre hand — which is what he normally holds. The obvious counter-measures for you are to stop betting against a calling station and keep betting against a lookup artist. So, the key to success is to size up your opponents accurately.

You should categorize players in freerolls. With few chips and escalating blinds, you cannot afford to misread players. Otherwise, you run the risk of missing out on opportunities to accumulate chips — or worse. ♠
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Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered (autographed to you) from Bob by e-mail: [email protected]. Free U.S. shipping to Card Player readers. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons at a reasonable rate. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert’s Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org_