Thanks Foucalt!

Well that’s what I’m sort of trying to figure out. Since I don’t have much experience at playing MTTs other than freerolls, I’m not sure if the environment in which I’m trying to level my attributes is conducive to my long term desires which are to become a mid-high stakes consistently profitable player.

I feel like the beginning of the freerolls are a huge joke and I’m not getting any real experience on how to pick up chips other than jamming all in with a premium hand against a monkey (lol), hoping to double up, and then doing that again once or twice to build a big enough stack to work with.

I was playing a $1 tourney the other day with some of my freeroll winnings, and while it’s a super low buy in, there definitely weren’t that many “all in any 2” players there, but for some reason my play just felt out of wack in the early stages because I was so used to waiting for a premium to jam in and get my quick double up instead of actually playing out early game dynamics. I guess I sort of treated that tournament like a freeroll one even though it wasn’t, but I was just so used to that freeroll format that I failed to implement any other early game strategy because I lacked the finesse to do so.

That’s when I realized I’d rather just stop playing the freerolls and wait to get the experience I need in the early stages to allow me the chance to go deep because there won’t always be that guy who punts off his stack with any 2 basically giving away free chips.

But ya anyways I might just be overthinking it and kind of answering myself a lot, I’m just curious as to how you pro gods view freerolls as a tool for improvement if you view it as that at all?

Well my thought process behind such a tight range is basically built around the core of the strategy that these players are employing. At the surface it seems really dumb to be jamming in any 2, but when you really think about it it’s an incredibly strong strategy as well since their ranges are completely balanced 100%. You don’t know if they’ve suddenly woken up with AA, KK, or if they just have complete garbage because they are literally jamming it in every hand. So my thinking is, I want to give myself the greatest possible chance at winning my flip and just felt like AJ was right outside of that range as well as anything lower than 10s beacuase they’re just that much more vulnerable to being dominated. AJ not so much, and honestly I probably would call a jam with it, but A10 is definitely pushing it for me. However with this range I have been fairly successful although it is on the super nitty side.

It’s humbling to read your insight. And it makes sense that an inexorable change in your core strategy will come along not only at different stakes, but against different players and table dynamics within the same stakes so the attribute of adaptation in itself is of significant value which would make playing in these freerolls help to build that attribute in a polar region.

I will continue to play in these freerolls for the time being as I now see more value in doing so thanks to you Foucault (just realized you are Andrew Brokos lol, hello) and will hone my skill enough to be able to crush these consistently before moving up. I still play like a monkey myself sometimes so definitely have a ton of work to do so thanks man.

Also when my journey begins (for stakes), I’ll be streaming it (within 2 weeks), so will be posting in the goals section soon, cheers!

Yes thanks Joel, it does helps when you put it in terms of percentages. I never really think like that and am just always afraid that I could be up against better. This will definitely help me adjust my range and help me read ranges with more clarity so definitely helpful, thanks 

So after continuing to play these freerolls on ACR since my original post, I’ve come to a few conclusions.

First, as Foucault stated, “Recognizing the mistakes your opponents are making and devising strategies to exploit those mistakes to the maximum is the most fundamental poker skill there is” with that I agree 100%. I’ve gained great value from playing in these freerolls from my mistakes and victories alike such as: How it feels to run deep in a fairly sized field; How it feels to play on the bubble of a tournament you run deep in; What it feels like to be short stacked at various parts of the tournament; How to deal with the super loose and sticky players that the freerolls are infested with; How to exploit these players for maximum value when I make my hand; All of this amongst a rail of other experiences that I’ve gained knowledge from to my benefit.

I’ve literally been either studying or playing poker everyday from 5-10 hours since deciding to become definite in improving my poker game about two months ago, so while it’s true that I only started playing some time last year, I feel I have built enough of a solid base of fundamentals to allow me to perform much better than I ever have in buy-in tournaments. But obviously my results will speak for themselves on whether or not I become a consistently winning player.

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Now secondly and more importantly, I realized I was concerned more about the time investment factor than the “skill erosion” factor which I now believe is actually non-existent (the skill erosion factor that is) if you’re a competent thinking player. How can your skill actually erode if you know that the unorthodox decisions that you’re making in certain spaces of a freeroll will probably only apply to that freeroll? If you know you’re making certain plays that you can probably only get away with making in a freeroll, then there is no diminishing return skill-wise, rather you probably become even more aware of each circumstance you are in whether it be a freeroll, low stakes, mid or high, and adjust your play accordingly.

The time investment is where you start to build an argument for not playing freerolls. Even I, who at the moment has no bankroll, find these freerolls to be quite trivial when looking at opportunity costs. I could be doing plenty of things of more value to my life than sitting for hours on end grinding these freerolls for literal pennies and a seat to a satalite. If I seem like a pretentious ingrate to you just picture yourself grinding out 10 hours of freerolls a day for a top prize of $2.55. Even if you were to bink each and every one you play, let’s say you play about 15 in that time, you’re essentially making $3.80 an hour, and that’s first place every time. I feel I’ve performed fairly well to this point in the freerolls I’ve participated in by winning and making numerous final tables as well as binking a satalite ticket, but the ROI, being a time investment and the return being the winnings as well as the experience gained, just cannot justify continuing to play these any further.

I understand there are probably greater value freerolls on a site like pokerstars, but seeing that ACR is the only on demand freeroll site I can play on atm, I just can’t allow myself to invest anymore time into them for the reasons I’ve stated. Of course I will still be studying poker with the help of TPE amongst other resources, but just thought I’d post again to kind of recap my thoughts on the whole deal. 

Thank you guys for your responses!