Preflop Play
Welcome to Full Tilt Freerolls, your best guide to beating freeroll tournaments on full tilt poker. If you don’t already have an account on full tilt poker, we highly recommend you get an account with rakeback from www.pokerwhip.com and get 27% of your rake returned to you for life.
Now we can get to the strategy guide. If you develop serious skills as a player, you may not need this guide any more because so much of poker is situational. Until you are playing for real money and a consistent winner in multi-table tournaments, this simple guide should be quite helpful and will give you a big advantage in the weak (but huge) field of players in a freeroll tournament.
Part 1 – The Zone Theory
The Zone Theory is based on the idea that as the blinds increase in relation to your stack, you need to be more aggressive. The blinds are getting closer to eating your stack down to nothing, and raising to steal those blinds can add a nice chunk to your stack. Because of this we play looser when the blinds are a larger portion of our stack. We measure this in big blinds as you will see by the chart below.
Chart – Beating Full Tilt Freerolls with the Zone Theory
Zone 1 : 30 big blinds or more
Zone 2 : 15-30 big blinds
Zone 3 : 8-15 big blinds
Zone 4 : Less than 8 big blinds
Part 2 – Preflop Play
Your opponents in a freeroll tournament are typically very bad players who play too many hands and call far too often. Because of this it’s best to play very tight and not bluff unless your stack is very short. I you are in the first few levels where you and most of your opponents are in zone 1, then you can play the hands in zone 1a, but only if there is no raise before you. If you are in zone 1, but most of your opponents are not, or someone has already raised, then play only the hands listed in zone 1b.
Zone 1a – Any suited ace, any two suited and connected cards, AQ, AK, and any pair. If you limp with these speculative hands and there is a raise of more than 3 big blinds you should fold, otherwise you should call and see a flop. You should never bet your draws in a freeroll tournament, but you should also never fold them. Freeroll tournaments only pay the top few spots, even if there are a thousand entrants, so you need to be willing to take risks to try to get in to those top spots. Beating freerolls is all about taking those risks at the right times. Since your opponents won’t fold often, and you can’t fold a good draw because you need to take risks, the best way to play open ended straight draws and flush draws is to check and call, playing very passively.
Zone 1b – When you have a big stack, but most of your opponents do not, you should play very tight because you have very little pressure from the blinds and you can not win a huge pot from most of your opponents by playing the speculative hands. If you are in zone 1b you should only play TT, JJ, QQ, KK, AA, and AK. Do not play Ace-Queen or a pair of nines unless you are in late position and no one has raised and don’t play any hands lower than those. It is awfully tight, and you will be folding a lot of hands, but it’s the right way to play when you have a big stack and your opponents don’t. If you just want to have fun then don’t bother with this guide, this is written for players who want to actually win these tournaments and can have the discipline to fold hands until the right cards come along.
Zone 2 – With more than 15 big blinds, but less than 30, you should be playing very tight, similar to zone 1b where you are not feeling pressure from the blinds and can afford to fold and wait for good cards, but you don’t have so many chips that you can play speculative hands in hopes of taking another player’s large stack. In zone 2 you should play all pairs sevens and higher, Ace-King and Ace-Queen if there has been no raise yet. If someone has already raised, then you should reraise with Queens, Kings, Aces, and Ace-King, fold the rest of the hands if the raise is large, or call with the other hands if the raise is small.
Zone 3 – In early position you should raise with Ace-Queen, Ace-King, and any pocket pair. In later position you can add Ace-Jack and near the button you can add Ace-Ten and King-Queen.
Zone 4 – In zone 4 you really need to accumulate chips, so as long as no one has raised, you can raise all-in with any pocket pair, Ace-Ten or better, and King-Queen. If you are near the button you can raise with any ace, any two cards above ten, and any pair, as long as no one has raised before you. If you are in zone 4 and someone has raised, you should reraise all-in with Ace-Queen, Ace-King, and any pair higher than eights.
Best of luck at the tables, we’ll be back next week with an article about playing after the flop, a crucial skill for winning freeroll tournaments. For more information on Full Tilt freerolls, join us at poker-coach.com or PokerXFactor