By far, one of the most popular concepts in poker is no doubt the freeroll tournament. You don’t have to pay anything to enter freerolls, and many poker players see these as a risk-free way to make money. But even if there’s not a buy-in for freerolls, you need to realize that you’re paying for these tourneys with time. That said, it’s important to ask yourself if certain freerolls are worth the cost of your time.

Prize Pool

The first thing to look at in this discussion involves the freeroll payout structure. In other words, does the prize money and amount of entrants make the tournament worthwhile? A $200 freeroll with 300 people entered is much better than a $50 free poker tournament where 2,000 players are registered. Expanding on the latter tourney, you have almost no chance to cash – regardless of skill – when the prize pool and number of players are considered.

Your Goals

As we just mentioned, you probably want to avoid freerolls where the prize pool is small, yet the field size is giant. However, you may not care if you simply enjoy playing poker no matter the outcome. But if you’re somebody who wants to earn money fast and move up the stakes, open-entry freerolls aren’t the best place to start out.

Finding the Best Freerolls

Much of what we’ve talked about up to this point involves open-entry freerolls (no entry requirements). But your goal should be to find restricted free tournaments because the field sizes will be much smaller. Your best chance of finding restricted freerolls is by either signing up through a certain affiliate/forum that offers these deals, or by attaining a specific VIP status.

Players of a certain VIP status must play real money tournaments/cash games to get here though, so keep this in mind. But if you are able to get into exclusive free tournaments, the prize pools are usually much bigger and there are less entrants too.