"Free Online Poker Tournament: The Pro’s, Con’s & Uglies"Download any one of the best poker tournament sites and you’ll find a free online poker tournament. Most of these free tournaments are similar from site to site. Some are “bought” into with play money chips the poker site provides to you at no cost. These play chips can be re-loaded when your account is depleted. Other’s require you to simply register for the tournament. These are called free rolls and feature prize pools of $50 to $250 or entries to a tournament that DOES have a prize pool. While FREE always sounds great, there are pro’s, con’s and an ugly side to free online tournaments. The obvious major PRO is its free! It’s a no-risk situation for you to play online tournaments. Plus these free tournaments are basically online poker sites giving away money. Free money is tough to pass on, huh? They are also a great way to learn and get a feel for an unfamiliar poker game. If you wanted to learn texas hold-em a hold em poker tournament online is the place to do it. Why not learn a new poker game and never risk a single penny? Its also a good place to practice your internet tournament poker strategy again without risk. Some of these may not work though as I’ll explain in the con’s. The CON’S of free online poker tournament: The strategy and online poker tournament betting used in free tournaments is useless in real money poker tournaments. So you may set yourself up for failure. I know I said free tournaments are a good place to practice strategy but that’s just to get the basics of betting and reading the board. Players in real money tournaments are usually beyond basics which means you’ll need a tougher arsenal to beat them. Free tournaments are not the place to gain this arsenal. Only real money tournaments can give you this. Free tournament players don’t play their best poker which makes them easy to beat. This can give you a skewed view when you play real money tournaments. The players are tougher but not un-beatable. Keep this in mind when playing free tournaments. The amount of time a free tournament lasts can be up to seven hours. When 1st place is at the most $25 in the largest of free tournaments its tough to justify spending that much time playing one. If you don’t mind making $3.50 or less an hour then free tournaments are fine. Making a minimum deposit of $10 and playing $1 tournaments with guaranteed prize pools of $10,000 is much more worthwhile. Plus there is plenty of online poker tournament info that can get you playing solid tournament poker. Free poker tournaments have huge player fields. Most limit entries to 9,000 or 10,000 players. That’s a lot of players to beat for the amount of time you play. Only 1%-2.5% of players get paid in a free tournament. Where in real money tournaments 10% usually get paid. That’s a large contrast. Now the ugly side of free tournaments. You may stunt your poker growth. Learning much beyond the basics in free tournaments is doubtful which makes advancing your skills tough. Even worse your poker skills can slip backwards. This is an unlikely scenario but it can happen. When you play against players that really aren’t playing for anything of value they tend to play a poor style of poker and its possible to start mimicking their poor play. Justifying it by saying “they’re playing bad, I might as well too”. In reality it’s not beneficial to you. A free online poker tournament requires no cost to you with a chance to win real money. Its great if you want to learn the basics of a poker game. However they have large amounts of entries with a small portion of players getting paid. Your time is better spent playing small real money tournaments with BIG PAYOUTS. At the very worst your poker skills could slide down hill. A free online poker tournament has both pro’s and con’s that need consideration. Decide what’s best for YOU. Good luck! |
