As an avid poker lover and one with limited funds for this indulgence, I generally rely on freerolls to get my weekly dose of poker. Both on Indian as well as International sites, my poker game survives mostly on poker freerolls. It all started in April 2012 when I won an iphone4 on Adda52.com through a freeroll and thus I set out on a journey to explore the free world of poker. Freeroll poker has ever since become a means for survival for me. The end to my poker appetite.
Playing poker freerolls for me is a three step process. First is getting your hand on a freeroll ticket. Now getting entry to freerolls isn’t exactly as easy as anyone thinks. From keeping your eyes open to the otherwise spam email from Pokerstars and 888 to the twitter competitions run by even the funniest sounding poker websites. From posting in poker forums to leaving your poker usernames at all possible poker portals. I have tried it all out. The results have been mixed. My poker freeroll scorecard boasts of satellites for TCOOP and even mains for the turbo championship at PokerStars, Poker Snowie tutorial subscription, Seat to the Hot $109, SnowWhite Freerolls on 888 poker, PCA Last Longer and PS Women’s School freebies and Loyalty Finals at Adda52.. They are simply called poker freerolls, but they really aren’t freerolls. They come after a decent amount of labour. Sometimes coining a wacky phrase, sometimes following tens of odd websites, tweeting crazy one liners and captioning cheesy looking photographs, winning a poker freeroll is definitely not an easy task.
Well, winning a ticket to a freeroll is one thing and playing which is Step 2 is another. While Indian poker sites time their freerolls with some decency; it is the international poker rooms that have no regard to the sleeping Indian. All freeroll tickets that I have won have to be redeemed at tourneys post 2 AM. They don’t call poker play ‘grinding’ for nothing.
Now getting to play is simply sacrificing your sleep but winning which is the final step is like striking gold. There are huge playing fields of more than 10000 poker players who have either out-captioned others or over-tweeted to win this freeroll ticket. How does one play through this huge a field in a sleep deprived state is a million dollar question? The best I have ever done is surviving till a tenth of the field was left. Winning is still a distant poker dream since the iphone4 happened more than 2 years back.
To test these murky waters of freerolls, OPN also organised its first OPN freeroll which involved completing a phrase. Thanks to Adda52.com who helped us put it up on their website. Lots of people did win, after all it was a freebie. But the poker freeroll appetite isn’t satiated as of now and poker will go on. The goal here is to win a Sunday Million ticket through these freerolls and then an entry to the Red Dragon is the ultimate destination. Till then, freeroll hunting will go on!