Poker Freeroll Update

It's official! Love-Texas-Holdem brings you confirmation of yet another poker freeroll for members. This time it's not $100, not $200 but a fantastic $250 prizepot for the winners.

The tournament is on Sunday, 23rd November at 5:00pm UK time. Sorry US players but this one isn't for you.

To access the freeroll, click the link below and download the software. Then sign up and click on the following tabs: Money Play > Hold'em > Multi-table then click the "Restricted" button.

More players required for the Love-Texas-Holdem members only freeroll tournament! So far the uptake has been a bit slow for the freeroll next Sunday but that's usual for this stage of a tournament. I expect a lot more of you to boost the numbers in the next couple of days, otherwise somebody will get an easy passage to the top prize.

3. Go to Tournaments > Scheduled > Regular and look for the Love Texas Holdem freeroll on 16th November

Remember if you're not a member yet you can get the free newsletter every week and enter all the tournaments like this one. Just go to Love Texas Holdem Home Page and leave your address.

Well there's all sorts of worn out sayings to cover this one but the news is that today we have ANOTHER members only freeroll tournament.

Note - This is very important. You can ONLY get access to the freeroll by clicking on the link below to go to the site. Then check your email for the password.

I've been trying to get a decent freeroll fixed up for members of Love Texas Holdem, but these last few months have been a bit difficult with everyone feeling the pinch.

LuckyAcePoker have come through for us with a fantastic $250 freeroll which will go ahead on 23rd November. Now if you want to take part (and why wouldn't you?) you NEED to sign up to Lucky Ace Poker by clicking the banner below. It's the ONLY way that you can get access to the tournament.

LuckyAcePoker is a great new emerging poker site and I'll have an information page up on the site next week to tell you all about it. In the meantime though, you need to download the poker software, sign up for an accout (it's fast and easy) and get ready for the freeroll.

I know you love your freerolls and this is probably the best chance you will get to win a good pot. To play in a $250 freeroll anywhere else would mean fierce competition against probably 500+ players, you have a much better chance with the Love Texas Holdem freeroll.

Good news for freeroll lovers - Tower Poker are extending their summer 24 poker freeroll binges. All day every day you can play in their absolutely no strings games and build yourself a nice bankroll. Admittedly the prize money won't see Phil Helmuth beating a path to play there any time soon but that's one less for you to worry about.

At Poker770 you can take part in ECOOP, a highly prestigious poker tournament with a guaranteed jackpot of $4,150,000! You also get to call yourself European Champion if you win!

Not only that, but for just $0.50 you can qualify to go to Belgium and win an amazing €2,000,000! (Check it yourself but that's a LOT of dollars).

And there's more...At Doyles Room are running $10K Guaranteed tournaments every Tuesday and Thursday nights that you can get into for just 99cents. These fantastic tourneys start on October 21st at 10pm EST, find them from the lobby at: Scheduled Tournaments > Special.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Poker Heaven has a great deal going where 5 lucky players get to play in the next 250K guaranteed tournament for free. The winner will pocket the top prize of over 50K.

If you've gone the extra mile and made a real money deposit at Poker4Ever, there's a great $5,000 PP freeroll at the end of the month to reward you for taking action. If you are still considering making a real monet deposit (maybe for the first time ever?) you could do a lot worse than put your money with P4E as you'll get the chance to play in their $500 New Depositors Freeroll on the 30th October. You can make a deposit any time up to this date.

Betfred's freerolls are worth a look and there is a special poker freeroll tournament coming up next Sunday, October 19th 2008 with a £500 prize fund paid in free bets on the site (that's about $1000 - see the internet for the latest exchange rate).

It's called the Champions League Free Bet Freeroll and the starting time is 16:00 BST, that's 9pm EST.

Now I don't normally promote casinos but I know that there's nothing you dear reader likes better than something for nothing. So I'm going to give you just exactly that. If you click the Betfred banner below and register you will get £5 absolutely free paid into your account (that's about $10).

There's no catch, Betfred just want you to sign up and play at their casino and they are willing to give you an incentive to do it. If you like what you see they have a 100% $600 Sign Up bonus operating which is among the best in the industry.

Betfred is one of the leading online Sports Betting sites. They offer £100 in Free Bets as well as various event promotions. If you are interested in sports betting at all it is your absolute DUTY to compare prices and see where you can get the best value. So add Betfred to your list of places to check - you may be pleasantly surprised.

If you've been out of the country on a desert island for the last few weeks you might not have noticed the Million Dollar Men freeroll series that's going on over at Poker Stars. There's still time for you to scrape in before the cutoff on October 17 so get yourself over and stake your claim for a share of an amazing $360,000 worth of cash prizes.

Go there right NOW and register, this is the best deal you will get anywhere. The sponsors have added a massive $300 to the prize pot, so not only is the prize pool starting at $300, every player who registers adds another $1 to the prize.

Forget freerolls for a night and splash out a whole buck to win a potential $150_ first prize!

For those of you who wanted a low money buy-in tournament, I've got a private game coming up on Sunday and it's a corker!

Now there is still a good deal of resistance to paying any money to play poker from a lot of people, so I would expect the entry numbers for this tournament to be lower than, say, a $100 freeroll.

So there is a great chance that you can turn your $1.10 into a nice little earner, low player numbers and a great prize - the perfect combination!

The interface is very easy to use, I made a minimum deposit of $25 using Neteller and it was very smooth and easy. It only took a few minutes to create my account and make the deposit.

And remember as I always say about real money deposits - the money is still yours to do what you want with. You can play a few more tournaments to test yourself against better players than you'll find in the freerolls, or you can play a LOT of low buy-in tournaments with a great chance of building up your bank.

You'll find the tournament in the lobby when you download the software, just go to Tournaments>Private and you'll see the Love-Texas-Holdem game lined up for Sunday 28th September.

Note that you won't be able to register right away, registration is due to begin in 3 hours before the start of the tournament. I'll send a reminder on Sunday so you'll have no excuse for missing the action!

Sometimes when I'm looking for a good site to play poker at, I turn to the people I consider to be some of the most in-the-know - that's you! I look at my stats to see what sites you have been impressed enough with to sign up with and especially what ones you felt were worth opening real money accounts at.

You see it's one thing joining up with a poker site that's offering some nice freerols, but it's another thing entirely to invest your own cash into the deal and try a few real money games so I'm always impressed by the response Carbon Poker gets from you. Every time I feature it more players sign up for a real money account and move up into where the real value in online poker is at.

OK freerolls are a great way for beginners to get used to the tables and how to bet, but it's never going to be "real" poker if you're not risking anything to play. In essence poker is a gambling game, one of great skill of course, but a gambling game at heart and you can never gamble properly and feel the real excitement of poker unless you have something to lose.

That said, Carbon Poker does have some great freerolls too - new player freerolls for those who just joined the site, regular four-hourly $50 games for everyone and big money "bonus" freerolls for real money players who accumulate comp points.

So whether you are a committed freeroller or you would like the chance to take your game to the next level check out Carbon Poker - as recommended by the readers of this newsletter!

Often during the past three years that this newsletter has been running, I have given you information about freerolls that have some sort of qualification requirement. Now a lot of the time the qualification is very easy to achieve, for example just setting up a real money account and making the minimum deposit, and so I feel it is OK to bring you games such as these.

However, there are other types of freeroll being touted around that are in no way free and that have some fairly stringent entry requirements and I feel that it is in your best interests that you know what is required in order to qualify for some of these freeroll tournaments.

Take for example the freerolls on offer at Tower Poker. Now this site isn’t available to US players so a lot of you won’t be interested in it anyway, but it provides an example of the kind of thing you need to look out for.

Tower Poker has a series of freerolls running called the Tower of Freerolls. There are four different levels to play at, with prize money rising as you go up the levels. At the bottom is the $500 freeroll which you can qualify for if you earn 100 player points.

Sounds good – until you learn what you need to do to get to 100 PPs. The player points are awarded for real money games and are awarded for both ring games and sit ‘n go tournaments. For ring games the points are 1 point per dollar raked, but only if you contribute to the pot. So for example if the rake is $1.50 - $1.59, you get 1.5 points.

For tournaments the player points accrue at a rate of 5 for every dollar paid in Real Money entry fees, note that this is NOT the money you pay to the pot but the fee paid to the house. So if the entry is $10 + 1, you make your points on the $1 fee and not the $10 that goes to the prize pot.

So – in order for you to qualify to play in the lowest value Tower player points freeroll, you need to get $100 in tournament entry fees, that means $1100 total outlay in sit ‘n go tournaments. This is a bit rich for most freeroll players and should be considered as a bonus if you are a real money player rather than something to aim for if you concentrate on the freerolls.

The Tower poker site offers some tips for earning these player points which may be of interest, the best of these are probably to go for tables with a high flop percentage or tables with a higher average pot, stick to no limit games and be tight and disciplined.

So the verdict on Tower of freerolls is approach with caution, you now know what’s needed to get to even the first level of freeroll tournament. There are other smaller games you might be interested in at Tower Poker that you can play without all of the stringent entry qualifications.

If you’re interested in that other form of online gambling – casinos – then Doyle’s Room might have something that’s of interest to you. For a limited time Doyle’s is offering entry to a freeroll just for signing up to their casino:

Hollywood Poker has a nice event for new players at the site called the Red Carpet Welcome Freeroll. This is a weekly $100 tournament that is just for new players only and gives you a chance of playing against other new players, with the idea being playing people of the same ability. Obviously this isn't always going to work as there will be novice poker players as well as players who are more experienced but just new to the site.

Each new player gets 4 tickets to the freerolls when they make a deposit at Hollywood Poker. The freerolls are run at alternating times so that everybody gets a chance, 8pm EST one week and 8pm GMT the next.

There are also 11 daily freerolls at Hollywood where you can win your way through a series of games to a $1000 freeroll. It's a bit of a long winded way round but at least it's fre and there are plenty of chances to keep trying if you don't win the first time.

I'm still looking for the best deal for you for the buy-in tournament (details below), please sign up in the form if you haven't done it yet!

Hello everybody, it's good to be back! OK I'm a little bit later than I planned to be but there was this hurricane in Florida (apparently happens quite a lot :-) ) and it held our flights up a bit.

Anyway back from the sunshine (and rain) and no more all-you-can-eat buffets for another year, to the serious business of poker.

Last time I asked you all if you'd be interested in playing a $1 buy-in game which I was going to set up as an experiment to see what kind of response I got. It seems there are quite a few of you that are very interested in this so it looks like it's going to go ahead very soon.

There's still time to add your name on the form below if you are interested (note that there's no commitment by doing so, it's purely so I know how big a game we've got - the bigger the more prize money I can ask for!).

See the post below dated 27th July for full details, and remember that the more names I get, the more prize money you get!

Poker Host has a good $100 freeroll every day at 8pm EST. The top 10 players get paid out and there are no requirements to play whatsoever.

There's an unusual twist to these freerolls as you can play 25 Regular Raked Hands within the previous 24 hours before the tournament to earn yourself 750 extra starting chips.

Remember to let me know if you are interested in the Love Texas Holdem $200 poker games I told you abou last week (see details below). Fill in your name in the form below to let me know you're in!

I'm taking a week off next week so there will be no new Update. See you all in a fortnight!

If you've been a reader of the newsletter for any length of time, you might have noticed that I am becoming a bit disillusioned with poker freerolls. Since the USA legislation kicked in, most of the big prize games have been lost and now there are people playing for their share of a $10 pot at some sites.

Low buy-in tournaments where you can get in for $1 or less are replacing the big money freerolls of a couple of years ago. A 1000 player game therefore has a pot of at least $1000, with the poker site running the game usually throwing in a couple of hundred in "added" prize money.

Now this is what I'm leading up to. I want to stage an "added" money game where I will put in the money. It would be a minimum of $100 but hopefully at least $200, the money I put in would be entirely dependant on how many players were interested in taking part.

The conditions would be that the entrance fee would be around $1, therefore you would need to sign up and make the minimum deposit to the site where the game was being played.

So the question is are you interested in playing? You don't need to commit to anything right now but if you would be interested in principal, just leave your name and email address in the form below.

Everest Poker has long been one of the biggest poker sites on the internet and now they have a freeroll to match!

Their $2,500 Bankroll Builder Freeroll is a special promotion which is just perfect for beginners who want a way to build their bankroll fast.

You can qualify for the $2,500 weekly final by entering one of the two daily qualifiers below or by entering the final directly.

Beginners Only Daily: Open to new poker players who have been at Everest Poker for three months or less. These satellites are absolutely free to enter and the top 50 players qualify for the final.

Regular Daily: Open to everyone at Everest with a buy-in of 0+50 SP. The top 25 players from each daily satellite qualify for the final.

Doyle's Room is a poker site which over the years has been a bit neglected by this newsletter. Sorry Doyle! The site is the vehicle for one of poker's most enduring and best loved champions - Doyle Brunson.

Of interest to most readers here is the fact that Doyle's Room has some excellent freerolls, both in value and variety of game.

The tournament page at Doyles has full details, but to save you the bother of trawling through and picking out the freerolls, I've done it for you to show what's on offer:

$200 Freeroll (5 Card Draw)
$200 Freeroll (7 Card Stud)
$200 Freeroll (Holdem)
$200 Freeroll (Omaha)
$500 Freeroll (Holdem)
I-PokerIT.com Freeroll (Holdem)
POKERGOB $100 FREEROLL (Holdem)
PokerPeople $25 Anniversary Freeroll (Holdem)
QuickDraw FreeRoll (Holdem)
Precious Metals Freeroll (Holdem)
PokerPeople $25 Anniversary Freeroll (Omaha High/Low)

In addition, there is the "First Depositor Freeroll" series of freeroll poker games.

As the name says, these are for real money players who make their first deposits. Most big sites have similar offers but this is a terrific opportunity to take part in no less than EIGHT consecutive $1,000 invite-only freerolls. These are twice a week events so you can enter for a whole month for your initial $30 deposit.

For the month of July, Absolute Poker are running a great series of poker freerolls for their real money depositors. Every day during the month of July Absolute are running a bumper $500 freeroll. On the last day of July, Thursday the 31st, there is a fabulous final freeroll with a prize pool of $5000.

The first way to get to play in the Absolute Poker $5000 freeroll final is to simply deposit $100 as a NEW player to Absolute Poker. If you are a new player, please click on the banner below right now and sign up for your account. Note you don't need to make a deposit right now if you don't want to, you can do that later if you decide to.

If you are already a player at Absolute, the other way to qualify is to finish in the Top 10 of any of the $500 daily freerolls. To qualify for the daily $500 freerolls you also need to make a $100 deposit to your account.

Now sometimes people complain to me that these tournaments aren't really freerolls in the strict sense of the word as there is money involved, I disagree. The way I see it is that you deposit $100 and you get to play - for free. You don't need an entry fee for the freeroll (that's why they call it a freeroll!).

You can then withdraw your $100 from your account any time you like, or use it to play some of the great low buy-in tournaments at Absolute. So you play $500 freerolls and it doesn't cost you a penny - it's free!

You can get to the July games by looking in the FREEROLLS and SPECIALS tabs in the AP card room lobby.

Tower Poker is a thriving online poker site with regular freerolls throughout the day. During sping and summer Tower have upped their game and now feature even more freerolls, with some of the best clearing ratios around.

If you've never won a freeroll you might be wondering what I mean by the term "clearing ratios". Well they say there's no such thing as a free lunch and it's as true with freerolls as it is anywhere else. If you win money on a freeroll they don't just give it to you, you need to earn it! The money clears at a rate proportional to the number of raked hands you play, so for example you might clear $1 dollar for every $10 that you play in raked hands.

Summer Bonus Freeroll Mania The chance to win more than $16,000 a month in Bonus Prize Freerolls - $15 and $20 Bonus Freerolls are running every hour of every day.

Tower of Freerolls Each month Tower are giving away $5,000 in prize money for 4 Texas Holdem Poker Freeroll Tournaments.

$25 Door Crasher Freeroll You can swap 25 Poker Points for your ticket for a chance at one of these $25, flat-payout freerolls.

$10 Freeroll At 7:30 pm EST, the $10 Freebie Freerolls are open to everybody.

Full Tilt Poker is still one of the market leaders in poker world and has freerolls every hour. There's a good bit of variety in the freeroll tournaments, as well as No-Limits Texas Holdem they have Limit Texas Holdem, HORSE, Razz, Omaha and Turbo Hold'em.

The prizes are normally a reasonable $100 and there are plenty of places available in the freerolls.

Poker Host has proved itself to be one of the most popular poker freeroll sites features on these pages. Every time I have written about PokerHost there's been a lot of interest and a good few new people signing up for an account.

The reasons are simple. It's a very good site and they have good freerolls. What more could you ask for!

The Doughflow Poker Freerolls are a way of working your way up to a weekly $1,000 Prize Pool game. You can enter Doughflow daily freerolls every day between Sunday and Friday. The 100 top winners in the daily games qualify for the weekly Doughflow final where the $1,000 prize pool is shared between the top 120 finishers.

Check out the Doughflow daily freerolls in the poker client, look under Scheduled Tournaments > Freeroll.

I've saved the best till last! The Friday game is a $500 freeroll with no restrictions at all, you don't need to have played a single raked hand in order to qualify for the Friday freeroll poker tournament. To qualify, all you need to do is sign up for a free account then register for the freeroll.

Note that the normal freeroll restrictions apply for withdrawing any winnings you might get from these tournaments but I'm sure you can cross that bridge when you come to it!

If you make a minimum deposit of $50 you will be AUTOMATICALLY entered for PokerHost's great $500 New Depositor game. You don't need to actually spend any of the money you've deposited in order to play in the freeroll, all you need to do is make the deposit. You can even just remove the money if you want, it's up to you. You can find the First Depositor freerolls listed under Scheduled Tournaments > Freeroll.

Note that this DOESN'T mean that you need to make a deposit. All you need to do is to give them your name, address and email and choose a passord and user name.

It's very easy to do, just Click Here then download the software. When you open up the poker client just look for Tournaments and then Freerolls.

The game play is actually very good, one of the best sites I've played on. All the information is clear and well presented and the thing I like is that it looks like a poker table rather (a bit like PokerRoom). All in all definitely worth a visit.

Freeroll News 1st June 2008:

Tower Poker is a site that has been growing in stature recently and now has a very nice feel to it along with a very healthy number of players at the tables. They also have a range of poker freeroll tournaments on offer, but the prizes on offer tend to be on the low side or require some kind of qualification.

Much better in my opinion is to invest just ONE DOLLAR (+$0.10) in the Tower Poker Turbo No-Limit games. I played one last night and there were 1201 players in for a very good prize pot of $1200+.

Now I don't know about you, but I feel that four hours of my time is much better spent with the possibility of a share of $1200, rather than a share of $20 or $25. And I'm certainly not alone, since the ban on US players took effect the freeroll market has been decimated and it's been really hard to try and get a decent freeroll game anywhere.

Now more and more online poker players are deciding it's worth a very small investment of their money to again play in a multi-table tournament that's actually worth playing in.

So if that rings true with you at all, I would recommend giving the Turbo No-Limit tournaments at Tower a go, after all what's the worst that can happen - you lose a dollar!

By the way just as an aside, if you have a hard drive full of poker clients and can't face downloading another one, there's good news on that front too. You can play Tower Poker "live" online in Java without the need to download the full program.

Click here to play the Turbos and freerolls at Tower Poker

Freeroll News 25th May 2008:

The Billionth hand is always a very special occasion for an online poker room (I wonder if any offline casinos have ever got close to having played a billion hands!) and at Bet365 they are celebrating the upcoming event.

To help them spread the cheer they are holding a series of events, including their "Bubble Hands Freeroll". All the players who take part in hands 999,999,901 thru' 1,000,000,000 (that's a total of 100 hands) will be eligible to play in the $10,000 pot freeroll and at least 20% of the participants will get a share of the prize money.

Not only that, but there is an extra $2,500 bounty available to the player in the freeroll who takes out the winner of the billionth hand.

There are a lot more payouts leading up to the event, as of yesterday they had paid out over $36,000 on billionth hand events, so it is one to really keep an eye on for a while at least. Maybe you could change over to Bet365 for your regular poker game online - at least until the billionth hand has been won.

Click here for more details of the billionth hand promotion at Bet365.

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If you are a player at Poker Room, you probably will have received a free ticket to the VIP Race Trophy tournament. Top prize for this is a fantastic trip to Brno for the semi-final of the Race Trophy - all expenses paid.

If you don't have an account yet, I strongly suggest you Click Here and join up at the site, Brno could be just around the corner for you!

Freeroll News 18th May 2008:

Sometimes poker players just baffle me. Or should I say, sometimes freeroll poker players baffle me. Some of the things they do just defy logic, I'll give you an example.

Today I played a freeroll at Full Tilt Poker.

There were 2666 players registered to play out of a maximum of 2700 so it was all but full. That in itself isn't all that remarkable, there are freerolls with more players than that registered.

No, the thing that floored me was the prizes on offer. Or should I say prize. That's right, there was only ONE prize between 2666 players. And the prize? A DVD!

So 2666 poker players were prepared to sit and play for upwards of four hours for the chance of winning a poker DVD - value less than £20. Now don't get me wrong Full Tilt Poker is a great place to play poker and I don't have a problem with it at all. What I do have a bit of a problem with though is people willing to waste their time like this.

Look, the bottom line in poker is money. It is that simple. We all enjoy playing poker but we all want to see our bank balance heading north at the end of each game. Freerolls represent a good opportunity to increase your balance, but ONLY if you have little or no money to spare.

If you seriously cannot afford to risk ANY money of your own at all, then poker freerolls are the way to go. You get to play competitive poker and you get the chance to win some money. On the face of it, the best of both worlds.

But let's get real for a moment. Who in their right mind would play a freeroll where the only prize is a single DVD? You are WORTH MORE! Your time is more valuable than that so here's what I would suggest you do:

Option 1.
Play better freerolls. There are loads of poker freerolls around, choose one with a smaller field of competitors and also a better range of prizes. There are still some good freerolls out there so shop around and find a good one.

You can check out a list of freerolls on Love-Texas-Holdem's freeroll timetable page.

Option 2.
Play real money tables. For me this is by far the better way to go. Even a minimum deposit on one of the larger poker sites opens up a whole new world of possibilities. If you don't want to risk a lot of your money then there are $0.10 and $0.25 tournaments available.

The difference is that 2000 players in a $0.25 tournament adds up to a prize pot of $500! And believe me the standard of poker play at that level isn't any better than the freerolls so you should be in with a good chance of getting amongst the prizes if you stick to the basics.

One of the best, and the biggest sites online to play poker at is Poker Stars. The minimum deposit is only $25, easily affordable to most people. That's nearly 100 $0.25 tournament buy-ins! (after site fees). And you can choose the size of tournament you want to play in, anything from heads-up 2 player games upwards.

Click here to find out more about real money games at Poker Stars

P.S. I didn't hang around long in the DVD freeroll, I just stayed for about 15 minutes to get the feel for what it was like. But I kept an eye on the tournament for a while and after an hour there were less than 300 players left. Not a great standard.

Freeroll News 11th May 2008:

If you haven't been to Betfair yet, you've missed out on a real treat! Betfair is the UK's biggest betting exchange, where people bet against each other rather than against a bookmaker. People are making SERIOUS money off this site due to the fact that you can bet against an event happening as well as for it.

Without getting into too much detail here, say for example you bet a team on Betfair at even money NOT to win. Now all you need to do is get a price of better than even money for them to win and you will have guaranteed that you will get a return no matter what the outcome of the event is.

There is also the opportunity to use "hedging" tactics like the stock market where you bet on an event at a high price and close out your position by betting against it when the price drops. This is typically available for live sports events where the expected outcome is changing by the minute as the game is unfolding.

Betfair also do poker, and one account lets you into both the poker and betting sections of the site. And the good news is that there are a lot of freerolls for you to get stuck into.

Here's the details of some of the freerolls:

The $1,000 Weekly Welcome Freeroll is open to all new customers, takes place Every Saturday. Prize pot made up of a $550 value WSOPE Qualifier seat for first place and a $500 prize pool shared between the next 29 players.

The Daily freeroll for a place in the Weekly $100,000 guaranteed tournament takes place three times a day. The winner gets a pass to the $100K game worth $550 while the 4th to 9th places get a share of $200.

On Tuesdays there's a chance to win a place in the $30,000 guaranteed Imper1um Special tournament worth $420.

On Fridays there's a chance to win a place in the $20,000 guaranteed Annette tournament worth $212.

Each day you can win a place in the $16,000 guaranteed tournament worth $109. The $16K tourney runs on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays,
Saturdays and Sundays. If you win a place you will be entered for the next final.

Click here to get all the gen at Betfair

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Did You Know?

There's a simple way that you can calculate the odds of winning a hand. Now this method is quick and rough but is fairly accurate and is more than adequate for most players.

All you need to do is work out how many outs you have and your odds of winning are -

Percentage chance of winning = Outs x 2 + 2

To take a simple example, if you are chasing a straight and need a King, you only have 4 Outs - the 4 kings. So your chances of winning the hand are:

4 x 2 + 2 = 10%

This assumes of course that your straight will win the hand but you should be able to tell from the communal cards whether you can be beaten or not.

Freeroll News 4th May 2008:

Players Only Poker are running a great series of $100,000 freerolls, the latest one of which takes place on 31st May 2008.

Now to be honest, when I feature a big freeroll poker competition like this in the newsletter there is usually a bit of a catch of some sort. Let's face it, the poker room running the game has to make money so sometimes they require you to have deposited something before they let you play in these freerolls. Or sometimes there is a restriction to players from certain countries, like the US, which means they can't take part.

Well the good news is you can go straight into the qualifiers for this monster of a tournament and try to win a place to the final itself. There are two qualifying freerolls a day to the tourney and the top 10 finishers in each move forward to the grand final itself. As well as these freerolls, there are a few other ways you can make it to the final on May 31st:-

Gold Chip Qualifier: There's a qualifier where you need 10 Gold Chips to buy-in every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. The top 20 from each of these go on to the final.

Direct Buy-In: You can buy straight into the final for $50. Not too shabby for a straight shot at a $75K top prize.

Satellite Qualifier (Cash Buy-In): Buy in to these qualifiers Every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday from as little as $2.00. One seat to the final gets awarded for every $50 in buy-ins.

Deposit Bonus Seat Lottery: If you deposit a minimum of $100 using the code you will be entered into a lottery where 25 names get selected at random and get a final seat.

The prize money in the final of the Players Only Poker $100,000 tournament has an unusual split, being heavily weighted in favor of the winner who takes home a massive $75,000. The runner up gets $10K and the smaller prizes cascade down from there.

What it does mean of course is the most high-pressure heads up game ever in a freeroll! Imagine for a minute you're lucky enough to get down to the last two in the final, you are now effectively playing a game of heads-up poker for $65,000 - which is the difference between winning and losing.

Can you handle the pressure? I'm sure you don't know for certain but I'm just as sure you'd love to find out!

The next qualifier takes place in just over 10 hours at 7:15 EST 12:15 UK time.

P.S. Don't worry if you can't make this one, there's another next month on Saturday, June 28th.

Click Here to Register for the $100,000 freeroll at Players Only Poker

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The Spanish Football Freerolls

Poker Room lost it's American market due to the change in regulations but for those of you who can still play there, there are running a great freeroll to win a trip to see the famous Real Madrid. First prize is an all-expenses paid weekend trip to Madrid, climaxing with a visit to the Bernabeu Stadium to watch the match.

There is a nice list of consolation cash prizes from second place all the way down to number 860, just about the most prizes I've seen in a freeroll.

The tournament takes place on May 13, 19:00 CET

Click Here to play freerolls at Poker Room

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Intertops have a $1000 freeroll to celebrate their new table design. Why not pop over and take a look and while you're there, register for the $1000 freeroll.

Freeroll News 27th April 2008:

Poker Stars has a great series of free-to-enter qualifiers where you can win a $12,5000 package to the WSOP in Vegas, every day until June 27, 2008

The entry numbers are huge as you'd expect from the biggest poker room on the internet but the freerolls run every hour so there's always another one coming right along.

Best of all these freerolls are open to all players and there are no strings attached.

Click here for the WSOP freerolls at Poker Stars.

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NoPayPOKER has a massive $50,000 freeroll tournament coming up on April 30th. Caution - you will need an account and $50 FreeD NoPayPOKER points to get a ticket but that's relatively easy to do and well worth it for such a great freeroll.

If you don't have an account yet, Click Here to get one. Once you have signed up and collected your $50 in FreeD you will be issued with a ticket for the big game.

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If you have a real money account at PokerRoom.com make sure you check it! I just got a free ticket to their VIP Race Trophy poker tournament where the first prize is an amazing all-expenses trip to the Race Trophy tournament semi-final in Spain.

Even better, the first prize in Spain is a seat at the Race Trophy final table itself, which is a short handed 6 player event where the 6 will share a guaranteed $500,000.

So Click Here an make sure you check your PokerRoom.com account now!

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A reminder about Poker Host, if you register and deposit a minimum of $50 you can play in their exclusive first depositors $500 Freeroll.

It's a decent pot and as I always say the $50 you pay in stays yours to do what you want with.

Freeroll News 20th April 2008:

It's freerolls galore at LuckyAce Poker!

There are several $50 and $100 freeroll tournaments taking place every day of the week. Not only that, but by signing up and making a minimum deposit, you are entitled to play their excellent $500 freeroll games for a whole week.

That's seven full days of $500 freerolls for you to play with a combined prize pot of a very tasty $3500.

And there's more!

If only 25 of the players sign up for a REAL money account at Lucky Ace, I have negotiated a members exclusive $500 freeroll just for subscribers to the newsletter. You will get a very attractive instant 100% bonus, up to $400, for making the first deposit.

Click Here to get over now to LuckyAce Poker!

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If you are a registered player at Tower Poker, there's some great news for you this month! Due to a technical problem Tower customers lost contact with the site for a 12 hour spell on 17th April and to make up for this, TowerPoker have raised the prize pool for their monthly freeroll from $5000 to a fantastic $20,000.

The competition is called "Tower of Freerolls" and it takes place every month on the site.

By the way any players who have lost money due to the lost connection will be refunded in full.

Not yet registered for Tower Poker? Click here to get a piece of the action!

Freeroll News 13th April 2008:

This week for a change I won't be promoting any poker sites in the newsletter, there is already LOADS of poker freeroll information on this page so it will give you a chance for a final recap before I take it down next week!

Instead, I'm going to concentrate on how you can improve your chances of WINNING at the freerolls. After all there's not much point in playing for hours on end with no prospect of a profit at the end.

So firstly, let's talk about making more money by LOSING LESS. Now this might seem like a silly over-simplification but let me tell you what I mean. There are a few simple steps that you can take when playing in the freerolls that will greatly increase your chances of taking down a prize, and most of them involve losing less.

By adopting a more defensive attitude, you will hold on to more of what you have and stay in the games for longer.

So, what you should do could be summarized in these "rules":

1. Play fewer hands
By only playing premium starting hands you stop money dribbling out of your stack. Many little calls add up to you losing a lot of money and finding yourself with a short stack.

2. Stay out of the small pots
Following on from the first "rule", you should stay out of the early small pots as much as possible. There's an old adage that these give you a chance to win a little or lose a lot, and like most old sayings there's a strong element of truth in it.

3. Don't go all-in unless it's absolutely necessary
When you go all-in it is do or die. Survive the hand or you are ut of the game altogether, no second chances. You should only use all-in as a deterrent if you know your opponent will fold, or if you are absolutely sure that you have the best hand.

4. Don't feel you MUST defend your blinds
Look, we all hate putting up blinds and not even getting a run for our money, but if the pot has had a raise and a couple of callers, and you've got 4 7 offsuit, walk away!

Remember that the longer you stay in the game the more chance you will have of winning money. Statistically you will always get premium starting hands dealt to you in a tournament, when you do bet them aggressively and take down the pot. The longer you survive the more top hands you'll get.

It's your number one job to make your freeroll worth your while playing so STAY ALIVE!

Freeroll News 6th April 2008:

As part of 32Red Poker's month of freerolls and special tournaments, there's a $1000 freeroll which you can register for right now. It's on the 32RedPoker poker client under the Scheduled Tournaments tab.

The game takes place in 9 days on the 15th of April at 21:00 and there are NO entry requirements.

As well as these specials, 32 Red Poker have some great regular freerolls going on too throughout the year. The best of these is a $500 freeroll tournament on a Friday, as well as their massive $5,000 Monthly Freeroll.

At the moment for a limited time, there's a $500 Welcome Bonus for players depositing real money. Making your first cash deposit also gets you entry to the exclusive 32Red New Player Freeroll, which has a bumper prize pool of $2,000.

Click here to go straight to 32RedPoker

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PokerNordica has some huge freerolls you might be interested in.

Each Sunday except the last Sunday of the month, there's a $10,000 freeroll open to all players who have earned 2500 comp points in the previous week.

On the last Sunday, the stakes are raised and the prize pool goes up to a fantastic $50,000. You need to have reached 5000 comp points to qualify for this one.

I know this kind of freeroll isn't everyone's cup of tea due to the entry requirements, but it is a lot of money to pay out so there needs to be some sort of balance and therefore it is only available to real money players. In other words, they need to get their money back somehow!

One unusual feature of the Poker Nordica client is that they have incorporated a Deal It Twice feature. This has become popular on some TV poker shows and features in the high stakes games. It gives two players who are all-in - and who both agree to use it - the chance to deal the turn and river cards twice.

If you haven't seen Deal-It -Twice in action why not take a look a PokerNordica and find out what it's al about.

Click here for the freeroll and Deal-It -Twice action at Poker Nordica

Poker Freeroll Update Archives

March 2008's back-issues of Poker Freeroll Update Newsletter have been moved to the archive vault of Love-Texas-Holdem.com. However you can still access all of them with just a click, using the links below.

March saw a wide variety of top freeroll info and also included the first part of our course on how to win the low value tournaments at Poker Stars.

Our archived newsletters are still there for every single month all the way back to September 2005. They contain loads of great freeroll information. Check the listings below to find particular poker sites you are interested in - or simply just browse through them.

You can still access all the previous back issue information using the links below:

March 2008: 32Red Poker, WSOP 2008:- Hollywood Poker / Poker Room / Poker4Ever, Unibet, Carbon Poker, Poker Time, Winning at Poker Stars
February 2008: Poker4ever, Poker Host, Omaha Hi freeroll at Poker Stars, Simple Freeroll System Part 1, VC Poker, Carbon Poker
January 2008: Pitbull Poker, Mansion Poker, Hollywood Poker, Poker4ever, Love-Texas-Holdem private members-only freeroll, Cake Poker, Poker Host, Poker Stars
December 2007: Carbon Poker, Betfred, Battlefield Poker, Poker Room, Wingows Poker, Poker Host, VC Poker, Intertops, Love-Texas-Holdem private freeroll, No Pay Poker, Absolute Poker
November 2007: Poker4ever, Poker Heaven, Ladbrokes new player freeroll, Roxy Poker, Sportsbook.com, member's success story, Pitbull Poker
October 2007: Carbon Poker, The Poker Players Alliance, 5000 Euro freeroll, Poker Host, Poker Stars, Poker Nordica, Sportsbook.com Poker
September 2007: Newsletter Survey, Ladbrokes Poker, Fair Poker, Poker Heaven, Tower Gaming, Poker Host, Bugsy's Club Poker, VC Poker
August 2007: Full Tilt Poker, Tropical Poker, Carbon Poker, CanBet Poker, Bet365, Free Chip Trick guide
July 2007: Poker Share, List of the best poker sites featured, Bodog Poker, Vegas Poker 247, Absolute Poker, VC Poker, Carbon Poker, Full Tilt Poker
June 2007: Bugsy's Club, Absolute Poker, Bet US, VC Poker, Wingows, Poker Loco
May 2007: Intertops Poker, Players Only Poker, CD Poker, The3DPoker, Carbon Poker
April 2007: Tony G Poker, Poker Stars, Poker.com, Poker Time, Canbet, Sun Poker
March 2007: Love-Texas-Holdem.com Private Freeroll, Superior Poker, Pitbull Poker, GNUF Poker, 32Red Poker
February 2007: Action Poker, The Poker Club, UltimateBet, No Pay Poker
January 2007: UltimateBet, US Poker Players Hit Again!, Huge Bonuses from real-money games, Vegas Poker 247, Roxy Poker, Mansion Poker
December 2006: $5000 New Year's Freeroll, VIP Poker, Tower Poker, Sites where USA players can play poker, Poker Heaven
November 2006: Love-Texas-Holdem Private Freeroll, Poker.com, US Online Poker Legislation, US Online Poker Legislation Part 2, Live Poker
October 2006: Hollywood Poker, Bet Direct Poker, Full Tilt Poker, The Gaming Club , Poker Vida Loca
September 2006: Tropical Poker, Cake Poker, Poker Hour, Wingows Poker, Bugsy's Club, PokerSchool Online
August 2006: Victor Chandler Poker, Ultimate Bet, Royal Vegas Poker, PokerChamps
July 2006: 32Red Poker, CD Poker, Bet Fred Poker, Games Grid Poker, Bad Poker Sites
June 2006: Absolute Poker, Poker Ocean, College Poker, Royal Vegas Poker, Titan Poker
May 2006: 24hPoker, Hollywood Poker, Poker Heaven, 32Red Poker
April 2006: Absolute Poker, Mermaid Poker, Poker 333 and Canbet
March 2006: Ladbrokes, Noble Poker, Spin Palace Poker, Poker.com
February 2006: Planet Poker, Holdem Poker, Poker Heaven, Poker Champs
January 2006: Alamo Poker, Royal Vegas Poker, Purple Lounge, Noble Poker, 32Red Poker, Inter Poker, JetsetPoker
December 2005: Hollywood Poker, 32Red Poker, Canbet, Kiwi Poker, Multi Poker, Poker Room Lucky Dollar
November 2005: Caribbean Sun Poker / Sun Poker, BetFred, 7 Sultans Poker, Bet365
October 2005: Virgin Games, Inter Poker, 247Poker, 32Red Poker
September 2005: Fair Poker, Hollywood Poker, Poker.com, Everest Poker

The freeroll timetable has now been moved to a separate page to make it quicker to load. I've also split it up into time zones. You can get to it by clicking the link below.

Click here to go to the freeroll timetable

Poker Freeroll Update

November 9th 2008