When Freerolls aren’t really Free
The concept of a freeroll poker tournament is always appealing at first. Simply sign up at a certain poker room, make a deposit, and Boom!!…You’re playing against others for what could possibly amount to thousands of dollars in cash or prize packages. But hold on a minute because it’s not always that cut and dried.
In fact, many of the freerolls that I see offered nowadays not only require you to make the traditional deposit but they also want you to earn a certain amount of points by playing in ring games or jump through some other hoop that they’ve set forth. Now I can definitely understand the deposit part of the deal since the whole reason poker rooms are putting up the money for the freerolls is to attract players to their room.
However, with the advent of having to earn so many points in ring games, I’m starting to really wonder how free these freerolls really are. I realize that these rooms want to keep people there and hopefully familiarize them with the room before they get in the freeroll. Plus, by making a deposit there, most people are already kind of making a commitment to playing at a room anyways (at least time-wise). But I personally think that the required deposit is plenty enough and sometimes certain freerolls don’t get advertised heavily until later on and by then it can be too late for earning the points required to compete in them.
I seriously doubt my complaints will have any sort of impact on how poker rooms handle their freerolls as they are probably making even more money this way than by just letting people make the deposit then play. But I won’t be letting many freerolls entice me to new poker rooms with the way that things are as of right now.