What Freerolls Are in Poker and How to Play Them

To get to know poker, you don't have to make a deposit. You can take your first steps in the game for free. If you're just getting acquainted with the game, start by studying the rules of poker for beginners. We'll discuss what freerolls are and how to win them. We'll look at the poker rooms with the most interesting free tournaments.

What is a freeroll

A freeroll is a free poker tournament with cash prizes.

To take part in a free tournament, all you need is to register an account on the platform — no deposit required.

Freeroll participants not only gain experience playing against real opponents, but also win their first money. Many online poker rooms organize free tournaments. For example, GG runs freerolls with a $100,000 guarantee. Such large prize pools are the exception to the rule: free tournaments usually award modest sums.

A freeroll is one of the few ways to start a poker career from scratch. Earlier, beginners could start with a no-deposit bonus. In the early days of the industry, both rooms and poker schools handed out free money. By 2025, few no-deposit bonuses remain in online poker.  One of them is offered by the "FunFarm Start" program. It lets you receive $50 of starting bankroll for completing the theoretical part of the course. The student can brush up on their knowledge and start a career from scratch thanks to the bonus from the school. 

Which top poker players started out in free tournaments

Free tournaments aren't exactly the optimal place to start a career. Spending several hours, overcoming the resistance of a thousand opponents, and getting $7-8 is a dubious prospect. However, several stars of modern poker went down this very path. Let's discuss them in more detail.

Viktor Malinovskiy. One of the best players in the world came to poker from professional sports. A knee injury was the turning point in the career of the promising handball player. While recovering, Viktor got acquainted with poker through freerolls. Later, Limitless made a name for himself in cash games, but he didn't forget about tournaments either. In 2018, Viktor won WCOOP-2018 and received $725,847. In 2024, Malinovskiy won a record tournament with a $200,000 buy-in on the Triton Series. First place paid $4,789,000.

Alexey Borovkov. He started his poker career with freerolls and Avr0ra. Full Tilt Poker tournaments helped him earn his first money. Now Alexey is considered one of the top cash game specialists. Avr0ra scored his biggest win in tournament poker in December 2023. He won GGMillion$ on GG. The reward for his success was $299,880.

Annette Obrestad. A star of online poker in the early 2000s. She registered an account on PokerStars at 15 and played free tournaments until she came of age. In 2007, Annette won the main event of the live festival World Series of Poker Europe and made history. To take a gold bracelet and £1,000,000 at 18 is an impressive achievement.  

Annette Obrestad is among the top-6 players from Norway by winnings

Other popular players also started out in free tournaments: David Peters, Eugene Timoshenko, Chris Ferguson.

Types of freerolls

Free tournaments can be divided into categories. One criterion is the rewards. Most poker rooms organize freerolls with cash prizes. A player takes part in the competition, finishes in the money, and gets paid. Some platforms award tickets to other tournaments. Such freerolls generate less interest. With a large reserve of luck, a free ticket can be turned into a pass to the brand's largest tournament. For example, PokerKing offers a chance to get into The Venom with a $5,000,000 guarantee from a freeroll.

More often, free tournaments are distinguished by the method of entry. Among them, we'll single out: open, password-protected, by invitation, with a condition, and VIP.

Open. Any player is allowed to participate. To get into the freeroll, all you need is to register an account. The prize pool rarely exceeds $50. 

Password-protected. A secret word serves as the pass into the tournament. It is entered in a pop-up window at the moment of registration. You need to look for passwords in the social media of the room, a player, or a poker resource. Passwords are hardly an effective means of protection against random players. They become publicly available long before the start of the competition. Closed freerolls award larger sums than open ones.

By invitation. They allow restricting access to random people. To get into the tournament, you initially need to register an account through a specific portal. There are no workarounds. We'll also put tournaments with tickets for a deposit in this category. When funding their account, the player is given several free passes.

With a condition. To take part in a freeroll, you need to meet a rake requirement or complete a daily mission. Sometimes players are sent to place a bet at a bookmaker or play slots. 

The prospect of winning money without risk attracts many

VIP. Most online poker rooms reward customers for loyalty. Holders of high statuses are rewarded with tickets to free tournaments. The best example of a freeroll is the quarterly $1,000,000 tournament for holders of Supernova Elite status. Until 2015, it was held on PokerStars. Now Winamax organizes free tournaments for VIP-status holders.

The largest free poker tournaments in history

Most modern freerolls combine modest prizes and a huge number of participants. Sometimes the industry's leading rooms allocate big money to free tournaments. Let's look at the largest freerolls in poker history.

• 4 PokerStars freerolls for $1,000,000. In 2016, nothing threatened PS's dominance and the room ran large-scale promotions. The free tournaments attracted so much attention that PokerStars had to set a limit on the number of participants. The winners of the freerolls were paid $10,000 each. To qualify for the prizes, a customer had to: play a hand for real money, place a sports bet, or play in the online casino.

• 3 partypoker tournaments for $100,000. In 2019, partypoker presented a new tournament schedule. To celebrate it, free tournaments with big prizes were organized. Only the first one was made open to all. Playing in tournaments with buy-ins from $5 served as the pass to the rest.

• GG freeroll for $100,000. In 2020, GG held a free tournament in honor of the birthday of its ambassador — Dan Bilzerian. A ticket to the freeroll was given for a deposit from $10. Since October 2025, GG has been organizing a regular $100,000 tournament. 

• Weekly freeroll from MTT Sports for 1 Bitcoin. Every week the experimental room holds a free tournament with a prize pool of 1 Bitcoin. At the time of writing, 1 Bitcoin is worth $112,000.

New online poker brands run larger freerolls

Good free tournaments are often organized by new rooms. That's why we recommend carefully tracking the schedules of newcomers to the industry.

How to win freerolls

What distinguishes a freeroll from a regular tournament is the level of opponents. If a player spent money on entry, they play more carefully. In free competitions, players risk nothing, so they act more loosely. Thrill-seekers play any combinations. The most fun ones go all-in every hand. To achieve success in a freeroll, you need to:

• Play carefully at the start. We enter the game with strong pocket pairs and top Broadway. We throw away marginal speculative hands to avoid getting into a tough spot postflop. At the start of a free tournament we'll see a lot of all-ins, so it's reasonable to narrow the opening range. There's no point in raising AJ or AQ from early position if 2-3 players behind us will push.

• Increase aggression as your stack shrinks. In the middle stage of the tournament we start to steal blinds and make min-raises more often. If you managed to build up a good stack in the early stage, apply pressure to opponents with fewer chips. Many opponents want to last until the money, so they'll put up minimal resistance.

• Play skillfully with a short stack. Success in tournaments is often determined by push/fold skill. Choose suitable spots to go all-in. Don't lose chips on calls and dubious postflop plays. If you play poorly with a short stack, then practice in software. The free ICM Trainer will teach the basic skills. For advanced players we recommend ICMIZER 3.

To increase your chances of success and speed up progress, play several tables at once. Hundreds of free tournaments take place every day — many run in parallel. Playing several tables at once will protect you from stupid decisions out of boredom. In a tournament, bad cards can be dealt 10-15-20 times in a row and many players deviate from the basic strategy. In most situations, entering the game with weak hands leads to losing pots and busting out. 

Push/fold is useful both in a free tournament and at the WSOP

Statistical software will give an additional edge over your opponents. The developers of every poker tracker provide a trial from 2 weeks to a month long. We recommend using Hand2Note or PokerTracker from your very first tournament. Basic statistics let you determine the opponent's type. As a result, you'll be able to come up with an effective strategy against them. If the opponent is passive — we bet with weaker combinations; if aggressive — we check more often with strong hands.

At a satellite's final table, be cautious. Beginners often don't change their strategy and lose a guaranteed ticket. Let's show with an example. Suppose a player got AA. They have the second stack, 3 opponents remain in play. Two of them have short stacks. Tickets are given to three. The chip leader applies pressure and goes all-in every hand. In a regular tournament you don't throw away AA preflop. In a satellite there's no point in accumulating chips — they won't give you a second ticket. Don't take the risk — fold the hand and wait for the short-stacked opponent to bust.

Where to play poker for free

In recent years, rooms have spent less on freerolls. As a result, the number of tournaments and the prizes have decreased. However, most online poker platforms still hold them. Let's discuss the poker rooms with freerolls.

GG. The world leader in number of players doesn't place a big emphasis on free tournaments. The platform's most notable freeroll is GGCare & GGCheers with a prize pool of $100,000. Tickets serve as the pass to it. They are given for bad-beat losses or spectacular wins. For example, you'll get a pass for busting out of a tournament with AA or winning a big pot with quad 2222. Recently another $100,000 freeroll was added to GG's schedule.

PokerStars. PokerStars went down in history thanks to its $1,000,000 free tournaments in 2016. Nine years later, the situation has changed: PS abandoned freerolls with cash prizes. Instead of them, they hold satellites to other tournaments.

WPT Global. The World Poker Tour platform offers an original approach. WPT Global has no regular free tournaments. However, the room periodically organizes freeroll festivals. 

In the fall of 2025, $2,000,000 was awarded in the WPT series

RedStar Poker. The iPoker network also doesn't delight with a large number of freerolls. RSP mainly awards tickets to major events. The tournament schedule also has daily freerolls with prizes from €25 to €50.

PokerKing. The Winning Poker Network room combines free satellites and tournaments with modest guarantees. PokerKing runs several freerolls under Omaha rules. Free PLO tournaments are a rarity in online poker. Note that PokerKing has freerolls for the network's flagship — The Venom. 

888Poker. The British room was considered one of the best places for beginners for years. All thanks to a no-deposit bonus and a large number of freerolls. 888Poker hasn't abandoned free tournaments even now. The room organizes freerolls: 1) by passwords; 2) with entry for those who funded their account; 3) for VIP-status holders. There are also qualifiers for major events.

Pokerdom. It holds both publicly accessible and password-protected freerolls. The prize pool of most of them is 1,000-1,500 rubles. Pokerdom's schedule also has satellites to live festivals in Russia and neighboring countries.

Among the other rooms, we'll note VangPoker and Stake Poker. The first one's tournament schedule includes up to 40 freerolls per day. The second organizes 3-4 free tournaments per day with relatively high prizes. Stake pays the freeroll winner $50-$60.

FAQ

What is a freeroll?

A freeroll is a free tournament with real prizes. Winners receive either money or tickets to other tournaments.

Which poker stars started out in freerolls?

The following started in free tournaments: Viktor "Limitless" Malinovskiy, Alexey "Avr0ra" Borovkov, Annette Obrestad, David Peters, Eugene Timoshenko, and Chris Ferguson.

Who held the largest free tournament in history?

PokerStars organized the record freerolls in 2016. In 4 free tournaments, $1,000,000 each was awarded.

Why is it more profitable to play freerolls in new rooms?

To attract newcomers, online poker debutants run free tournaments with larger prizes. An additional advantage of small platforms is the modest number of players. It's easier to beat a hundred opponents than a thousand.