"Project: Freeroll" - An Overview

As many of you know, Chris Ferguson undertook a challenge were he started his Full Tilt Poker bankroll at zero and built it up to $10,000. He started off playing only Full Tilt Poker freerolls (no private freerolls) and moved on to playing buy-in tournaments as he accumulated bankroll through freerolls.

Well, I'm not Chris Ferguson. I've tried to build my bankroll through playing freeroll tournaments first and then moving on to playing buy-in tournaments, but I've inevitably went broke and had to start over.

In my most recent cycle, I went broke approximately June 25, 2008 (well I went down to 88 cents and couldn't afford to buy-in to a SNG with that). Since I was concentrating on qualifying for the Full Tilt Poker Iron Man One-A-Day Freeroll, I decided to not play any buy-in tournaments and play only freerolls to build as much bankroll as possible through the end of July and then try to profit enough in the $1.25 SNGs to play one every day in August.

In doing this I built my bankroll from $0.88 to $8.26 as of July 19 through playing in freerolls and only freerolls. That is $7.38 won in freerolls in about 3 and 1/2 weeks.

During this process of building my bankroll, I made several observations and decided to use by Full Tilt Poker account and bankroll to experiment with a "fun" project. This blog will chronicle that project and this particular post will establish the ground rules for the project.

PROJECT : FREEROLL

BASICS

• This project will apply to my Full Tilt Poker account and my Full Tilt Poker account only.
  The basics are that using freerolls only (defined as any tournament or table that does not require a real money buy-in), I will spend 1 year building my bankroll without ever putting any of my bankroll at risk.
• All freerolls I play in must be easily accessible to the general playing public. I will not participate in freerolls that have elaborate requirements that would take a significant amount of time to qualify for.
• I will play in private freerolls on Full Tilt Poker (freerolls hosted by various web sites, forums, etc.) as long as those freerolls would be generally available to anyone with minimal effort. So if the site requires a certain minimal number of post to get the private freeroll passwords, then that is permissible. Also sites that simply require registration, filling out a form, answering a poker quiz, etc. are permissible. I will also participate in "rewards" freerolls from these same sites. For example if site X holds private freerolls on Full Tilt Poker and has a monthly scoring system where the top 100 for the month are invited to a freeroll at the end of the month, then I will participate in that freeroll. So basically anything that requires minimal effort or comes directly from my play in this project.
  

METHODOLOGY

• First I will zero out all the aspects of my Full Tilt Poker account. This will include my money account, my play chip account, and my FTP points account.
• I will then start playing play chip tournaments and freerolls in an effort to build my account.
• I will use the play chips to buy into the nightly 500,000 play chip tournament that is has $40 prize pool.
• I will play in private freerolls as described above.
• I will play in the Full Tilt Poker freerolls (these are the 2,700 and 2,400 person freerolls that pay the top 27 and some that pay the top 3). I may not play these very often and instead spend the time playing for play chips to build that account.
• I will include any tournament dollar winnings and "real money" in calculate my bankroll.
• I will detail strategies and specifics in various posts on this site.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the details of this project and I will do my best to answer them.