Let's talk about Freerolls!!

Let's talk about our experiences, both good and bad when hosting freerolls. I have always thought freerolls are a great way to introduce new players to the respective sites that you are promoting. Especially if you are hosting a freeroll for the members of your site or people you know. They are extremely effective and I will always use them.

However........and a big However........there are so many freeroll whores out there, it makes me want to puke. How poor can people actually be that they run around from poker forum to poker forum looking for passwords and a chance to win $25! What pisses me off even more is when I add money to an event for a private group and these guys sneak in or get pissed when they find out I am hosting it and won't give them the password. What part of "Private Freeroll" do they not understand?

Recently I changed the format of our Paradise Ipods event to be a freeroll one week followed by a $2 buy-in the next week to stimulate conversions. The hate mail I got was hilarious. Even when I explained that I am the one fronting the prizes should someone win and on top of that adding over $100 to the prizepool every month, one guy even said "well thats great but your still an a**hole for changing it" If anything players should be happy as the feild will be minimized and give them better EV for actually winning.

The difference between these players and the players in your personal communities is that a majority of these freeroll whores are more than likely kids that have no cash and will never convert. No offense but I could give 2 sh*** about these people. I'm in business to make money, not to give some kid a $25 lottery ticket.

The arrogance of these people who have never deposited a dime at an an online card room baffles me. I would rather host a small $5 tourney with 8 players who followed my tracker and deposited than host a freeroll where I bring on 60 new players of which are awful suckout players and have no chance of converting.

Also of utmost importance when hosting a freeroll, don't publish the password anywhere, do it through email or PM. And DO NOT name the tournament anything that can be googled and found if it is a private tournament.

On the flipside though I have hosted some freerolls that turned out to be great successes and yielded me several conversions.

Let me hear some of you guys thoughts (both good and bad) on incorporating freerolls into your poker affiliate promotions.

[MilanFlyer]

Great post Jeremy.

I'm hosting my first freeroll in the near future for my members at Turneringspoker-Norge. I've only got 16 members but I get one or two new members each day.
So hopefully it will be a success

I have contacted Sun Poker, and asked if they will host the tournament. I plan on making it a $100 freeroll, and Sun may add a $50 on top of that making it a $150 freeroll.

Maybe $150 is to much for so few members, but I run a referal competition also with a iPod nano as first prize. I think that a $150 freeroll will make it easier for my members to recruit new members. The member witch recruit the most new members by 02/28/2006 will get the iPod nano.

Do you guys think I can make break-even or better with this?

[deepak7]

Well, I had more than 20... still make them but less frequently.

I make them only for two reasons:

1. Maintain the freerollers interest on my site/forum. That means active traffic, word of mouth...

2. Sometimes quality members from my site come to them cause they enjoy playing with the friends they made... or chating in our language.
So this way I am 100% sure most use my link for accounts. And in the future who knows...

The bad experiences:

1. Swearing at some of the tourneys.
2. I found it bizarre that at least 40% of them keep the money from the freerolls and don't use as a bankroll! this is amazing, they can keep even 10$ and wait for the next one... they withdraw even 50$.

[J S]

Freerolls are a great idea in theory but most of the time difficult in excecution. The idea of rewarding your community is right, but you will have to battle freeroll whores. Mostly punk ass kids mostly and players that you don't want to refer anyway. We hosted a few on a Prima Poker site and both of them had issues with getting people signed up correctly and our special tourney details... plus people googled the freeroll, found us and spammed the hell out of the forum.

You'll know the whores have found you as soon as 1rainbow1 signs up in your forum, he is like the olive branch letting you know they're coming.

If you can find a way to keep it private and keep it invitation to the people you want then it can be good. Keeping that password private can be a pain in the ass though, especially if you are offering some really good prizes and the word gets out amongst the bonus whore crowd.

[pokernut]

I wish I had read this a week ago. Put up my first $200 FreeRoll and used my forum name as the tournamnet name. all of a sudden as I check my logs I am getting 10 hits a day from google with the search term being my sites forum. I tracked them by ip and every dang one of them signs up for the freeroll.

I am making a list and will not send those freeroll whores the password. I suspect they may get a little upset.

I was going to wait an hour before the tournament to PM passwords...Is that too late or too early?

[kksuited]

I thought about running some freerolls and even bought a good stacks freeroll domain name, but I think I'm going to bag the idea.

I'm really not even interested in a player that will take the time to play a freeroll. For the most part, if you play freerolls, you're a beginner who has no money. Like Jeremy said, not to sound like an a-hole, but I bet 8 out of 10 of those players don't have a penny to play with anyway, so why would I want them as a player?

It would take 50 conversions from those type players to make what 1 decent player with a $1,000 bankroll can do.

[Stephen]

Good post Jeremy.

We had an internal discussion on exactly this issue and have implemented several things in-house to try and improve our service:

1. Whenever possible (provided its a small, known field), we will actually insert the Player IDs into the freeroll. That way, there is no actual password to be used - although the organizer will receive the password, and should someone show up late, they can always use it.

2. We are turning off outside chat for freerolls - that way the whores will not even be able to ask for the password.

We realise that the first point is not always realistic, but provided the chat is turned off, it will assist to resolve the problem.

Just our efforts in improving this...

Stephen

[gumbajohnny]

Free rolls as mauch as I love them to promote that is how much I hate them.
Just for he reasons that Jeremy stated.
I can't stand free roll whores I actually had a contest on my site for all of my league members,it went like this.
Who ever came up with the best answer when the whores asked for the password got $10.00 into there account.
It was pretty funny when the whores came asking the password and everybody participating in the tournamet kept typing the same response. "Man Goo" :lol:

As far as the amount I personnaly would not offer a free roll for more than $50.00
I just think its for the fun of it and also for promotion. I would rather have 4 free roll over 4 weeks than 1 big one especially if a whore wins it.

I personally have 1 free roll a month for $25.00.

Every one Happy Thanksgiving

[gumbajohnny]

Also I would like to thank Stephen for doing what he can from his end to improve this for everybody.

Good post Jeremy.

We had an internal discussion on exactly this issue and have implemented several things in-house to try and improve our service:

1. Whenever possible (provided its a small, known field), we will actually insert the Player IDs into the freeroll. That way, there is no actual password to be used - although the organizer will receive the password, and should someone show up late, they can always use it.

2. We are turning off outside chat for freerolls - that way the whores will not even be able to ask for the password.

We realise that the first point is not always realistic, but provided the chat is turned off, it will assist to resolve the problem.

Just our efforts in improving this...

Stephen

Fantastic News Stephen! I am going to put you to the test!!! I am hosting a freeroll for another group I promote too next week at some point. It should be a field no larger than 20 but many of these players I play live cash games with so the possiblity of conversions is much better.

I'll be the guinea pig and let you guys know how this goes. I'll email you Stephen. Thanks