I’m always inspired by the stories of new and veteran poker players who can take a relatively small amount of money and turn it into a bankroll large enough toFull Tilt Poker free rolls play at the highest stakes.

When I first started playing, I studied the game and used play money to learn the ropes before making my first deposit. Once I felt comfortable, I began setting aside money each month to come up with a $500 starting bankroll. I took that $500 and (with the help of poker bonuses) turned it into about $3,000 in just a few weeks.

Full Tilt Poker has one of the largest deposit bonuses around. They match 100% of your deposit up to $600. Poker Stars has a 100% match up to $50. So if you have some cash already set aside for a bankroll, this is the way to go. It’s free and easy money.

I understand that many people don’t have that kind of money laying around (or just don’t want to risk it). For some, it’s more exciting to build a poker bankroll for free. I understand that too.

Poker pro (and Fult Tilt member) Chris “Jesus” Ferguson showed that it can be done when he launched his own bankroll building challenge. He went from -0- to $10,000 in just over a year. Well known online poker pro Annette Obrestad, reportedly built her bankroll to several hundred thousand dollars by winning a freeroll. With the right mindset, a bit of discipline, and proper bankroll management, you can do the same.

In this article, I’ll share with you how to build your online poker bankroll on Full Tilt and/or Poker Stars for free. I’ll also explain why building your first bankroll this way is more important than the money you’ll win.

Build a bankroll with free rolls

Online poker sites want to give players extra incentives to play at their room. Enter online poker freerolls. A freeroll is just a free tournament funded by the poker room or a third party (like Gulf Coast Poker). You can access a lot of these freerolls without ever making a deposit. Some sites, like PokerStars, give new players who deposit extra freerolls (like the one shown below) as an additional bonus.

Pokerstars New Deposit Freeroll

Here are my tips for getting the most from online poker freerolls.

  • Take some risks early - Once you’ve made a couple of dollars from freerolls on Full Tilt Poker, take a shot at some .10 Multi-table tournaments and $1 sit-n-gos (single table). After you build your bankroll to $20 you can start implementing stricter bankroll management practices to prevent going broke.

The real value of building a poker bankroll with freerolls

If you really get down to the numbers, you can easily make more money working at McDonald’s than playing freerolls. But there are a few reasons (other than making money) that new poker players should start their bankroll this way.

  • A great poker education - For a new player, freerolls provide a great way to learn the ins and outs of tournament poker. You won’t learn much (if any) faster by playing higher stakes.
  • Discipline and patience - If you learn early on how to manage your emotions, keep from tilting, and be patient, you’ll be ready to take on tougher competition as your bankroll increases.
  • Bankroll management - One of the best practices a poker player can adopt is solid bankroll management. By always playing within your bankroll, you will rarely face the risk of going bust.

My own bankroll building challenge

I’ve started my own challenge to build a bankroll from next to nothing on Full Tilt Poker. I logged in and noticed I had only $2 left after a withdrawal several months ago. As of this writing, I have built it to $24, by playing micro limit tournaments. My goal is to build it to $1,000 over the next few months.

You can follow my progress under Operation: Grind-a-Grand in our poker forum.

Building a bankroll at Full Tilt Poker

What about you? Will you take the challenge and see how much you can turn a free poker bankroll into? Do you have a success story to share? Please use the comments or the poker forum to discuss.

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