Online Poker Freerolls - Play for Free!

The term freeroll is also used to describe a tournament with no entry fee but the use of the terms 'free' and 'no entry fee' can be misleading because some freerolls require a payment at some point to gain entry to the tournament.

The prize pool, instead of being an accumulation of the entry fees minus a fee for the 'house' (the way pay-to-play tournaments are typically constructed), is derived from a donation from the house, sponsorship fees, admission charged to spectators, broadcast rights fees, or any combination of these. Sometimes a particular cardroom or casino (either traditional or online) will offer a freeroll tournament to frequent players. Invitation-only tournaments are frequently freerolls.

Freerolls at Internet poker sites should not be confused with their close counterpart -- play money tournaments. Freerolls are different from play-money tournaments in two respects. Play money tournaments usually require the 'payment' of play money and the tournament winnings are play money. Freeroll tournaments can be genuinely free, may require a payment of points (from a point system developed by the site), or on some occasions require a deposit of funds into the player's account. The winnings are either real money, points, merchandise or entry tickets (invitations) to other tournaments.

Most if not all Internet poker sites have freeroll tournaments although in many cases require a payment of points to play. These points typically can only be earned by paying and playing real money hands which in essence is a payment required to play their 'freerolls' and therefore a loose use of the term 'freeroll'. There are Internet sites that allow playing in freerolls without payment of any kind and with the chance to win real money.

It is not unusual to pay to play in a feeder tournament that gives the winner(s) a free entry to another tournament but it is debatable whether these second level tournaments can be called 'freerolls', since they require a buy-in, albeit smaller than the major tournament one. More often, such tournaments are called 'satellites'. This format is typical of freeroll tournaments both on the Internet and in the 'brick and mortar' sites.

The Professional Poker Tour is one such 'freeroll', with entrants being required to qualify through their results in previous tournaments. Sponsorship and broadcast-rights fees fund the prize pools.

Here are some great online poker sites that have freerolls running daily:

PokerStars

Full Tilt

Bodog

Betus

Sportsbook

Doyles Room

Ultimate Bet

Aced Poker

Reefer Poker

Absolute Poker

Players Only

Carbon Poker

Oddsmaker

The history of online poker

The game of poker has been around for nearly two centuries. It was a popular games spread throughout the Mississippi River in the 1800s. The game since then has become the most popular card game today.

With the introduction of the internet in the 1990s, being able to play poker against other players worldwide was thought to be impossible. A very smart man, and great poker player, Mike Caro envisioned that one day online poker would become a reality. People thought he was crazy, but on January 1, 1998 the first real money hand was played on Planet Poker. The only game offered by Planet Poker was $3/$6 limit and there were not many players.

Seeing the success of this new concept, other poker rooms were established. Paradise Poker was one of the first to challenge the marketplace when they opened in 1999 and they soon thereafter became the industry leader. Paradise Poker was started by a group of Canadian college students and offered a more games such as Omaha, Seven Card Stud along with the popular Texas Hold’em. They also offered a variety of stakes making it more popular to a larger audience of people. At the time these sites were still fairly basic and were among the few smaller poker rooms available online.

It wasn’t until 2001 that two major sites were launched; PokerStars and Party Poker, which today are still two of the largest poker rooms. They were the first to offer tournaments in addition to the cash games other sites were already running. Both sites had done very well since opening, but online poker was still not very popular. Poker was not all over the TV like it is today.

In 2003 Party Poker started spending millions of dollars on television ads. Party Poker became a huge hit and at the time accounted for roughly half of the population of online poker players. At the same time, PokerStars had its own idea to gain popularity.

PokerStars offered a satellite tournament to the World Series of Poker with a buy-in of $40. Chris Moneymaker won this small tournament to go onto the WSOP where in a field or 839 poker players he took 1st place winning $2.5 million dollars. It was his first live tournament. This Cinderella story along with television ads prompted online pokers popularity to explode!

The revenues of these top sites more than tripled and new sites saw entry into the industry. In 2004 Full Tilt Poker announced its arrival and has since grown to be one of the most popular online poker rooms. The same year, the poker room, Paradise Poker, was sold for $297.5 million.

In 2005 the buzz about online poker had hit its peak. Hundreds of thousands of players were playing everyday and the companies were literally raking in the cash. Yahoo reportedly was interested in purchasing Party Poker, but they were too far behind.

In 2006, with lawmakers angry over the obscene profits being made and not taxed on, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was passed. This act entailed making funding or accepting funding from an online gambling site illegal. The online poker community was in complete chaos. The sites were not ready for these new laws.

Party Poker was the first company to react. As a public company, with shareholders to protect, it could not expose itself to this huge risk to its business. So it cut off all US players at a stroke, wiping out over 80 percent of its customers and sending share prices plummeting. Several of the other poker rooms such as Paradise Poker would soon follow not accepting US players.

With an abundance of players looking for a new poker room, anyone willing to take US players stood to make a killing. Private companies were only putting themselves at risk. PokerStars and Full Tilt have always been private companies and they continue to reap the profits from US poker players. Today PokerStars is the largest online poker room.

There are still a lot of great online poker sites that accept us players:
PokerStars
Full Tilt
Bodog
Betus
Sportsbook
Doyles Room
Ultimate Bet
Aced Poker
Reefer Poker
Absolute Poker
Players Only
Carbon Poker
Oddsmaker