Freeroll as implied by its name refers to a free tournament which is most often a promotional event that is conducted by most poker for money rooms and casinos to draw players to poker rooms both online as well as in the real world. These are events which are organized by the poker rooms offering a sizeable amount of real money as a prize. The very fact that players can gamble with the money for free as there is no entry fee attached, draws a good gathering of poker players to play a no risk game. You will find that these are fine opportunities to test your strategies and techniques and participate for free, as it is not always that the poker rooms will be paying for the tournament and will not be charging an entry. There is no risk of losing involved, at these freerolls since no money is spent by the players and is a very good opportunity to use in furthering your skills and not let it pass.
Generally a card room or casino will offer the freeroll to their frequent players as a calculated incentive to draw in more new players and encourage them to visit more often, either online or at normal live venues. On the other hand, Net Poker offering freeroll incentives should not be seen in confusion to sites with Play money tournaments since these are dissimilar in two respects. Contest loot is play cash and it is customary to require payment made in play cash.
Freeroll on the other hand is free and may use payment by points from a points developed system. Sometimes the system may need players to make a deposit into their accounts which may be needed on most occasions as an entry requirement. The rewards are usually made in actual cash, goods, points or entry tickets to other contests. Freeroll tournaments are conducted by most web poker sites with several of them requiring payment in points for play, earned when playing for real cash. In other words it is a form of payment that’s needed for playing the freerolls.
Yet, there are sites on the web which are allowing freerolls without any sort of payment, with the opportunities and the every likelihood of winning cash for real. There are also feeder contests where you pay to play, which in turn will reward the winners with free entry to a second level competition. It is debatable to know if these second level competitions that need such buy-ins can be classed as freerolls. This is however a typical freeroll format for contests in the virtual as well as the real world. The Pro Poker Tour, where players need to qualify to gain entrance through other prior contests is one such freeroll.
However, freeroll is not exclusive to the poker world. It is also offered by casinos to their high value and frequent players in a variety of games, slot machines and video poker.
