Deciding whether to deposit on a poker website is something that each and every poker player must think about when they decide to play online. Keep in mind that many people often play on multiple poker sites and depositing on each poker site that a particular person would play could get somewhat costly. I’ll discuss some the pros and cons of depositing and not depositing, and then offer a strategy that I use that has proven successful for me.

To start things off, lets discuss not making a deposit. I must say that is extremely difficult to start out on a new poker site and freeroll your way into a bankroll. There typically two types are freerolls, public and private. Public freerolls are open to everyone. There aren’t many public freerolls that are available per day. Usually poker sites will host one freeroll every 2-3 hours and they often fill very quickly. You have to be prepared and plan to enter a public freeroll ahead of time. Also, the payout structure is usually setup so that you have to be in the top 1% to be In The Money (ITM).

There are thousands of entrants that you have to outlast, and I mean THOUSANDS each and every public freeroll. Of these thousands of entrants, you will faced with every type of poker style imaginable… There will be the chasers, pushers, trappers, sit outs, and my personal freeroll favorite, DONKS. Now, if you’ve been fortunate enough to be able to get “In The Money” (ITM), or even win. The payouts are often very small. For example, Full Tilt Poker’s public $100 freerolls have a 2700 entrant maximum and only the top 27 will be ITM. 27th place will pay out $2 and 1st place would pay out $15.

Poker Stars is even more difficult to start a bankroll without depositing. In order to start a bankroll on Poker Stars, you have to place in the top 80-99 out of 5000-6000 entrants. Then you have to play a weekly round 2 tournaments and place in the top 200 out of 3000-4000 entrants for a total prize pool of $2000. The point I’m trying to make here is that you will most likely spend countless hours attempting to start a bankroll without depositing.

Private freerolls are a little different. I have seen private freerolls range from a $25 prize pool to over $5000! Private freerolls are either password protected or the freeroll host will manually enter you into the tournament. In order to participate in private freerolls, you basically have to register at many different poker forums and follow their requirements to be able to receive their passwords.

The moral of the “using freerolls to start a bankroll” story is that you will have to invest a lot of your time (both playing poker and being active and various poker forums) in order to be successful in starting a bankroll with no deposit. Do you have the determination and patience to play 4 ½ hours each tournament for a first place prize of $15? Or how about actively participating in many different online poker community sites making post, chatting, exclusive signups on an almost daily basis in order to meet the requirements to receive private passwords? These are the questions that you also will have to ask yourself if you’re going to take the no deposit route.

Next article, I’ll discuss the road to making a deposit.