The history of Freeroll Tournaments is closely linked with the advent of online casinos and online poker rooms back in the mid 1990s.

Before this time all poker tournaments were live events and required a buy-in, which is a set amount of cash. With the movement towards a larger, worldwide online poker platform the possibility of playing for free emerged initially as a way of enticing people to sign up with online casinos and poker rooms.

This method works well at gaining a casino or poker room more sign ups as people are happy to play for free. Once their skills attain a certain level, people feel confident to play the game for money and for each person who reaches this stage there is another paying member for the online gambling establishment to add to their books.

With freerolls, this also hooks in lots of new players who learn the ropes and gain a good level of skill and experience, some of whom go on to become world class players.