$0.00. It’s a daunting number. No one wants to see those digits staring back at you when you check the balance of your online poker account. Losing all of your bankroll is a troubling experience. Sometimes, going broke is too demoralizing and players give up the game for good. Others have the desire to take another shot online, but for either financial reasons or due to the murky political climate, they are unable to reload.
 
There’s no shame in starting from zero. Even the best pros in the world, some of whom you have seen on TV, go busto at some point in their careers. It’s part of the game, but the successful survivors are the ones who know how to bounce back as fast as possible.
 
Just because you have no money left in your online poker account doesn’t mean that you have to pull the plug on your online career and delete your account. For everyday players like you and me who run into a bad run of luck, there’s hope for us in the form of a freeroll. Yes, there’s plenty of free money in cyberspace because the online rooms are giving some away every single day. You just have to know where to look.
 
Freerolls can help regenerate your bankroll, however, it’s not going to be easy. It might take longer than you want, but it is possible because every online poker site offers freerolls. Do your homework and find a freeroll in your best game. Your primary goal should be to cash in that targeted freeroll. One of the players in my home game was a well-versed 7-card stud player who challenged himself to play the same 7-card stud freeroll every single Saturday morning. Like clockwork, he’d come close to the money but then tragically bubble off. It took him over a year, but he finally cashed in the weekly freeroll and even won the entire thing. His patience and perseverance paid off.
 
Your best bet is to scour the tournament lobbies. Play as many freerolls as you can and sign up as soon as registration opens because many of them are capped. Also, check the private tournament lobbies. Sometimes, new websites host freerolls where you get an invite for simply signing up to their forums.
 
Every couple of hours, PokerStars runs freeroll qualifiers to their weekly $2,000 freeroll. The fields in these freerolls are massive, with tens of thousands for some. Don’t let those numbers deter you. Just dig in deep and grind away. It might take days, or weeks, even months before you finally fade 99 percent of these fields in order to cash in the event. And don’t be disappointed if you only win a few dollars at first. The real cheesecake goes to the luckbox who wins the entire freeroll. But hey, beggars can’t be choosey, right?
 
Once you can scrape together a couple of dollars, it’s time to grind it out at $1 sit ‘n’ goes. This is another humbling pursuit and be prepared to grind it out and increase your roll to over $100. Turbo SNGs offer up tremendous value because it’s hard to make the wrong play in that format.
 
I know a couple of friends who will take their last $30 and buy into a sit ‘n’ go, they will win that one, then buy into a $100 SNG, only to bubble out. That’s simply terrible bankroll management, especially if you have no means to reload your online account.
 
We all run into lean times. That’s why it’s important to know how to grind it out and play poker with a disciplined budget. If you happened to go busto, get ready to frugally grind it out in freerolls.
 
Paul ‘Dr. Pauly’ McGuire is the author of the upcoming book ‘Lost Vegas’. You can read his poker blog, Tao of Poker, over at www.taopoker.com.