So you're in a free poker tournaments and have just been dealt pocket aces and make a decent sized raise, you get re-raised all in, call, and your opponent turns over 9/2. Even before the flop you sense your fate. He makes a set of nines and you get a black game over box.

Im sure I am not the only one who has met this fate (and thrown my computer mouse flying across the room) and I wont be the last.

Wherever you play your poker, you are bound to play against donks day in day out. I have found that I have experienced more donks on free poker tournaments site, NoPayPOKER.com. I know the reason for this is because NoPayPOKER is a totally free poker website where you never have to spend a penny of your own hard earned cash and it does attract many types of players from all over the world.

This does not mean there are not any good players at NoPayPOKER, in fact there are some very good players, far better than me. I started playing poker at NoPayPOKER roughly 9 months ago, and although I am not the best player in the world, I have still managed to bag myself about 22k in FreeD. It isn't millions, but at the same time, its money, and free money at that! I actually started winning my games in the last 3/4 months.

After playing for a while I noticed that every final table I was on had the same bunch of players on them. Coincidence? I recently came to the conclusion that it is not a coincidence, as these players constantly on the final tables are not donks.

I have developed a few techniques to try and avoid being donked, but a word of warning, they are not fool proof.

It's guaranteed that there is a freeroll running every thirty minutes, and what is also guaranteed is that if you want to play the first hand then you will have to go all in. Some players will play any two cards on the first hand. There are reasons for this. Some players going all in first hand take the view "win big early or go home early".

By this I mean if they can double or treble up first hand then they have a bit of flexibility over the hands they play from then on. On the other hand some players are just genuinely bad and don't know how to play the game. My advice would be to avoid playing the first hand, unless you have pocket A's, K's or Q's.

My second point would be to establish who the good and bad players are on your table.

This can take ten or fifteen minutes in a free roll as there is a lot of table moving at the start. You need to see a few hands to work out how people are playing. If you spot a player who is doing some big raises, bluffing and being a pain in the backside, then I would suggest avoiding them. What tends to happen is they will win a few big hands, then loose a few, and then go on tilt. Figuring out how each player plays is key if you don't want to get donked. Whilst playing on other sites I have taken notes on players to build up a profile of good and bad players. I wouldn't necessarily go to these lengths on NoPayPOKER, but I do keep a mental note of bad players.

My next bit of advice is one of the most important when playing any type of poker. Always play the cards, not your feelings. This can be extremely difficult but key to making the money. Do not hold grudges against players on your table.

Finally throughout your time playing poker you have no doubt built up a whole catalogue of skills and tactics in which you use to good effect. However, my last point would be to throw these out the window when playing with donks.

Remind yourself where you learnt these skills, other poker sites, casinos, private games, etc.

What separates these from NoPayPOKER brings me full circle to my initial point. You learnt your poker skills whilst playing with your own money. It's much harder to go all in first hand with 10/3 when you have just bought in for $100.

People always say it's much harder to play poker against bad plays than good ones. All your bluffing skills, positional play, squeeze play forget, because a donk will call anything.

To summarise;
(a) If possible, don't play the first hand
(b) Establish who the good and bad players are at your table
(c) Remember who the donks are (maybe create a list)
(d) Play the cards not your feelings
(e) Forget your poker skills when playing donks

Adopting these tactics will not win you free poker tournaments, but should help you in avoiding an early bath and should at least get you into the money.