Play money is no way to learn.
I know, it sounds like a good idea. It’s not.
Let’s say you know how you play poker, but you want to improve your game before you put any of your hard earned cash to risk at your internet poker site of choice. Very bad idea. Your game will certainly get worse. The yahoos in play money rooms will see every bet and raise randomly with any cards if they haven’t already gone all-in preflop. Bluffing is impossible, improving is impossible. Not everyone at the table may go in with the intensions of making a mockery of poker, but they will just to keep up…including, probably, you.
You never heard of texas hold’em before and want to learn the rules. Playing for free can’t hurt there, right? Wrong! You want to learn how to play ask a friend to teach you. With absolutely no incentive to win you are not learning poker, you are subconsciously picking up bad habits.
You are a hold’em expert and and want to pick up omaha, you know enough about free poker to avoid the insanity. That may well be, but I still wouldn’t risk play money games.
The lesson for today, make the investment. It doesn’t take much. .05/.10 cent blinds is how I started out. Granted, I was with college students who had to make five bucks last the whole week. You just have to find the sweet spot to keep out most maniacs. If you prefer tournament play, I recommend $10 buy-ins with no rebuys for solid learning. $5 is okay, but you do get plenty online that don’t take their five dollars seriously.
If any price is too much, don’t play online. Look in your area for games hosted at local bars or restaurants. The winner usually gets a bar tab or points towards a larger incentive to win, which may be enough for them to play seriously. Also the social repercussions of stupid play is felt in these situations. No one likes to ruin it for the rest of us.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 12:05 am and is filed under Poker Life Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
