[ballen]

anyone here practice their games w/online free play? i do from time to time when i have some free time.....but those people will bet into anything, so i'm trying to figure if i'm just wasting my time w/free online play?

wha's everyone's thought on this?

[arcfinn]

Well I started off playing free ring games on paradise and the free tourneys at pokerpages.com. Once I could win at those games consistently and learned to fold I moved to the cash games.

[pritz]

I think it is a waste of time. Pacific has 5cent-10cent limit games going all the time and other sites have no limit as low as 1cent-2cent blinds. I've been showing a friend how to play at these limits and some of the games are surprisingly tight, but is seems your main edge is that the players don't know the value or lack of value of hands in different situations.

[lork]

Online games are only useful for improving some areas of your game, the areas being pre-flop strategy, pre-turn and pre-river. Like you say, people in free games will go in anything, if your going to practice online I'd suggest the low limit games, 10s and 20 cents, even though the stakes are so low you will find that more people will fold rather than be wrecklace as in free games.

[chris]

Hey, I would have to say online poker for play money is a very good tool to learn and practice your game. Best of all, it's free so you try different tactics and see what works.

The thing is, apart from playing against my younger brother for a buck in a heads up tourney I only played online for play money. After I felt I had an understanding of the game I went and played a 2/4 table at the casino. After about 4 hours I was down 50 bucks. Oh well. Then I played again there with friends and won 10 bucks. No big deal. Then I tried a tournemant with a $20 buy-in. No limit, mind you. That is what my brother and I always played. First tournemant ever but it was my third time in the casino playing with the chips. I won. For my 20 bucks I took home over 1300. 60 players in all.

Apparently my game was too tight for a ring game but just right for a small tourney. A fluke? I went back the very next week and played the same deal only limit this time and took 4th. Also a cash prize.

To sum it up, playing online for play money helped me learn the game enough to be able to play it live with confidence. So if anyone tells you online for play money is a waste of time, they just haven't figured out poker yet.

[ThomasR]

I play online largely because it is more convenient, I can sit at a table for as long or as little as I like and leave if I want to.

I found it good to learn the value of hands and to develop skills without investing money. I did find that very low limit games were better because you were playing with your own money - you would never lose much, but you play that little bit more attentively when you're playing with real money.

It's great to get started, but if you want to move to cash games you'd be better practising at the low limit tables as suggested above.