Practice poker online for free

I enjoy playing poker. I'm not that good, but I do OK in small home games and I enjoy myself.

Recently I've been having a lot of fun playing online for free. How, you ask? Well go to http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/, sign up for free, get a free account, and start playing with play chips. Work your way up to the level you've got skills for, then have fun.

Now everyone's first reaction when I tell them this is that people play really stupidly when they are playing online for free. It isn't worth trying.

But this is not necessarily so! When you play on Full Tilt you can reload to 1000 play chips every 5 minutes. And at the bottom tables people play like complete donks because they can with impunity. However there are a lot of different buy-ins. As you move up, the skill level increases. So you get a gradation of skill from ridiculously soft at 1/2 up to a boss level of 50K/100K. At the latter level typical buy-ins are 4,000,000. The game I just looked at had 2 players, each with about 25,000,000 in front of them. You can't play that game unless you've managed to earn your way to that level. Anyone who does that has legitimately beaten a *lot* of other players, and put a lot of time in. Do you think those people play poorly?

If you've got basic skills (easily acquired), it isn't hard to beat the easy "donk" levels of free poker online. Then you can move up to more fun levels that require more skill. And once you can play poker well? Well, then you can buy in with some confidence about your skills (at least for low level play) and enjoy both the game and the money you're making at it.

Here is a data point. My sister read a couple of books, went online, got a free account, worked her bankroll up to a few hundred thousand and was playing at the 100/200 level. Then she began playing for money, entered the WPS, and look what happened.

So if you find poker fun, and want to practice, you can online for free. The only thing you'll lose is your time. Which isn't a cost if it is fun for you.