Online Poker - Learn to Play for Free, and the Chance to Win
Real Cash Prizes
All of the online poker rooms offer you the opportunity to play
poker without risking a penny of your own money. You just
download and install the software, open an account and then
login. You don't have to give any payment details to do this. If
a poker room does ask you for a credit card number, just to open
an account, leave and choose another one.
When you create the account you are given a certain amount of
play chips. If you lose them all you will be given more.
One of the advantages of Fun money, is that you can learn to
play, without risking your own money doing so. Or if you join a
new poker room you can get used to the software before you have
to put hard cash on the table.
The main disadvantage you'll tend to find is that because there
is no real money at risk, people generally play a lot looser
than they would at a real money table. Some players will call
every hand down to the river (last community card dealt in
holdem), with hands that most good players would fold without
question in a real money game.
That said you can get a realistic game sometimes, and for a
complete beginner it is a valuable aid to learning the different
games and strategies.
If you do decide to play at these tables you should try and make
the play chips as important to you as you can. Don't see every
flop and call everything just because other players are doing
so. Try to play as you would on a real money table and
accumulate chips though tight skillful play rather than pure
luck. At Absolute Poker you can earn $50 of real money if you
can build up 15 million play chips. Sounds impossible ? Well
over one hundred players in the Absolute Poker 15 million chip
Hall of Fame would probably disagree. Some of them have done it
five times !
Some poker rooms also offer 'freeroll' tournaments which are
free to enter but have a real cash prize.
Absolute Poker currently have a $50 freeroll every two to three
hours which pays $10 to the winner and $5 to the other players
who made the final table. There can be up to 2000 players in
these freerolls at times so the competition is hot, but its a
risk free way to get acquainted with Multi Table tournaments.
So if you want to try your hand at Poker, but don't want to
loose too much money learning the game, play money could be for
you.
Good luck