Jazz Casino & Sportsbook - Offering the BEST online casino games experience on the NET. Start playing now, in any of our 7 Online Slots Machines, for FREE or for Real. Security ? Reliable ? We also offer on-site - land base casinos - gaming in the beatiful beaches of Costa Rica.

>>PLAY FOR FREE<<

>>PLAY FOR REAL<<

Online Play Money Tables

by James West

Is playing play-money tables in an online poker room going to help you improve your play, or is it utterly useless?

That depends.

First of all, it depends on whether you're a complete newbie or something of a "reasonable" player. Reasonable players have no business at the play money tables, for two reasons: the play there is abysmal, and they really don't have anything to learn there. One reason could bring them to the play tables, though, that is, if they're not handy with computers and online poker rooms, they can get the hang of it without risking a single cent.

The situation is much different if you're a total beginner. Play money tables are the correct place to head to first. Poker is not like online casinos.Yes, the play is chaotic, yes sometimes it's dead poor, but there's still value in free play.

For someone who barely knows the rules of the game, there's no faster means of learning than free online poker.

You need to see what the real motivation behind free online poker play is: real money play is driven by cash. Play money tables feature no rake, and no real stakes. If your goal is to accumulate as large a play-money bankroll as you can, you're not doing something right. Who cares about play-money? There's plenty of it available for everyone. What you need to be after, when playing at a play-money table, is to learn to draw correct and useful conclusions from certain situations, to give strategy you read about, a try, in a word: to improve your game.

That is something that's worth more than any giant play money stack you can brag around with.

Back in the days, when no free online poker was available, potential poker players had a much harder time mastering the basics, and besides, the only place they could learn something useful was the real money poker room. There's no exception to the fact that a rookie will always lose. The money they lost during the period it took them to learn the game, was written off as tuition and that was it.

You no longer need to pay tuition, and you'd have to be a fool not to take advantage of the free poker school play money tables offer.

There comes, however, a time when play money tables will no longer provide the benefits they used to, for every player. That is the moment when our player needs to get going and move his game over to the small stakes limits tables. Free online play will only help so much, there's no use in hanging out at free tables anymore.

To sum the whole thing up in a single idea: if you can't beat a play money table you'll definitely not be able to beat any real money game. If you beat play money games all the time, the time for you to move on has probably arrived.

When you make the move, the real money games there are several issues you'll need to get accustomed with: first of all, the game is not played for experience anymore. The object of the game is real money, and there's another factor that is new and that will greatly influence your game: the rake. The rake is a small percentage of every pot, taken by the house. This means, in case you win, the whole of the pot no longer belongs to you.

What a player needs to achieve at play-money tables is to get the necessary knowhow to beat a game. That same knowhow may apply differently to different limit and no limit real money tables, but the essence remains the same. Patching the whole of the picture together from many scattered little pieces, is a task that every single poker player will have to tackle on his own.

Back To Articles