Free Play Poker

Free Play Poker Overview

Most online cardrooms have free play poker tables for their customers to use in order to Learn Poker aswell as daily freerolls, providing you with the opportunity to play a lot of poker for absolutely nothing. There are plenty of reasons to start your poker career on the free play tables rather than the real money tables, there are also differences between the free and real tables that are worth noting before transitioning over from free to real money play.

There is a wide choice of free play poker available on the Internet, spread across numerous online cardrooms. Poker varients offered normally include Texas Holdem, various types of Omaha Poker aswell as different types of Stud Poker; many game formats are provided such as ring games, poker sit & go's and multi table tournaments; normally there are fixed limit, pot limit and no limit versions of these poker variants and game formats.

Free Play Benefits

The free tables provide the opportunity for new players to learn how to play poker without losing any money. All poker players have to start the learning process somewhere, why pay for a poker education when it could be free? The play money tables look and function exactly the same as the real money tables, this helps to familiarise yourself with the cardroom software being used; each site has different sized and placed buttons, the cardrooms also provide the free tables so you can try the software before committing any money; it is advisable to try them before making your first deposit, if possible, incase you decide that you don't like the software and/or the site.

It can be very intimidating playing with real money for the first time, there is merit in becoming desensitised to the betting process by using the free tables first; it won't make your decisions much easier when you do play for real, but at least you will be accustomed to the environment aswell as the process.

Nearly all inexperienced poker players start out by losing money, online cardrooms allow you to replenish the amount of free play chips in your account as many times as you require; there are literally no restrictions to the number of hours you can apportion to playing poker, your learning curve can be much quicker than an unprofitable novice player who chooses to learn on the real money tables that only has a limited amount of cash per month to spend on playing poker.

There is a common misconception that free play games tell you very little about your ability, many fail to realise that if you can't win at the free tables it is likely you will struggle at the real money tables. Only once you can beat the free money games is it worth testing the water for real. Although the quality of opponent is well below average, one can learn vital information about your styles of poker play, temperament and stamina aswell as being a useful guage on how much and how quickly you are improving; if you lost 20 racks of 1,000 virtual chips in your first week, 10 racks of 1,000 in your second week and only 5 racks of 1,000 in your third week, it is likely that you are improving. You also have a benchmark to compare your future play to, allowing you to learn a lot about the progress you are making.

Learning to use discipline and good poker bankroll management may seem silly when there is no money to play for, but if you can't display these good characteristics from day one you run the risk of developing bad habits. Many associate picking up bad habits with playing on the free money tables, this is counterintuitive though, play money tables don't promote bad habits, indisciplined and impatient players promote bad habits, play money tables promote learning.

Play money tables are also utilised by experienced poker players who are'nt technologically savvy, in order to learn the nuances of online play in comparison to the Bricks & Mortar experience.

Free play poker is evolving for the better, some online cardrooms have made the free play experience feel more real by forcing players to earn the right to play at the higher limit free play tables; this encourages tighter play and more solid play aswell as incentivising good poker bankroll management as the right to play at a higher level is at stake. These types of innovation are likely to improve the standard of play and therefore make the experience more worthwhile.

Free Play To Real Money

Obviously there is a big difference in the mindset of most free table players in comparison to real money players, the free tables are filled witha high percentage of people who are just looking to have fun or are using the game to pass time; the real money players are more likely to be taking the game seriously, even though they are still playing the game for fun. Real money players are more aware of losing because there is money involved, this changes the way the games are played; real money games have more structure to the betting rounds and a greater level of strategy is applied, generally the standard is considerably higher than on the play money tables.

The main difference between free money and real money play is the action is a lot looser on the free play tables with bigger pots and a much higher percentage of players staying in the hand for the flop. There are significantly less pre flop all ins on the real money tables, with players preferring to leave themselves room to maneuvre after the flop, it's common to have half the table all in pre flop at a 10 seater free money table, whereas it's uncommon to have more than 2 players and rare to see more than 3 players all in before the flop on a real money table.

One must adjust their strategy when transitioning from the free play games to the real money environment, typically there is more opportunity to use a wider range of tactics because the playing environment is more diverse, the vast majority of play money players would do well to tighten up when stepping up to real money play.