Poker Winner Blog

What the games are like

Most Internet play-money games are loose action games. (That’s putting it mildly!) Players enter pots with guns blazing, firing bets and raises at will. Much of this activity is just smoke and mirrors, but when the smoke clears, someone will have made a hand. Don’t expect to win a pot without a struggle!

There are many family pots (pots in which all players participate in the action), and you won’t find many wallflowers sitting on the sidelines hand after hand. Betting is frequently capped (when players put in the maximum number of raises allowed). Hang on for the ride — if you have a hand.

You’ll see players call or even call raises with cards they should have folded without a moment’s hesitation. You’ll see people calling with a bottom pair, with backdoor draws, even with as little as one overcard — hoping to get lucky. After all, it’s fun to play and no fun at all to fold! Your challenge in these games is to keep from joining the party!

At a good play-money site you will find at least Texas Hold’em and Seven- Card Stud. Omaha is another popular offering, and if you’re lucky you’ll have a choice between Omaha High-Only and Omaha/8. The trend is toward a wider selection of games. You can also find tournaments.

Game menus change with popular trends, and even game sites themselves come and go. To find out what games are currently available, post an inquiry at the Internet poker newsgroup rec.gambling.poker (RGP).

How these games help you to improve

You’ll be playing with people who, like you, are learning the game or have limited experience. But unlike you, most of them will be playing strictly for fun. Those folks will be mired in bad habits because they either don’t care or just don’t know any better, while you’ll be playing seriously in order to improve. That’s right, seriously! Play as though it’s for keeps, as though your chips in cyberspace will be cash in your pocket when you win. Oh, you lost? Oops, there goes your bankroll! Better keep your day job! You can’t refrain from playing when you get a streak of bad cards? Better get a second job while you’re at it — you’re going to need it.

Think playing cyberpoker is going to be easy? Maybe for the first 30 or 60 minutes. After that you’ll be fighting the 4F trio: frustration, fatigue, and the fun factor— the tendency to join in the loose play to have a better time. So lick temptation now, while there’s no cost.

Make these sessions count. Keep records. Determine when your break point occurs: How long can you play without yielding to the temptation of playing inferior hands? Of calling when you shouldn’t? Of getting emotional when a poor player draws out on you? Remember that the hardest victory in poker is conquering yourself!

If it’s hard to take an Internet play-money game seriously “when it really doesn’t count,” remember this: For you, the game really does count. It counts as preparation, and when you sit in a game with real stakes, you’ll face many of the same factors you face in these cyberspace games. Here’s why:

• Unless money is no object, you’ll be playing your first cash games for low limits. In many places, low-limit games are of the loose, “no fold’em” variety. Even though there’s real money at stake, many players in low-limit casino games will be playing with a devil-may-care attitude. In fact, they’ll be betting and raising as though they’re risking nothing but play-money!
• If you can keep your discipline even in a play-money game, you are even more likely to keep your gambling gremlin in check when there’s real money on the table. (What’s a gambling gremlin? Why, it’s that little voice — and we all have it — that keeps popping up to urge us to stay when we should fold, or to see one more card when we know the odds don’t justify it.) Keep this in mind: Losing players indulge their gambling gremlin. Winners don’t!

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