Improve Your Online Poker Play - Play for Free but Not for Long

Just because you’ve been winning in the free games online, don’t expect to be able to jump into a cash game and immediately start winning. In fact, that probably isn’t going to happen. You must understand that even though you have won at the play-money tables, you will not automatically win in the real-money games.

Many first-time money players lose their chips when they start playing for hard cash, and they don’t know why. One reason is because the training you get at the free tables is not conducive to being successful in real-money games. Let me repeat that—the training you get at the free tables is not conducive to being successful in real-money games. Basically, people play very loose poker in free games. If you were playing a little tighter than your loose opponents in those games, you should have been winning. When you move on to real-money games, you will find that people usually play tighter and more solid poker when they are playing for hard cash.

If you want to become a better player, don’t stay in the play-money games for very long because you’ll be tempted to play too loose yourself. My recommendation is that you play in free games until you learn how the game is played, understand how the betting works, and have grasped the basic concepts. Then move along to playing in a small buy-in tournament in which your monetary exposure is limited to the amount of the buy-in.