Do Play Money Players Graduate?

[Al Mirpuri]

Do play money players graduate to the real money games? Do they take that loose aggressive, play any starter cards mentality with them? How long do they last when playing for cash?

[Bama Boy]

Some definitely do. I played play money just to see how the deals looked, learn the interface, and generally just hang out and ask about the site in general before I started playing real money. Stars has so many freerolls going that its always fun to participate in if you just hang out in the play money.

[Legend27]

I had litte hold 'em experience before I played online so I did the play money on party before I deposited money. I did the single table tournies on party and played them pretty seriosly and did well (if you don't do play money seriously you can't do well in real money). After a month of that I put $100 and did the $5+1 single table tournies and lost about $50. Then I tried .50/1 and won a quite a bit, got bored there and moved up to the $25 NL tables and did well there too and recently I've moved up to the $50 tables. Since March I've won over $10,000.

[Inthacup]

There's a guy(Goldenhawk) on pokerroom.com who used to play for play money religiously. He played like 50 hours a week and had the all time record for biggest bankroll in playmoney, which is like 4.5 million, but has since been surpassed by some other play money freak. He got a free $10 on there as incentive to play real money. He's since parlayed that $10 into five figures after tearing up the games from $1 2 up through $25-50.

You can confirm his play money winnings here (http://www.pokerroom.com/games/toplists/?topList=holdemAllTimeTop)

I haven't heard about it very much, but he's the most successful convert from avid play money to avid real money player that I know of.

[MS Sunshine]

"if you don't do play money seriously you can't do well in real money"

That's just about perfect advice.

"if you don't play 50-$1 seriously you can't do well in $1-2"

That's almost perfect advice.

"if you don't play $5-10 seriously you can't do well in $10-20"

That's close to perfect advice.

"if you don't play the limit you're playing seriously you can't do well in the next higher limits"

That's perfect advice. If you wish to continue to do well at poker you should be working on your game every day and every hand. If you only play poker for fun then you have stumbled into the wrong place, please go back.

Everyone is getting better, you must run just to stay in the same place. Our market gets more effecient all the time, with some slippage as advertizing brings in many new players from time to time. When the pond is no longer being stock then the game really begins.

MS Sunshine

[SittingBull]

the play money 100-200 limit on Pokerroom.
His accomplishments were amazing! He won extra money several times for playing the longest time in a given period at a real money game.
A rare breed indeed!
In play money,one needs to obtain at least 5K to participate in the 100/200 limit.
hence,there is an incentive to achieve this goal--so the players at this play-money game are usually not playing random cards.
When i started playing at Pokerroom for play money, I parleyed my 1K to 300k
At this point,I reviewed the works of Jones,David and Mason.I also continued to try to understand the concept plays of fellow posters on this forum( And still do).In addition, I continued to do some related article readings in "Cardplayer"(Still do).
Hence,I believe I have enough ammo to attack real-money micro-limit in cyberspace. I tend to avoid competition. LOL! /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
HappyPokering, /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
SittingBull

[dux]

Ditto to Legend27, I was a home game convert who only played spread limit draw poker bet-or-drop, and I stumbled upon the old Poker.com, which has a real play money following. It was funny, I never knew how to play limit poker, so playing for play money taught me that, and I found out about Omaha, and other games.

I did graduate to real money, and I did my first buy in fairly quickly (I took the Poker.com $50 match bonus, so you can see why they have these play money rooms). The only other player I've ever heard of graduating is another Poker.com guy, who my freind had played in play cash. I used to watch this guy when he played real money $1/$2 no limit, that guy was pretty loose agressive, well, he was a nutcase.

[SwordFish]

Al -

Although I had played poker in home games (stud,draw etc), the first experience I had with Holdem was online with play money. In my first post to this forum I related my experiences, but the short version is: Yes I moved to real money, yes I brought the loose "play any two card" mentality with me and yes I lost my a s s.

I learned from this experience, read books and worked to improve my game and became a winning player. I don't know if most people follow this pattern, or if they just continue to lose and eventually quit. Interesting topic.

SF