Is it worthwhile, at all, to play Play Money NLH on UB or anywhere?

[Yardbird]

I initially thought it might help me with tactics for NoFold'em Hold'em; but, now I'm not so sure... I think I may just be picking up bad habits. I've never played online before, and the last few days have been rather demoralizing.

I'm interested in ruminating on the intrinsic value of attempting to conquer the Free tables. Pros and Cons if you please.

[cornell2005]

pros: gives you time to think about situations, hand strengths, overall poker strategies, ect

cons: can pick up lots of bad habits, wont develop hand reading skills from other people's plays, ect

[JKratzer]

I tell all beginners to start out at Play Money, mostly to learn the value of certain hands against others. Once someone knows the basic rules of hold'em and how good certain hands are against other hands (i.e. straight when three flush cards are out) then I recommend they start playing very low limits and work their way up. If you know basically how to play poker and feel comfortable playing, put on however much you feel comfortable losing (always assume you will lose, it's safer) and work up from there.

Good Luck,

JKratzer

[Godfather80]

Because hand reading is such a important skill in NL, I'd stay away from play money. As Sklansky said in HPFAP, don't bother trying to read the hands of bad players, it's a waste of time. The players who use play money don't really have that much to teach. I'm sure it could be argued that neither do the players at 25max buy-in tables or 5+1 SnGs, but I think one can learn more about NL here and have less chance to pick up the bad habits that dominate play money. For a great example of how not playing with real money destroys any semblance of actual poker, watch Celebrity Poker on Bravo. It's a joke.

I thought about this play money problem quite a bit when I first started playing. I decide that the only way that play money games could be useful is if you had a NL study group, consisting of yourself and 9 others, who could take over a play money table. At that point, you could attempt to play seriously and possibly (note: it's still not the same as real money) learn NL on the cheap.

[Yardbird]

First off, I'd like to thank all those who've read or responded to this thread.

[ QUOTE ]
Because hand reading is such a important skill in NL, I'd stay away from play money. As Sklansky said in HPFAP, don't bother trying to read the hands of bad players, it's a waste of time. The players who use play money don't really have that much to teach. I'm sure it could be argued that neither do the players at 25max buy-in tables or 5+1 SnGs, but I think one can learn more about NL here and have less chance to pick up the bad habits that dominate play money. For a great example of how not playing with real money destroys any semblance of actual poker, watch Celebrity Poker on Bravo. It's a joke.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess I've just had that principal redemonstrated to me regarding reading bad players. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I don't suppose it helps that the proportion of chum-league (as in "shark-bait") to average players seems to be in the neighbourhood of 9:1 at the FreeMoney tables either. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] But, it comes back to the basic concept that it should be more profitable for an average to good player in such situations: the proverbial "No Fold'em Hold'em" (NFHE) game. That's what I expected and was principally seeking to experiment with since my poker experience is almost entirely flesh&blood games (except for the last couple days @ UB) where the proportion of real fish and calling stations at any given table is nowhere near the micro-calibre found at the FreeMoney tables online IMHO. I suspect that I got impatient and reckless waiting for the optimum hands that are required on NFHE tables coupled with the fact that I had no real stake in the game to trigger a reality check. (Should this move to the Psychology forum?)

Anyway, perhaps I should solicit information about what kinds of hands I should be playing and what fundamental alterations to conventional wisdom should be adopted to optimize performance in a NFHE=FreeMoney game and compare that with what I was actually doing. I'll try searching the forums here as well.

I've not completely given up on the experiment... I'd really like to see if its possible to conquer the FreeMoney tables---theoretically, it should be, as I assume that similar situations have already been discussed on this site in the past. If any of you reading this recall and can post links to those threads it would be much appreciated.

My secondary hypothesis about the FreeMoney tables is that the quality of play should get better as the blind values go up in proportion to the basic Freeroll value (1000 points @ UB)... Maybe I'm wrong. My next foray may be to attempt to capitalize on Malmuth's reasoning that the optimum bankroll is equivalent to the BB (if I recall the Poker Essay correctly).

Any and all suggestions on how to accomplish my goal of amassing 1,000,000 points ASAP playing at the FreeMoney tables on UB are welcome. Perhaps I should cross-post this challenge in the Poker Theory forum?

[ QUOTE ]
I thought about this play money problem quite a bit when I first started playing. I decided that the only way that play money games could be useful is if you had a NL study group, consisting of yourself and 9 others, who could take over a play money table. At that point, you could attempt to play seriously and possibly (note: it's still not the same as real money) learn NL on the cheap.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree; however, I'm still convinced that there must still be a way to defeat them in the long term, despite the gulf of divergence from conventional strategy that may be required to do so.

Here's some extraneous background on my personal take on online gambling (in white):
<font color="white">I really have no interest in playing online for real money, because I feel like a blind man there, unable to fully evaluate my opposition, and equally unable to verify that there is no covert machination of the flow of the game. Just because one is paranoid doesn't preclude the possibility that somebody is not out to get one. I'm also very wary of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
If any community can appreciate the possibility that the purveyors of online gaming might be capable of acting in contravention of reason by manipulating natural circumstances of profit, I would think that it is poker players (it's an optimum bluffing situation IMHO). But I digress... Let's not delve into any conspiracy theories in this thread, P L E A S E.</font>

[flatline]

Just play the .01/.02 NL games on UB. Its so little money that you're not really risking anything, and the game at least has some sanity to it. It doesn't really matter how much you play for, but you have to play for SOMETHING before you can really consider it poker, and learn anything.

[Yardbird]

It's all about the challenge in this case.

I'm not interested in playing for money unless I'm F2F with my opposition. I'm a well-schooled, but, intuitive player.

[crazy canuck]

If you don't want to play the microlimits, you can try the no limit freeroll tourneys. It is still no fold em, but less silly than the play money games.

[sniperd]

I honestly have been able to apply a few things I learned from play money to real money games. However, I started playing play money, after I was a real money player. Here is what happened, and how it helped me.

I was already playing some $25 buy in NL, and was a regular at the low limit Foxwoods tables. A friend of mine wanted to play online too, but wasn't ready for cash, so I played with him for a few weeks, on and off, on various sites. From this, I learned several things:

1) Which sites I liked. Since I was playing fake money, I spent more time exploring the site, since I was a little board.

2) You can learn to play Omaha, or 7 card hi/lo, etc. Something that may not be spread often, and the easiest way to learn the rules is to get in there!

3) Play money players are terrible in general. There are many bad habits to be picked up, and this leads to my next point...

4) If you can't beat a play money table over time (if you play it seriously), then you probably can't beat a real money table. Ideally, you want to play with players constantly making mistakes, and that's all there is at a play money table. You just need to tighten the heck up, and get in there with the best hands. It's very extreme, but you’re practicing the Fundamental Thermo of Poker. Now, you must realize that middle pair is NOT often the best hand at real cash, so don’t start picking up bad habits, but if you’re already a good real money player, you can learn this:

5) How to beat that table full or terrible players at 3:00 a.m. in a BM that just got done at a bachelor party. I don’t know how many times I have heard players complain about how a game was so ‘good’ that it couldn’t be beat. Well, how often do you get to practice against a bunch of terrible players? You may have a couple of goons at your table giving it away, but how do you beat 8 goons? The only place where you can practice this regularly is at play money. Sure, you may do fine and make some money, but I have found that I need to drastically change my game to beat a full table of idiots, and when the fires hot, I wanna strike it when I find it!

I would say in general, the play money tables serve little purpose to me now, but you can glean a few gems out of them!

[Yardbird]

...Then this maniac shows up on an incredible rush an ruins the day's take. :-( I suppose I should have had the presence of mind to just take off rather than butting heads with him (I'll post the 3 hand sequence elsewhere in this thread).

I share very similar reasoning on all your points. The only difference is that I'm not interested in playing online cash-games.