BEGINNERS GUIDE TO POKER: STARTING TO PLAY

You're now ready for the next stage of learning poker - jumping in somewhere and starting to play poker. It's a good idea to try out the play money tables first, so you can get a feel for things without risking any of your own money. Most online poker sites have play money tables (all our partner sites do) where you can start right away.

There a number of benefits to starting playing poker this way. It gives you the opportunity to make sure you are familiar with the rules of poker and poker hand rankings - you want these basics to be lodged in your head without having to think about them as you begin to put more effort into learning poker. Playing poker for play money for a couple of hours will help this stuff become second nature to you.

You can also experiment with a few different ways of playing - playing a lot of hands (playing loose) or sitting back and waiting for premium hands (playing tight), raising a lot of pots (aggressive style) or just calling other bets (passive style). You can see how different actions get different results and maybe even get a feel for what sort of play suits you best.

However, it is very important to remember one thing - for the most part, players do not play the same at play money tables as they do at real money tables. When there is nothing at stake, players tend to be a lot more reckless and play a lot more hands. This is not necessarily an indicator of how they would play with their own cash.

So the best thing is to spend a little time on these play money tables to get a handle no things, but don't pay too much attention to the results or how other people play.

Useful links

You can play for free at any of the following sites :-