Should I play Freerolls or for Play Money?

I'm still pretty bad at poker and I wanted to know if it's better to learn the game by playing for play money, in freerolls or if neither has a distinct advantage over the other. I'm doing my best to absorb basic strategy, I just ordered Poker: The Real Deal by Phil Gordon. I just wanted to know where it was best to practice.

I would not suggest play money, that is the furthest thing from real playing there is.
If you are unsure of how the game is played, then by all means play it to get the feel, but keep in mind the betting and calling will be different in real money, and freerolls.
I think the freerolls are your best bet, and the play is pretty poor in those as well, but definitely not as bad as play money.

Alright, thank you for the speedy response.

There are several levels in online poker game: play money, freeroll, micro stack real money, low, medium etc.
As the level rises so that the game becomes more difficult.
You can definitely skip the play money level because you don't learn anything from it, unless you don't know the rules of the game.

Yea I would have to say skip the play money, the only time I have played for nothing is when I was trying to learn Badugi and then it came in handy. I tell people that never play online to start with fr's because they can actually when real money. There are a lot of people in those that don't know how to play anyway so a person could fit right in. Other then that maybe you could get into forum games because usually low fields for a nice prize and work your way up that way.

As the others have already said, skip the play money.
Freerolls are HARD but you can build a bankroll with them, I did.

The only reason to play the play money games is for practice,
it won't be like a real money table, people tend to get crazy with chips on play money.
They can allow you to play some games when you don't have a Bankroll and you can learn from them.

Once you have a small bankroll try playing .01/02 cash tables if that's your game.
or small (.25 .30 buy-ins) tourneys
Go to the FTP Academy and watch the video from Chris Ferguson on BR management, it will really teach you how to maximize you cash.

GL

If your not sure about playing play money keep playing it until you understand why it isnt like real money.

Here's my suggestion:

1) Play with play money until you build up several million. If you can't do that, then you probably shouldn't be playing real money anyway.

2) There are web sites that will buy your play money for $10-$12 per million. Keep at least a million set aside so you can repeat the process in case you go bust while you're learning.

3) Profit!

I did a variation on this - I played on PS for about 8 months with play money until I got to about $3 million. I didn't know I could sell it at that time, but I wanted to try real money, so I deposited $25 with a promise to myself that that was the only deposit I was going to make. I didn't want to be one of those people who continually deposits and busts out. Even if I could afford it, it seemed like a bad habit to get into.

I watched it gradually dwindle away to about $6 at .01/.02 NLHE and $1 SNG's. Then I found out about selling play money, sold $20 million for $20 and was able to build up from there by tightening up a little.

Freerolls are an option, but I like them less because:
1) Until you actually cash in one, you have nothing to show for it. At least with play money, you can see if you are a winning or losing player and can gauge your progress toward a sellable amount.

2) Even if you do cash, it's likely to be just a couple of dollars which would be very difficult to build into a bankroll. You'd have no room for variance before you're busted again.

3) I think freerolls encourage bad play even more than play money. With a freeroll, the expectation of a win is so low that you may as well either build a big stack early or bust out and move on. If your playing at the highest stakes for play money, you know your opponents are at least among the best play money players, and that they care about losing their play money bankroll and will play about as well as they can.

4) There is no freeroll equivalent to a cash game and you should practice both cash and SNG to see where you do better.

Finally, when you do sign up for a real money account, make sure you get a rakeback deal.

Good luck!

I'm one of the few who approve of play money poker. At the highest play money buy-ins, both ring and tourney, you approach small buy-in cash play. Approach, mind you.

Cash play is different. It may be because everyone playing cash has a differing level of scared money play. Scared money is that money you can not afford to flush down the toilet.

As a beginner, you want to feel as comfortable as you possibly can BEFORE you plunk down your hard earned cash just to watch the sharks gobble it up.

That will happen anyway, but before you get all discouraged and whatnot, learn as much as you can for free.

While there is a sane reason to not play play money poker, it still seem to me the biggest reason most people council against it is unspoken. They want new fish! The sane reason would go more along the lines of protecting yourself, and your bankroll.

I too used the million play chip model in the beginning. Tho I punked out early (somewhere over 1/2 million play chips) I am convinced it helped me make only one deposit at any site. Those who learn under the gun, meaning they learned with real money, might still be depositing on a regular basis.......

Take that , you real money snobs!

Dont waste your time with play money. Good freerolls a little better than playing for nothing. Then if you make some bucks, try to make more on the cash tables.

Lol, actually my reason for advising against it is I do not think it is even comparable to freerolls. I was trying to teach a friend who lives out of state and took him to the play money tables.
Granted, maybe I was not at the right play money stakes, but when someone would go all in, so would 5 other people and I don't see that unless in one of the ultra turbos.
So I was trying to explain to him why not to shove his KJ when the others are shoving less than that.
jmo

play play money without fear, when i started playing poker i was a losing player at play money, started reading on the basics, playing tight, made millions of playchips before i moved to any sort of real money game. the highest level of playchips i can find on stars, 200.000 sngs is actually pretty close to the 2nl level.

good luck.

what site lets you cash play money chips for real money? lol

I doubt any poker sites do this, but if you search for something like "sell play money chips" you will find several third party poker sites that will buy them from you. You transfer your chips to them and they transfer cash to your account. The risk is all yours, but I never got burned. Though when I sold $2 million, I did it in two transactions to check that they were legit first. I think I recall hearing about people getting burned by trying this with individuals they met in chats or forums. I haven't done this for several years, but a quick search still shows plenty of sites that look like they do this. Poker Stars chips appear to be the most popular, but some sites will buy chips from a variety of rooms.

On full tilt theres like a $40 freeroll for a ridiculous amount of playchips, 500k or something like that.. Not sure about any other sites though.

To the OP - If you want to play without spending money for a little while until you're comfortable depositing, then just play freerolls. Just dont expect to make much money. As has been said many-a-times the CC freerolls have the best payouts and odds to cash around, so that could be a way to win money without depositing. It does cost at the minimum just a little bit of your time to get in though.

I think you'd probabaly just want to deposit at least a little bit, and when you qualify, play the CC freerolls as well to try to help cushion and build on your bankroll.

Thats what i should try and do but i play freeroll but not playmoney i should give it a shot lol damn online poker lol

Just an update - I tried to sell $3 million in play money and the best offer I could get was $4 per million. And I saw that Pokerstars apparently prohibits the selling of play money. One site I found would send the funds to PayPal instead of your Pokerstars account, so it might be hard to detect.

Anyway, it doesn't appear to be as profitable as it once was, so I didn't bother.

Can you explain please how you do it? How it works? what site you sell the chips?
tnx

Let me google that for you.


Google is your friend.

tnx man

Yep, I'd say try playing as many small field freerolls as you can. Just to get the experience and possibly cashing to get your bankroll started. When you get better try playing buyins. The key is to keep playing as much as you can to gain the knowledge for the tight situations. Good Luck hope you do well.

Once you are familiar with a sites software, play money tables are a waste of time.

freerolls! You can learn a lot when it's bubble time.

Play money is too often lottery poker

i as a novice found out that playing small .01/.02 buyins was a big step from play money.play money was a waste of time for me and i had better fun in bingo.freerolls will help you in the long run especially after the all-inners are gone.

dj and I have always been together on this. I think the 10,000 play money and higher sit and goes on PokerStars play similarly to the $1 real money sit and goes, though probably more passive and also less donkey-aggroish. Meaning, not enough raising/betting in the play money but also less idiots shoving any Ace hand.

Freerolls are a different animal and are pretty hard to describe in terms of use 'cause you get players at both extremes of the passive/aggressive and decent/awful spectrums.


For learning purposes, play all the CardsChat freerolls that you can. The play level is miles above any general freeroll you can play, though even then players who know better won't play at their best, 'cause it's still just a freeroll.

I had $25,000,000 play chips on Party and never sold them. don't like the site and prefer cash play on FTP.

Found this so most of my chips will be gone.

Earlier this month, PartyPoker changed their play money chip policy and imposed chip stack caps to non-real money player accounts.

Party Poker play money chip counts can now only reach a maximum of 250,000 play chips.

PartyPoker’s decision to cap the play money accounts has caused somewhat of an upheaval amongst loyal play money chip players at PartyPoker.com, many of whom had amassed virtual fortunes only to wake up the next morning to find their hard earned free chips cut right down to a meagre P$250,000.

The official statement via their blog went along these lines: “We recently implemented a new policy that restricts play money accounts to a maximum number of chips. This decision has the vast majority of our play money players in mind, and is intended to stop the transferring of chips from account-to-account outside of regular hands of poker… Although this may have affected some play money players in the short term, the decision was made in the interest of our play money games and the fair play benefits it will bring. We will not reverse our decision.”


PartyPoker Play Money Chips, bankrolls depleted
For those who have never tried a play money account at PartyPoker, here’s how it works, players opening an account at PartyPoker get 1,000 play chips to begin with and are permitted two reloads of 1,000 play money chips within 24 hrs, prior to the new policy players were permitted to amass an infinite amount of chips. Players were never allowed to transfer their play money winnings between each other yet lo and behold there were players caught dumping chips to each other for a price. In addition to this some play money players stooped as low as selling their play money chips on ebay, with other sites like chipempire selling play-money chips where players could purchase a billion chips for a mere $400.

Now understandably if playing poker for play money is your thing and your bankroll was bursting at the seams you would be pretty upset with the new policy, but let’s be realistic here, it’s only FREE Play-Money, besides I have tried out play money games at Party Poker in the past and it certainly can’t be called poker it’s like a full on donk fest with all-in’s and re-raising galore, certainly the skills are somewhat lacklustre vs. that of the real money poker games.

My suggestion to all of those die hard PartyPoker play-money chip players is quite simple really why even get upset just move on and play for real money, as let’s face it, you were wasting your time in any case and if you have any skill then put it to the true test by playing for real and if you are that upset with PartyPoker.com, minimum deposit is $10 at Full Tilt Poker or PokerStars for first time depositing players plus it’s coupled with a bonus to reward you for your effort.

I suggest you try FRs, I built my bankroll from them, check out Harrington's books and Collin Moshan wrote a beauty on SNGs when you have raised a bank. Good luck.

How do u cash play money?

Learn to read

Are these sites credible? They really pay money? Can someone elaborate how this is done?

for 500k playmoney in fulltilt has a MTT for real money prizes

LOL! I never knew it.

True, and the field is usually less than 90 players and pays $2 at 18th. Not bad. I've cashed once out of the 2 times played.

I would be playing freerolls if I were you. Play money games are pretty much like playing bingo.

Disagree... I believe that most (if not all) on here would be doing their best to help you by telling you.. "DON'T BOTHER WITH THE PLAY MONEY crap!!!" It's a waste of your time & if anything it'll only enforce poor habits that you'll just need to break anyways. Way better off to just try to learn the right way to begin with.. (right = the style you gravitate towards & what becomes profitable for you... although in something like a SNG/STT.. there can arguably be a 'right way'.. & a wrong way (or not so right, lol)).

Do some reading - I see you picked up a Phil Gordon book.. great stuff.. but unfortunately the wrong book. You want 'Little Green Book' for sure!!!

Read up on some beginner SNG strategy and give some micro buyin SNG's a shot (or try 2nl cash tables). Whatever you pick it's best to try sticking with just one variation of the game for awhile until you're very familiar with it (ie. SNG's 9plyr.,.. just stick with 9plyr. for awhile, then consider branching out to the 18's, & 27's).

I can't understand why anyone would suggest/recommend the play money stuff???? It's a joke.

play money is a waste of time,at least in freerolls you if you do well you win something and if not you will be improving your multi table tournament experience