Suggestions For Real Poker Practice for US Player Who Doesn't Trust

Hi All,

I used to play a bit of online poker back before things got tough for US Players. Since then occasionally I would look back into it and read terrible things about US Players mostly having to try unregulated sites and taking lots of security risks. No offense whatsoever if you do it, but I currently don't feel comfortable getting back into it that way. Note: I don't live in one of the (3) pokerstars allowed states.

However, once a year or so I get together with some old friends and play poker with them in person. I'd love to be able to practice more throughout the year, and also generally love playing and don't have anyone local who's interested in playing. So, I'd like to be able to practice against real players, and I have a few questions for you all:

-Would you say that playing for fake money on e.g. Pokerstars is really an accurate / close enough representation of poker played with money? Or do people mostly not take it seriously and you end up with a completely different range of play styles than you would playing poker with money?
-Can one organize private games with specific players on any of these sites? E.g. if I wanted to just play my known friends across the globe but online, could I set up a private table or two for them--even just with fake money and we'd figure it out on our ends if there's money? If so, which site would you recommend for this?
-If I were to get more active into online poker again, I might be more comfortable playing people from Cardschat rather than strangers colluding/potential bots etc. Does anyone here ever have private games / Cardschat members only games after getting to know each other etc., and would you say that lowers the risk of being cheated while playing?

Thanks for your thoughts!
clubsta

America's Card Room (ACR) has tons of freerolls, including "On Demand" for $10 prize pool. There is some bingo playing going on... but its not much different than you'll see in most freerolls (CardsChat excluded as it has a lot better play).

poker stars using Play Money: Jonathan Little has a weekly Home Game, Royal Flush Radio, CardsChat (occasionally), and Poker Stars School has Home Games

Advanced Poker Training you can play tournaments against real people daily. The free version allows this as far as I know - you just don't get the benefit of the more robust functionality of the website.

Zynga and wsop have Play Money - but the games seems to be full of "bingo" players - that said, it might be helpful if you intend to play freerolls.

I would not recommend playing with play chips. Different crowd altogether and not representative of play with real money. Get an account at a major site and play freerolls instead as discussed. You could VPN onto non-US sites but don't expect to get any money out of them.

Try ACR .lot of freerolls. u got nothing to lose