I was going to respond to your original post about Play Money games as I didn't feel they were 'realistic' but having read this one I think that what you say makes a lot of sense.
I have tried the play money on several sites but never for very long. Is there a particular site where you feel the PM games are representative of 'real' games?
The American sites don't have much if any play money games. Tilt and Stars do.
Note that at the low levels you will be banging your head against the walls. Building the big br will be tuff, but figuring that out is a transferable skill to real money. Once you do get that big br, the highest buy-in games are pretty decent games, and several folks around here will agree that they will be playing at least as good as $5 STT's or MTT's.
I personally, from experience, would go further suggesting that if you have the balls, you can do alright at the $20-25 STT's/MTT's, but will not have the 'scared money' experiences needed to tackle those games comfortably.
Also note that there are more naysayers around here, who think I am FOS about my approach to getting into the online poker world. Their points, which are certainly valid, center around getting that 'scared money' problem solved early by losing lots en route to learning poker. My counter is those greedy bastards (
) want to profit on that learning curve.
IMHO, once a game starts and a stack is in front of us, we should be taking the game seriously. Whether that be working out some flaw we perceive, or building a bigger roll, or trying new stuff, or just competing, or whatever. Along the route to that big PM br the basics of BRM come into focus, and that too can be learned via PM.