Yes you could
Good day,
Can you learn to play poker using virtual money and then have good results playing for real money? It seems people act differently when playing for real and for virtual money. So does it make sense to practice with fake money if my goal is to learn to play for real?
Thanks for posting.
Many of the posters are correct here about game play. The key difference in virtual poker is there is no fear of loss so we cannot win chips by getting villains to fold very often.
We can however work on some skills in the virtual world and then transfer those skill to the real cash games to help us win more.
When starting few new players attempt enough bluffs because of fear of failure.
Playing in the virtual games allows you to become comfortable with bluffing in correct spots more often.
The key is your bluffs will not win in the virtual games, you will be called. This seems counter intuitive. In virtual you should not be focusing on win loss as it is just a lottery. You should instead be playing hands losing pots when you correctly
bluff then reviewing those hands to be sure your bluff was correct.
What do I mean. So you read a player for having a weak hand. You then set up a three barrel bluff representing a better hand. Then the villain calls you with nothing and wins. You stop review the hand and go through each street and see if you made a mistake or not. Was your read correct? Was your bluffing story valid? Could you have the hands you were representing? Were your bet sizes the bet sizes you would use if you had those hands?
When bluffing we want to represent several hands we could be holding not just one.
ie 233 we bluff only the 3 or 22 or over pair. 234 we can have. 22 33 44 A5 56 over pair Ax bluff the turn when a 5 comes etc etc etc.
There are many more spots to consider.
You can work at getting very good at reading hand strengths and choosing bluff spots in virtual and that very much helps you to win in real games.
Just expect to be called but the chips are free so why not lose them learning to bluff.
Hope this helps