Nowadays it has become industry standard for poker rooms to feature play money sections. Many people insist that play money poker is useless crap that will only serve to make you a worse player than you already are, however, the fact that every single poker room has play money games, means that there is something to it after all. Poker room operators are pretty much on to what the public wants, so the public must want free games if they invest so much energy into it.

At a closer analysis, play money games are useful from a couple of points of view: first, they give would-be real money players a taste of the interface graphics, software features etc. Even people who deposit real money and are fully intent on playing real money games, hit the play money table first, to get a taste of the action and to familiarize with the environment.

On the other hand, many of the players who hit these online poker rooms today, are players who don’t even know the rules of the game. In this respect, poker rooms have created the best poker school that ever existed. Sure, play money tables are chaotic, and there are tons of mistakes players make there. Obviously there’s a risk for new players to pick up some anti-skills, yet still it remains the best and fastest way to learn poker.

The problem with most rookies who learn to play via play money tables is that they take the action literally. They aim to build up huge stacks of fictitious currency, and they try to simulate a real money game as closely as possible. The problem with that approach is that a real money game is extremely difficult or damn near impossible to simulate. There will always be someone at the table who will act strange and will ruin the game for everyone else. On top of that, people will never fight over play money quite the same way they would over the real deal.

The answer here, is not to play for the play-currency. You have to find some other reason that will keep you going. You have to play for knowledge. You have to play to learn. Every single hand you play, try to learn something. If you think you’re on to something, don’t hesitate to put it to the test. Remember, the currency you’re after, is not play-money but something much more precious: poker knowledge and experience.

In play money poker, you’ll be able to grasp some of the most important aspects of the game. Before you even realize, you’ll be able to tell why table selection is extremely important, and above all, you’ll know how to do it from then on. Online poker facilitates table selection more than anything else. There are tens of tables available at or near just about any limit/stakes, and you can actually watch the action at any table before you decide to take a seat. What more could you ask for when it comes to table selection? Despite all this, many rookies just pick the auto-seating feature and just let a great opportunity pass. I remember the first time I realized the importance of table selection in online poker. I was in a real money game, and I was winning. Pretty big actually as I was on fire that night. At a certain point in the game, a player took a seat at the table.

"I’ve been watching you" he said. "you are pretty lucky". That was the moment when the usefulness of table selection hit me in all of its glory. Needless to say, this guy then went on to try to strip me of my stack, which I couldn’t allow, so I left the table.

Play money poker offers great lessons in similar situations. It is limited, of course, like anything that has to do with beginners, so after a certain period spent at the play money table, the time comes to move on. What it can and will teach you though, is how to beat a game. Remember that if you can’t beat a play money game, you’re less than likely to be able to make it in real money play, where the rake will give you a much harder time. (you can get an edge on that via rakeback though) and the other players will also play it quite differently.

Editor's Note: This and future articles in this series are written by Steve Larson, RakeMeBack.com, who has been writing online gambling and poker articles in his home Canada for several years now.