Ignore all the people telling you that you can’t learn anything from free games. They’re wrong.
You can’t learn how to play from free games, but a near-total beginner (which is what it sounds like you are) can definitely learn how the cards fall by playing free games. You don’t need to have any experience to calculate your odds of hitting on a draw; you need lots of experience to calculate your pot odds (ie., your odds of winning the hand versus how much money you can win).
Apart from anything else, playing free tourneys will give you a better feel for the relative strength of each hand.
Better yet is playing free live tournaments, like this. I play in a very similar league in the Central Florida area. The “stakes” are much higher- you can’t just join another table when you get eliminated, so people play much more tightly than online- and playing against actual humans with actual facial expressions and table talk and stuff can’t be recreated online.
Another vote in the “You CAN learn things from free online poker” column…
As stated upthread, play-money poker is still excellent at learning the fundamentals of play: patience, discipline, and aggression, which (because the players are so bad) should pay dividends more immediately than at a real money table. In addition, as you move up in the play-money table limits, the level of play actually does begin to approximate what you’ll see at a low-level real money table (which makes sense, since any player who has amassed millions of dollars in play money is probably as competent as someone found at the $0.01/$0.02 level at a real-money table).
I do agree that you should be absolutely crushing the play-money tables before you can even consider yourself a decent player.
Oh wow, thanks for all the responses, guys. I leave here for a few hours and you all pony up a wealth of information!
Really Not All That Bright, special thanks to you. I’m sitting here debating whether or not to head over to a free tourney near me right now. I’d get crushed, but hey - I’d learn something.
I’ll do my best to join you guys this Thursday as well.
As far as donating money to the owners of the company, nah. I’ve known them for a year or so now and it’s a small, close group. I’m just moving up to be in the home office (it’s really a promotion rather than a new job). They play for pennies, from what I gather.
Thanks for all the info here, guys. I really appreciate it! It’ll take a while for it to grab hold, I suppose - since I started typing this reply, I’ve lost like $500 play-dollars (damnit, I had KK and the flop was 3-J-8 rainbow…or something…).
The Wilson Software poker series is probably what you’re looking for. It’s well regarded and pretty flexible.
As to the OP - if you want a very good introduction to poker, read Sklansky’s The Theory of Poker. There’s not another book that even comes close to detailing most of the basic concepts as well. It is the single most valuable book on poker.
Super/System 2 has chapters on the most popular casino games - Razz, Omaha, Eight-or-better, Stud and Limit Hold 'em, off the top of my head, and I think one or two more (plus No Limit Hold 'em).
I should have clarified that I was interested nonSuper System books, the other games get mere chapters whereas Hold 'Em gets whole bookshelves worth of whole books by a variety of authors.
Is it from a lack of interest by the poker playing masses (well obviously yes a little) or at least partially because these other games are not as nuanced as HE or what?
Both. Hold 'em is on TV, and those other games aren’t, for the most part. It’s not so much that HE is more nuanced - I’d say Omaha is more nuanced than Hold 'em - as that Hold 'em is the most dramatic game.
Hold 'em is the only poker game that’s usually played no-limit. Omaha is normally played as pot-limit; the other games, like 7-card stud, are usual fixed limit.
I’m not quite sure what your definition of nuanced is, but I’m not sure I could agree with any. Omaha is usually a slightly more mechanically complex, but less theoretically complex game - you usually have a much better idea of where you stand and what’s an out. Except shorthanded or at very high levels, there’s usually not much ambiguity or ranges to your decisions - you play for nuts or nut draws. Hold 'em is definitely a more nuanced game, IMO. This is even more true of split than high. This is assuming we’re talking about real poker, and not the 7 bet deep tournament bullshit that makes up most of what’s on TV - in that case, there’s no nuance to anything.
Hold 'em plays on TV well. It’s easy for a casual viewer to understand - it appears to be extremely simple on the surface, and so it’s the game that really sucks people in. They’ve had Omaha based games and stud based games on TV and they just don’t translate as easily - I find them interesting to watch, sure, but the commentators spend the whole time just explaining to viewers what’s what and half the audience still probably doesn’t it get.
I’m the furthest thing from an expert, but I’d say that the reason that Hold 'Em has become so popular are that it’s a game with a lot of strategic depth, so the professionals are happy to play it, combined with a lot of features that can sucker poor players. The flop, for example, seems to be basically designed to sucker idiots into calling almost anything at the first betting round.
The top players will tell you that Hold 'em is supposed to be played after the flop. In truth, it’s not a mistake to take a flop most of the time. The problem with doing that is that the swings are too big if you play too many hands, and the odds say you’ll go broke early.
