As I mentioned before, I play a lot of free poker.
It’s not really free, but technically it is. All players can sign up at no cost, but the expectation is that you’ll support the venue that it’s held at by buying food and drinks. Free poker is similar to playing for free chips on any given online site. There’s little consequence for playing poorly, or taking chances you wouldn’t ordinarily take, so you can get pretty frustrated with bad players, especially if you take things more seriously, as I do.
Further, some poker companies allow you to pad your chip stack simply by buying drinks and food. Some places are so bad that they’ll give you 50% of the starting stack by buying a shot. Buy food, drink, and a few shots, and you have 10 times as much as a player who has not. The point of all of this is to support the venue who is paying the poker company to put on the game. It’s a great bit of capitalism, but it perverts the poker game dramatically.
Fortunately I have become involved with a company who stopped that particular practice long ago, and only awards a smaller amount of bonus chips for things like being a regular, or RSVPing in advance for the game. This has a similar effect as it encourages a regular clientele. Almost everyone eats/drinks anyway, so while it may not generate massive alcohol sales, it makes for some happier players, and evens the playing field a bit more. I so enjoy this company that I support them by running tournaments when a fill in is needed, and providing the website and web-related work for them. I’ve become pretty good friends with the owner, and am proud to be involved. (www.posh-poker.com in case you are curious).
I already pointed out the hazards of “free poker”, but I still love it. When playing against regulars, you find they actually start developing a desire to play correctly and to improve their game. So you quickly spot the people who are “donking” and the ones who take the game a bit more serious and adjust accordingly. I’ve become pretty good at this. I regularly make final tables, earning points towards end tournaments and taking down gift-certificate prizes.
After playing this way for years, I’ve improved my game dramatically. The question became, however, was my play good enough and was so much “free” poker ruining my ability to play real poker. I took that question to Vegas a few months back and found out, much to my pleasure, that I did have what it takes to survive a real game. I played in four daily tournaments (one at the Golden Nugget, three at Binions) and cashed in every one. I actually won the second tournament I entered at Binions. I also played a few cash games, and came out quite a bit ahead there too.
There’s more to my improvement than just playing free poker, as I play online quite a bit, have read quite a few books, and immerse myself in poker media (books/magazines/tv) as much as I can. But the regular live play has benefited me the most. Even if you are playing against “donks”, you see a lot of hands, and I think any poker player will tell you that the more hands you see, the better you’ll get.
So if you get a chance to play some free poker, I highly recommend it. It won’t cost you anything, and you may just improve! If you live in an area where Casino’s are far away, you may just find some free poker companies… so look around. I’ve often thought that if I ever moved back to California, I’d start one… even though you can take a short trip to a Casino, I think there would be a market for it where I used to live (San Luis Obispo, CA).
I have much more to say about poker, but it’s late and time for me to get some sleep… so there will be a part 3, probably a part 4, and beyond 
- Jesse
Oh, by the way… I won the tournament I entered tonight, and placed 5th and 6th in the last two I entered Go me!
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