Quote Originally Posted by Pythonfriend View Post
i am most familiar with reallife poker, no limit Texas Hold'em, and i can tell you.... poker does not work without money. poker requires a monetary value attached to the chips, or it does not work. i play with friends or in tournaments with low stakes, buy-in with friends may be as low as 2 euros. often 5 euros. small for fun multi-table tournaments may have a 10 euro or 20 euro buy in.

but you cannot really play poker without money at stake, no matter if its online or in reallife. all players need to concentrate, when one player fails to concentrate it can either ruin the game, or there is money involved and everyone is happy and the game continues after the douchebag got knocked out.

also you cannot learn poker without doing serious poker. I learned no limit texas hold'em at a private table where buy-in was sometimes 5€, sometimes 10€. 3 of the players were so good that they would sometimes go to a casino for a week, with a common pot, and would pay off all hotel and restaurant bills with their winnings, and come back with a bit of a profit. You learn from such people and when there is no money involved they wont touch the cards. So i lost each week and kept paying my 5 euros (or 10 euros) each week for maybe 3 months and learned poker. in the end 5 euros for up to 3 hours of reallife poker with very good players was a good deal, they explained a lot and some could calculate odds in realtime.

if you dont like the monetary stakes, play chess or go (i mean the game "go"). Backgammon can be played with or without money. But poker requires stakes. you cannot learn at tables where the chips do not represent money.
Good point. So many of the other players are so quick to go all in with a pair of 3s. Kind of ruins the game.

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