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Play Money Wins

rainmaker314
rainmaker314
in General Poker Questions

Hello everyone, been on the site since June. It has really helped my game. I am pretty regular in the tourneys on APT and have recently started playing play money on Poker Stars, also playing in Jonathan Little and Gareth James home games on Poker Stars. Anyone interested in these should check out their websites for details on how to join. Now to my question, when I play play money, I go in thinking like it is a paid tourney. My thinking is usually geared towards the buy in for the next tourney I am planning to play. At this moment when I am playing, I am thinking I paid 135 dollars to enter. So this week I took down a play money 148 entrant tourney and last night finished 5th in a 204 entrant tourney. Both were on poker stars for play money. It feels really good to have done this since I only played those 2 tourneys on stars so far this week. I am taking it with a grain of salt because it is play money. I did play very well and used all of the techniques that I have learned. How much stock would you put into these results if it were you?

Comments

  • pgearan
    pgearan

    Congrats! Always fun to cash no matter the venue!

    Short-term tournament results real money or play money are always taken with a grain of salt. Good players can go long periods of timing without cashing and some less than stellar players can get hot for a short period. Although if you are trending toward better results it's not like these 2 tournaments are meaningless and they may well be a sign of your improvement.

    The question is whether you thought you made good decisions that helped you money in these tournaments versus just having hit a great run. In many of the APT tournaments, players are really motivated to play well and get better so I think it is a better barometer than some free situations where people play insane. If you're finding similar solid play elsewhere then maybe these games approximate real money game quality better than others.

    If you make the transition to live money games, start small and see how you feel and see some long-term results at the lower levels before moving up.

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