Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

So while I'm registering for a tournament on Absolute today, I happen to notice another tourney starting at the same time, with over 2000 participants. It's a swag freeroll. First place is an Absolute Poker card shuffler; 2nd-5th is similar crap. 6th thru 2000th is squat. 6 hours or so of play to win a $20 card shuffler. Unbelievable.

My question is: how many of these play money regulars and freeroll addicts would play for real if online poker were completely legal, above board, and as easy to fund as buying a book on Amazon? Is there a giant untapped pool of potential fish out there who are just scared of depositing money, or are they mostly people who love playing poker, but would never play for money no matter how safe and easy it was?

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

Its people who like playing but dont want to risk real money online becuase they dont wanna lose it. Also its a lot of underage players, you dont have to provide ID to play free money.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

People also play computer-/Playstation-/X-boxgames etc for fun. OR they are practicing?

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

My friend's dad plays for play money all the time, he will not deposit money on a site, I think at least partly due to lack of faith in the security of depositing.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

I always wondered this too. I mean, poker is sooooo boring without money changing hands.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

No way to deposit....
I mean since doyles closed i tried to open a cake account.. Good lucky. Thats pretty much what customer service told me anyway.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

I think it is a good sign, alot will get bored or feel they are good enough to move to real money.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

I'm surprised networks don't capitalize on these frequent play money users by giving them a dollar or two every once in a while.

Super-cheap props/marketing/loyalty for your users to play for real and get hooked.

Party (after a month or two) gives first-time-depositer-busto accounts a free ~$50. This is a big reason I initially gave them a 2nd chance, and resulted in thousands of dollars of rake for them.

I suppose abuse is an issue, but giving the top 1,000, 30,000 or 3,000,000 play money users a dollar is going to seriously revitalize the micro stakes games on your site, and get people hooked. Spending the same amount of money on TV ads isn't close.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

its old scared people who have no money or life. They play a few family homes games for 5 bucks here and there thats about it. There old ugly fat and married with 5 kids running around the house. These people get thier thrills from playing free online poker for hours, it sicker thank people who play for thousands and lose

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

Some will some will not. Some will get good at it and try the next step with real money. Others may get good but simply never want to gamble with real money. I know a hand full of guys at work that talk about their big on line play money accounts. I've played poker for a long time myself and when I went on line I played play money for a month just to get a feel for it.

Play money is simply a stepping stone to real money accounts that a certain percentange of players will go to.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

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My friend's dad plays for play money all the time, he will not deposit money on a site, I think at least partly due to lack of faith in the security of depositing.

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Same, except that is almost fully the reason he won't deposit. The other is that he's not sure its not rigged.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

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The other is that he's not sure its not rigged.

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I think that's a huge reason for a lot of people. They just don't trust that the RNG is truly random, or that the guy sitting across the table from them hasn't hacked the site so he knows all the cards coming, or that the site doesn't place all-seeing bots on tables to take players' money, or that they'll actually be able to get their money off the site if they win or decide to stop playing.

I started out on play money tables long, long ago, before I took the plunge and deposited some real money. A lot of the table conversations in those games revolved around topics like that, and a fair number of the people regularly played B&M and/or home games for real money. Well, that and the friend someone always knew who put a dollar in or something and cashed out $1000.

For the majority of those people, I don't think it would really matter if the U.S. gov't stepped in and regulated/certified sites. Who trusts the federal government anyway?

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

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its old scared people who have no money or life. They play a few family homes games for 5 bucks here and there thats about it. There old ugly fat and married with 5 kids running around the house. These people get thier thrills from playing free online poker for hours, it sicker thank people who play for thousands and lose

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I know what you mean. It's almost as bad as some people trying to act cool on a message board. Only to have their real education level exposed by poor grammer.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

It's the training grounds of the future fish. They make millions of play money chips and it gets them the thought they are good enough to make real money.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

80% of the people I studied with played with play money on Stars during the last 3 years. Of all those people (like 40), only one (me) deposited, and I also transferd 10 bucsk to two friends. The other ones just take it like another video game they can play on their laptops instead of sleeping in class. They are the same people who don't like playing a 10$ B&M SnG because it's too expensive for their taste, but spend 100$ on beer every week.

People are wussies.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

Five years ago, I was one of those play money players... and the reason I chose not to play for real cash back then (and it was for a good while, something like 6 months worth of exclusively play money gameplay), was because I did not trust depositing my money into the poker room (the poker room was pokerstars).

As far as I was concerned, the poker room was offshore, unregulated, promoted by people I had never heard of (remember, I was a newbie then, so I had not heard of the 'big' pro poker celebs back then) and had no bricks & morter presence to speak of.

For me, deciding to give my credit card details over to a poker room took a huge leap of faith. And even then, the first poker room I deposited into, was Victor Chandler (and that was only because their poker room is an offshoot of a well known UK regulated British sportsbook outfit). I simply felt my money was safe there.

As I became more educated about poker (started coming to twoplustwo and other forums) I relaxed and started using other poker rooms (Poker Stars and Party Poker), but it took time...

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

They have wives

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

playing 10 dollar tournaments is basically play money. Lot of people play for the fun of it, and not for the money.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

I reaallly wanna beleive that half of them are under 21.

so they dont wanna break any laws.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

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its old scared people who have no money or life. They play a few family homes games for 5 bucks here and there thats about it. There old ugly fat and married with 5 kids running around the house. These people get thier thrills from playing free online poker for hours, it sicker thank people who play for thousands and lose

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I know what you mean. It's almost as bad as some people trying to act cool on a message board. Only to have their real education level exposed by poor grammer.

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What's that saying about glass houses and stones?

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

Had a neighbor who plays on play-money tables somewhere.
On Yahoo perhaps?
In her 50's with a couple of cats. She was my pet-sitter when I was out of town.

Tried to tell her that she could play for just pennies on places like pokerstars if she wanted to. She would literally be unlikely to lose more than a $1 in a given session of .01/.02.
But she still wasn't interested.

Funny thing is that she occasionally goes down to Tunica and plays the slots.

And I know she has no problem buying stuff with her credit-card because she gets a lot of packages from the Home Shopping Network.

I think there's something with depositing REAL money online with an actual gambling site that makes people ill-at-ease.

If the sites were allowed to fully advertise their dot-com sites they could overcome some of this stuff just with basic info/propaganda.

"It's safe. It's easy. You can win a seat to the WSOP for only $2. Thousands of players are on right now all playing for REAL money all the way from penny-stakes up to our high-roller tables with thousands of dollars on the line.
Depositing into our secure network for as little as $10 will get you started on the road to riches....and you'll get a free $10 bonus as our welcome gift to you."


Talking in terms of actual money and how many people are actuially doing it would encourage more people to give it a try.

The dot-net ads just aren't as effective at getting people over the hump, "Learn to practice and play like the pros. NOT a gambling site."

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

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I'm surprised networks don't capitalize on these frequent play money users by giving them a dollar or two every once in a while.


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The freerolls are an opportunity to win money 4 or 5 times a day on Absolute or FullTilt. They usually pay top 2 tables from $2-20. depending on place. PokerStars uses a 2 tier system where the the last 2 or 3 tables go to sunday, make the top 15-20% in Sunday you win $$$.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

You are thinking of these players from the perspective of a poker player. Why would a poker player spend so many hours playing for free?

The better perspective would be from someone who plays card games on the internet. Millions of people spend countless hours playing games on yahoo, pogo, etc without any chance of winning anything of monetary value.

For them, the chance to win a card shuffler or a $10 freeroll prize is a big deal compared to what they might otherwise be playing for.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Had a neighbor who plays on play-money tables somewhere.
On Yahoo perhaps?
In her 50's with a couple of cats. She was my pet-sitter when I was out of town.

Tried to tell her that she could play for just pennies on places like pokerstars if she wanted to. She would literally be unlikely to lose more than a $1 in a given session of .01/.02.
But she still wasn't interested.

Funny thing is that she occasionally goes down to Tunica and plays the slots.

And I know she has no problem buying stuff with her credit-card because she gets a lot of packages from the Home Shopping Network.

I think there's something with depositing REAL money online with an actual gambling site that makes people ill-at-ease.

If the sites were allowed to fully advertise their dot-com sites they could overcome some of this stuff just with basic info/propaganda.

"It's safe. It's easy. You can win a seat to the WSOP for only $2. Thousands of players are on right now all playing for REAL money all the way from penny-stakes up to our high-roller tables with thousands of dollars on the line.
Depositing into our secure network for as little as $10 will get you started on the road to riches....and you'll get a free $10 bonus as our welcome gift to you."


Talking in terms of actual money and how many people are actuially doing it would encourage more people to give it a try.

The dot-net ads just aren't as effective at getting people over the hump, "Learn to practice and play like the pros. NOT a gambling site."

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Totally agreed. And to a lesser extent I think this is why Party was so successful. I miss Party. Look at FullTilt for example, the kinds of people you described don't really care whether or not they play with the pros. The only people that that type of advertising attracts are card sharks and railbirds.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

I won't play online anymore after 6 years, not surprised these play money players won't either. Too many soft games locally, and a lot more fun.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

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playing 10 dollar tournaments is basically play money. Lot of people play for the fun of it, and not for the money.

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I have made $1,000's at $10 tournies, but how much did I lose?

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

Lets say one person gets up the nerve to make the transition. They deposit and likely go busto as many new players do (variance, BR management, just plain bad). Some declare the games to be rigged. They likely tell their friends to avoid it thus losing other potential players as well.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

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I always wondered this too. I mean, poker is sooooo boring without money changing hands.

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I wouldn't say it's boring, per se (I play both for play mobnies and real mobnies).

However, I find people play a LOT looser with ye olde fake mobnies, if that were even possible, given the donkishness at the stakes I play.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

My dad has been playing on pokerstars almost as long as I have. (~3 years) He knows how well I have done (which isn't very well compared to most of you but still...) I transferred him $20 right after he started. About the only real money he has ever played has been .02/.04 HE and Stud. He still has about $10 in his account (and that's because I lost some of it playing on his account.) He hasn't played real money in over a year probably. He doesn't think it's rigged. He doesn't think he money is not safe. He just doesn't like to play for real money. He will play playmoney sng's all day tho and tell me how good he is. And he is not gambling averse. He will go to the casion once in a blue moon and he likes to go to the horse track.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

They are losers.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

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[ QUOTE ]
its old scared people who have no money or life. They play a few family homes games for 5 bucks here and there thats about it. There old ugly fat and married with 5 kids running around the house. These people get thier thrills from playing free online poker for hours, it sicker thank people who play for thousands and lose

[/ QUOTE ]

I know what you mean. It's almost as bad as some people trying to act cool on a message board. Only to have their real education level exposed by poor grammer.

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What he sayed.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

[ QUOTE ]
You are thinking of these players from the perspective of a poker player. Why would a poker player spend so many hours playing for free?

The better perspective would be from someone who plays card games on the internet. Millions of people spend countless hours playing games on yahoo, pogo, etc without any chance of winning anything of monetary value.

For them, the chance to win a card shuffler or a $10 freeroll prize is a big deal compared to what they might otherwise be playing for.


[/ QUOTE ]

Best point so far.

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

They have now way to deposit!

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

My excuse? None. Sheer laziness.

I would imagine that a lot of people do not feel the need to put money down to play a game of poker, however sad that may be. Pure recreation, without fear of it costing a penny (save for electric bill, internet bill etc).

Re: Zillions of play money players: why don\'t they play for real?
 

I was afraid I would lose money so I only used play money from June - Sept 2004. Then I saw an ad on 2+2 where a guy wass giving away $50 to play on Party (I did not know about RB at the time). I used his $50 and have never had to deposit my own money.

I eventually learned about RB and actually became an affiliate and started offering players $50 to play. That all ended Sept 30th when Party pulled the plug. I was getting around 20 players per month at $100 per player ($50 net). It was an easy grand but I digress...