[Bruce D]

This is the exact reason the forum is here.

Read hands and contribute to the answers. It allows you to really think about the hand and you can take as much time as you want. You will not see the same hand twice here, nor will you see it when you are dealt the cards, but you don't need to see the exact hands. You need to get a feel for the game. ie, I called an open raise from the BTN in the BB and it's heads up, I just flopped middle pair. How do I proceed? Well if you try to think of it on the fly, you could clam up. However, when you are thinking about poker all the time, your brain will process the information and store it. When the situation comes up you will be able to instinctively make your decisions rather than REALLY think them through.

Most of us read the forums a whole bunch. Even more post a whole bunch more. Then they discuss the hand further.

I will replay hands in my head to see where I could have made fewer mistakes. I will throw hand ranges into equity calculators and create random flops to see what my equity would be versus a range. Of course this is done away from the table when you can afford the time to do so.

Of course there is no substitute for playing, because you can play so many more hands in any given time, than you can analyze, but mistakes are costly when you increase the frequency of those mistakes.

Sometimes if I get a soft table, I can play by rote. I don't even care what the board looks like, but those decisions come from having seen hand after hand after hand after hand. You get the idea. But it doesn't matter where you see the hand. If you see it at the table or in the forum, all that matters is that you are thinking about the game away from the game.