I see Facebook poker as a place to play some free poker and improve your skills. As of writing this I have somewhere around 250k and I rarely play. I look at it like Yahoo 2-4 hold em. I go play when one of my friends is online and I want to chat with them. The competition isn’t serious and neither is the chip stack.

Facebook poker does serve a very important purpose though in learning new skills, as does any free poker game. Some players are maniacs and don’t take the game at all seriously. You’ll run into some of these at your local home games as well if you’re playing for anything under $50. Same goes for casinos at the lower levels as the person is either drunk or just out to “have fun.” So, by learning how to play against these less than serious players online you’ll pick up some useful skills to make an extra $10-$50 in a night against your buddy who is only playing because you needed the extra body.

Also, you can try out different strategies that you never would have thought of trying in a real cash game. Why not try raising several pots in a row? It won’t cost you anything to test it out. Or how about start learning some odds and see why you shouldn’t chase certain hands through trial and error. Free money poker can teach you important skills that you can translate into real money. That’s how I learned how to play. You can also learn some sit and go strategies as well as tournament strategies if you play in the Facebook tournaments.

It’s a free education and you should earn your chips, not buy them. If you buy them you never really earned them and therefore will just dump them quickly. Play in the rooms you are comfortable in and work your way up. You’ll learn a lot about different types of players (mostly different styles of maniac) and you’ll learn about hand selection depending on the amount of players at the table.

Facebook poker is for fun and that’s what it should be looked at. Test out stuff to see if you can do it before you go play for the big bucks. Believe it or not you will get better, you won’t become a WSOP champion but you will build yourself a foundation to put toward going and winning the WSOP championship.

Also, being that it’s anonymous (well pretty much) you don’t have to worry about looking like an idiot if the 15 plays you made to try and steal the pot didn’t work. There is no judgment. Just play, don’t buy chips.