When you take a look at all of the different online poker sites that exist in the world today, something that should become very obvious right away is that the one thing they all have in common is a play money area. One would have to be an online poker historian to truly know the origins of the play money areas on online poker sites, but regardless of how they started, the poker software that is in use today almost universally has play money areas for people to use. From the online poker site point of view the play money section costs virtually nothing to have in addition to the real money section and the cost in lost customers that potentially comes from not having it would be too great a risk for most online poker sites to want to take.

In spite of the fact that these play money sections exist, there are many people around that do not make use of them at all. Quite a few online poker players will tell you plainly that they have never actually played in a play money online poker game before and indeed most of the players that would say this would not feel that they are missing anything by skipping that particular section of the website. While it is certainly possible to skip that section of the website and not really feel any ill effects as a result, there are some big positive arguments in favor of playing at least for a few minutes at a play money table before you take a seat at a real money table in order to get started with your gaming action.

The most obvious of these reasons is that by playing at a play money table for a few minutes, you will familiarize yourself with the layout of this particular poker site. This means that you will get all of the nasty surprises out of the way when it does not matter and therefore you will be better off with the real money games when you get to them afterwards.

Different poker sites have different layouts, especially where the pre-action keys are concerned. You might have the options to call, raise or fold when someone has bet and the action is working its way around to you, but the order in which those options appear might be different depending on the site you choose to play at. If you are used to a certain sites layout and you move over to another one, you risk the disastrous outcome of potentially clicking on the button to raise when you wanted to click on the button to fold. By playing a few minutes at the play money tables, you will be able to program the new order into your muscles and avoid such a potentially disastrous mistake before it even has the chance to form.

Free Poker is available all over the internet, but finding the best poker room will help you to get an additional No Deposit Bonus too.