Poker Games on Social Networking Sites

Everyone has a facebook or a myspace at this point in the online revolution. Along with these sites, social networking games have also begun to pop up, including a few that have to do with poker or hold em tips on a limited scale. These play money poker games are one of the biggest assets that the real money sites have to entice new players into taking a shot at the real thing, giving these players an avenue to try their luck and learn the game without any financial risk. The most popular of these is Zynga Poker, a free to play application on Facebook that allows players to earn achievements and badges to show off things they’ve done in game.

However, these social network poker sites lack a few things that the actual online sites can provide. The only variation of poker most of the sites offer is holdem (a game you can improve at with Free holdem manager while the online sites offer free variations of all the games on their site, along with free tournaments that offer small cash prizes to the top finishers, something the vast majority of the social sites can’t match. The advent of the badges/achievements can also be a bad way of teaching people how to play the game. It may seem like a cool thing to get a badge for a royal flush, but it also drives players to making insanely bad calls with awful hands (think Qh2c on a AhKhKcJh board) that may carry over into the real money games, including but not limited to Blackjack, Roulette, and Slots for cash. Good for good players, obviously, but terrible for the newcomers. Be wary before choosing a new no deposit poker networking site; you may be better off just going with the real thing.