Zynga Poker | Poker Blog

September 7th, 2010

Zynga Poker Photo

One of the more popular free online poker sites on the internet and Facebook is Zynga Poker. Zynga Poker has over 30 Million active users monthly that play on the site. While it is a popular site, can Zynga Poker really be considered a good way to break into poker? Not really. There are several issues that really make playing at Zynga not only a time waster, but it can also hurt your growth as a poker player.

Not Realistic

The first thing that you will notice about playing at Zynga is that it really is not all that realistic. Players do not play with any semblance of strategy when they play at Zynga. The goal is to get as many fake money chips as possible and in many cases, it becomes an all-in fest. Would you shove with 9-2 after two raises ahead of you in a normal game? Hell no. Would six people go all-in in one hand in a live game? No. It happens frequently on Zynga.

Buying Chips

A big issue I have with this “free” site is the fact that they regularly sell players additional chips. While you can add onto your stack in a live poker game. You cannot get 100,000 times your money when you do so. Want to buy 36 Million in chips? Just pay 75 bucks and you are set. Where does the strategy come in. You can sit down to a table and play any way you want and not really care about going bust.

Slow Game Play and Spam

For the most part, the game play on Zynga is much slower than most any reasonable online poker site. Actually, this plays slower than even some web based online poker sites. In addition, there are 100’s of ads that you have to put up with. Do you want to send chips to your friends? Do you want to accept chips from your friends? Do you want to invited them to play? Do you want to paint your monkey blaze orange? Ok, maybe it doesn’t ask you about your monkey, but you get the point. And this isn’t even including the ads for you to buy new chips.

Why Play Zynga When There Are Options

Zynga poker can be fun for many users, but there is one thing you will never do on Zynga, and that is win real money. As such, at some point, you have to make the jump to some type of real money site. The great thing about many online poker sites is that you now have the option to play freerolls for cash and prizes. Full Tilt Poker is among the best in offering regular freerolls to players.

Freeroll tournaments are just as they imply, as in they are free to enter. The only “catch” about these events is that they pay a very limited number of players. For example, you might have a field of 20,000 players and only pay 50 players. A normal poker field would pay at least 2,000 in that size tournament.

While that may seem like a big catch, one must remember that any prizes won in a freeroll are legit and that they can use their cash prizes to play in real money games. Let’s say you play in a $500 freeroll and a 50th place min-cash is $5. You min-cash and win $5. You now can play anything from .01-.02 NL all the way up to a $4 tournament. Red pro Annette Obrestad has never made a deposit on any online site she has played. She started all of her bankrolls through freerolls.

For those that pay for play chips, why are you doing this. You are paying anywhere from a couple bucks all the way to $100 or more for chips that will NEVER have any real value. A better bet would be to make an online deposit on Full Tilt and work on playing real money poker.

One group that can help you make the transition to play live poker is Play Money to Real Money on Facebook. Through this site, you can get help with setting up a new account, help you with your deposit, and can even give you guidance to play real money poker.

Playing poker online for free can be fun, but ultimately is no better than playing an online computer game. It will not lead to your being able to make money, and it certainly will not help you improve your poker game. If you are serious about playing poker and making money at poker, then you need to play live. Make the transition today and join the rest of us in the real world of online poker.

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