A friend just sent me a link to this site called PurePlay.  You can win money playing poker, but you don’t have to deposit any of your own money, which means that it is legal to do.  How is this possible?  I haven’t downloaded the application, but I suspect that the format is similar to freerolls that are offered in online poker rooms.  I used to play in these freerolls, and I think that they are good for beginners, because you get some real experience playing with players who have some skills and take the game seriously.  You can’t win much if you place in the money, and the odds of doing this aren’t particularly good.   I never won any money.   It is definitely better to play in freerolls than to play for play money, but not by much.  So give it a try, but expect to be bored in short time.

Remember that software bug at JonWoodGaming, the one that helped me win a lot of money. Seems like a similar bug has hit Betfair Poker. Below is an abbreviated version of the story. It was written by Alistair Osborne. The original story was reported by the Telegraph.co.uk.

The real story is that several bored poker players ould futz aroundlate at night (GMT), and do icro-stakes Sit-and-Go’s; they would all go all-in on and one. Then, someone noticed that on a six way all-in, there as a Software Bug: hands 2-6 were all paid FULL 2nd lace money. They soon graduauted to $500 and $1000 S&G’s; the same sofware bug applied! Word got out, and over one late-night, hundreds of thousands (millions actually) of dollars were “won”. Faced with exposure when the morning Betfair auditors came in, these players furiously made withdrawals or played in high-stakes games, dumping chips to many other players (not originally in on the scam).

When police begin to go after people playing low-stakes poker in VFW posts you know something’s going crazy. It’s apparently illegal in Texas for the house to make money off of a poker game, even if the money is being used for a charity. Keep in mind that it’s not illegal for the state of Texas to take a cut of lottery proceeds. Hmmm, something doesn’t seem too consistent about this.

Poker, the game played by Mark Twain, George Bush, members of the Supreme Court, is apparently destroying the fabric of this great nation. Watch the video and see for yourself the problems that cops face viz a viz people who play poker in “illegal” gambling rooms. Drew Carey does a nice job narrating.