Many poker sites, especially when advertised on television make a point of offering free poker games. What does this mean? Can you play for real money without having to put up any of your own? Is there no real money involved? There are options on these websites of this nature, but thats not what they mean when they say their site is free.

What they mean is that there is no charge for downloading their software or subscription fee that you have to pay to play on their site. With the competition for online players as heated as it has become, there is no reason you should be paying to play online, and I know of no reputable online poker site that charges in this way.

So how do these sites make any money? They make money by charging something called a rake. A rake is a percentage of each pot that the dealer takes out for the house as a fee for providing the game. This rake is usually around 10 percent of the size of the pot, and usually capped at $4. Live casinos also make their money from poker games in this way. Some live casinos charge time instead, which is a set amount that a representative of the casino collects each half hour, but the rake method is far more common.

In a tournament, where all the chips must remain in play and no rake can be taken, casinos add an entry fee to the buy-in for the tournament, so for example a single table tournament might charge $100 + $9, with $100 from each player going into the prize pool to be redistributed to the winners, and $9 from each player going to the house.

How can you play a truly free poker game, with all the money being returned to the players? Play in a home game. It is illegal in most states for the organizer of a home poker game to profit from said game. Besides which, youre probably playing with friends who would rather win your money fair and square anyway.

What about playing for free as in no money changes hands at all? Most online sites offer play money tables where you can get accustomed to their site without putting any money at risk. The play money tables are clearly distinguished from the real money ones on your games menu. These tables are a good opportunity for you to familiarize yourself with the software. However, you are unlikely to be able to accurately gauge your poker ability through these games. With no real money on the line, many players treat these play money games as a game of bingo, and just keep putting chips into the pot and hoping for the best.

As far as playing for real money without putting up any of your own? Well, you can do that too. Many sites offer free rolls that award either a small amount of money or the entry into a bigger tournament as their prize. You can get into these free rolls in a variety of ways. Sometimes just being a new player on a site earns you the opportunity to play in a free roll, other times amassing the sites player points can earn you tournament entries that are worth real money, still others are just a first-come, first-served affair, with the number of entrants capped at a predetermined amount. Keep in mind because these tournaments are free, you will often find yourself competing with a very large group of players for a very small prize pool. But hey, its still free, right?