We all come here for different reasons; fill in some free time, meet and chat with buddies, try to win medals, get an understanding of the basics of Texas Holdem. I come here for all those reasons and really enjoy this fun and friendly site. As I?m sure most of you do, it?s a good bit of harmless fun.

Having been here for over 6 months I've seen my game and general understanding of the hold?em really improve.

One thing I?ve noticed is that the styles played on a free money sites differs greatly from real money sites. Although micro-stakes would likely be fairly similar. You know what I mean, calling the blinds with any 2 hole cards, chasing over-priced flushes, going all in on Q7. All of us would think a lot more carefully about table position, aggression and hole cards strength before handing over our hard earned (heavily taxed) wages. Would we still pay $150 into a $200 pot to try for the flush after the flop? Think about it.

The style here is a kind of passive/loose style in general characterised by check/call patterns rather than raise/fold/re-raise. Of course it has fair share of nuts and flakes in the mix to keep it interesting and keep dollars flowing.

An aside: I watched a live cash game a Full Tilt the other day, not a televised job where you get shown the most interesting encounters, this was just everyday cash poker with blinds of $10/$20. All the players had $4,000 or more, so a reasonably serious game. After playing Gpokr it was so interesting to see the differences. On Gpokr almost everyone sees every flop no matter what cards they hold , occasionally a raiser will drop 5 players from the 9 ring leaving 4 to flop. As I watched this $20 game I immediately noticed that I only got to see a flop about 40% of the time. I.E. Most contests are won through positional pre-flop raises. When a flop does show it is very rare to see more than two players competing for the pot, what a contrast to the regular 8 way pots we?re all constantly fighting over. Showdowns to 5th street were all but non-existent.

This told me a great deal: You can have a laugh here and learn the basics but the real cash games of hold?em are hugely different. Undoubtedly, Gpokr has some good quality performers. The likes of Wallak, Zoid, Winner Robot, Basket J, Shark, Clarkie, Vince Carter and sboll regularly demonstrate their ability to rise above and beyond the masses.
My question is, how do we adapt the skills we learned on Gpokr to be effective when playing for real cash?
Any of you that dabble with real cash games, I would really appreciate your feedback.
One last thing; So this site is primarily for social fun and helps you learn hold?em up to a point. It seems that once a certain level of competence is achieved that Gpokr would stifle rather than enhance card skills.
So
To all the aforementioned Gpokr heroes and the countless others that I forgot to mention could you please give up 30 minutes here and there and bang in a few entries on the (hugely underused) strategy section in the forum. Some of you are clearly genuinely skilled at this game and sharing some of your insights methods etc would be good for the community as a whole.

Come on Wallak, how do you do it month after month? No need to share all you finest deceptions/read techniques, just take 30 mins out of you Gpokr day and help the noobs and improver play better.
Sboll, you get on the forum often. What a hugely positive step it would be if you could be arsed sharing your wealth of knowledge with unwashed masses.

On a personal note: I am interested in getting involved in some small stakes cash ring, cheap sit n goes and cheap buy in tourneys. I've done a tiny bit of this but would be very grateful for any replies from cash players that can spell out some crucial differences and help me to avoid the novice pitfalls.

I have a feeling that if the top players got into producing tutorial material and insights into better play it would enhance the sense of belonging to a community for all. At the very least it would make a change from all the cheating and transferring accusations.