(2020 edit: I haven’t played this game in years and came back on a whim to see what’s new, and I have some new thoughts on the strategy portion at the bottom of this section)

Texas Holdem Poker games for all experience and skill levels! FAIR PLAY – Zynga Poker is officially certified to play like a real table experience. Take your online poker games anywhere and know that you’re getting the true Vegas-style game. VARIETY – Play poker free and however you want! Join a Sit n Go game or a casual online poker game. The same indirect answer is true about real money Zynga Poker. In 2013, they started offering real money poker games to players in the UK. While this faucet of the site received positive reviews, it failed to compete in this new market.

Some blogs try and attempt to explain winning strategy in Zynga No Limit Hold ‘Em Poker, the secrets of Zynga poker, the Zynga poker “cheats”, etc., but the problem is that they try too much to adapt real money strategies into the play money game of Zynga Poker. Doing this will simply not work. This is Zynga and it’s an entirely different world from real money and it needs to be played as such. This is not to say that there is nothing from real money strategy that works, it’s just that things need to be tweaked a bit and that’s what I’m going to explain to you here.

This entire strategy will simply be one single entry to this blog. I challenge anyone to disprove it doesn’t work when followed to a tee over a 2 week period or so. I would really like to see people leave comments and say how they have done. Just one favor though please be honest with yourself that you were indeed following the advice given here to a tee. I know it can be extremely hard for people to adopt a strategy and just toss away their bad habits over night, so i would think it’d be a very rare person that could probably read this and automatically forget the way they had been playing up till this point. So once all the bad habits are flushed away and you can incorporate the advice here, give yourself a week or two of some decent hours of play time and let us know how you’re doing.

Now on with the strategy.

There’s a huge difference in play style between playing Zynga Poker for play money and playing poker for real money. When it comes to real money, well, you’re playing with real money. You’re probably emotionally attached to this money and play very conservatively with it (or at least you should be unless you’re a seasoned veteran that can play a very aggressive game because you’re good with exploiting players’ tendencies and good with math and know when you’re truly getting your money in good). In a real money game, you wouldn’t be raising or even calling 6-7 offsuit or A-10 when you’re first to act in a hand for example, yet people do this in Zynga poker all the time.

People do stupid things like this when playing Zynga Poker because it’s play money. Sure there’s still some emotional attachment to the “money”, but no where close compared to when it’s real money. This is why people playing Zynga Poker frankly play like idiots; they’re emotionally detached from the money and are willing to gamble it up.

Realize as well that you can in no way use Zynga Poker as a training ground before taking the leap into real money.

Play Zynga Poker For Real Money In Usa

You will get killed. Trust me.

Zynga Poker for play money is a game all unto itself. Yes it’s similar to real money in that it uses chips, and there’s cards, and the hands are the same, but betting patterns and skill at real money cash tables are completely different and it is a whole ‘nother world.

Everyone thinks they’re a better player than you, and there’s little respect for your action.

Another seemingly general rule in Zynga Poker is that every player thinks they are better than every other poker player. You are probably even one of these people. I’d say probably 75% of poker players think they’re better than 75% of other poker players. Well of course that math doesn’t add up. The Dunning-Kruger effect is very real in the poker world. People think they can bluff others off hands, and in turn they always feel they are being bluffed by someone they feel is just a gambler looking for some action. This is however likely more true in play money games rather than when playing for real. It would make sense because a smart player would realize that most people just download these poker apps to have fun and gamble and you’re likely to be playing with 70 year old grandmas who don’t really have a clue what they’re doing. This is why so many people call practically any bet with any hand. You know as well as I do that people go all in with the most idiotic of hands… 2-5 offsuit with A-10-8 on board. They don’t care. So please realize the likely skill level of the playerbase.

Most people don’t want to think about strategy in play money games, they think poker is all about gambling and that’s all they’re there to do. When you see a picture of a player at the table who looks like a 60 year old woman holding her cat, you can be certain that person most likely is not there to contemplate the inner workings of the game. They are there to have fun and gamble. Some people love the thrill of the gamble over mulling over strategy and winning on their own merits. This is what you need to capitalize on, but also unfortunately why you can’t expect to rake in money quick because you really do need to play tighter in these games than maybe you currently think you should.

So OK, what does it take to get rich at Zynga Poker then mister blogger guy that knows everything? Well that answer is two fold, and back in 2011 when I first wrote this, I would only have the answer which will follow in the next paragraph. But now trying the game again in 2020, I feel there possibly is two answers, and one of them is a bit nefarious and disappointing. The first is…

Fold fold fold and fold some more. The majority of your hands per hour may be just folding. Boring right? This sounds idiotic to newbies, but do you want to win and use skill and observation to your advantage or do you just want to gamble and cross your fingers?

Common sense will tell you that if you’re sitting at a table with 8 other people, and you have K-4 of clubs, and it’s checked to you and there’s 5 more people to bet after you, you do not raise this hand. You don’t even call trash like K4. I don’t care if it’s suited or not and it looks pretty and ohhh you have a KING!

Shut up and fold.

Your powers of observation should be telling you that many hands will get shoved all in by someone, and these people will show down with anything. I’ve seen people shove all in with trash with no hope of winning thinking that they will bluff others out of the pot and scoop up the dead money, and this is idiotic in play money, because as I mentioned… People think they’re being bluffed by everyone else and think they’re better than everyone else. Egos run wild in poker, even play money. What’s funny is that people will call that all in shove with equally bad hands. People will also call all in shoves with much better hands.

This is why you don’t bet in Zynga poker unless you know you are good. It is usually fruitless to use logic and think that the player behind you should fold to a bluff raise because there’s no way logically they would have called the raise on the flop in their positions and based on their action pre flop, etc. etc.

STOP!

Stuff like that is GREAT to think about when it comes to real money, but it’s pointless playing on play money poker apps.

Top two pair or better on the flop for Zynga poker (As long as the board isn’t paired, creating the danger of 3 of a kind or a Full House) seems to be good enough since people typically call with much much worse. Then you just start getting the money in the pot. Bet enough to keep the person in the pot, don’t price him out if you think he’s not as much of a crazy player as most are who will shove all in over your bet with a garbage hand. Last thing you want to see is the flop come As 4d Ts with you holding AhTc and you don’t bet enough, the other guy calls, and then the turn comes another spade. Now what? If your opponent has any spade in his hand, he’s got a w