Q. Why Play? A. Cheap lessons. ...Here's what I do....Deal out a ten player game. Five cards across on top. Five cards below. Leave a gap in the middle for the flop. Top left is small blind. Bottom left is the button. The button never moves. Your strategy moves by position. You don't burn cards. Just play. No you don't need chips. But, buy them here if you really need them.... Start under the gun....Now, here's where the fun starts. If you think you have a good raising hand then leave those cards face up. That becomes the hand of the, "opposition". The opposition gets the first two raises automatically. Let's say the opposition raises with total trash. Even though you know the hand, you must go to the next hand and make a decision. Do you really want to call a preflop raise with this? Perhaps, you do. Perhaps, you fold. It's an actual decision. Make one....Solitaire Hold'em allows you to play questionable cards experimentally. (Calls that somebody would make just, not you). Leave those cards face up. Calls that you feel would be good as trapping hands are played face down. Or, long shots. The last raise belongs to you to cap the pot if, you are so inclined. Toss junk accordingly..... You will be dealt about 30 hands per hour in typical CASINO PLAY. Therefore, you will only have to make about 30 starting decisions per hour. Since you don't play every hand (nor should you try to ) the net learning experience is far less than you might think. You don't see what gets folded by other's and that is data lost. You at home playing SOLITAIRE however, must make about 300 starting hand decisions per hour (in a 10 player game). Hence, your decision speed must improve, quickly. Here, is where you establish and test your STARTING HAND STANDARDS......... Make your mistakes at home and not, in the casino...SAVE mucked hands off to the side in order of play but, don't check them out until the hand is finished. There will be times when one or, both of those cards in the mucked hand pile would have won that particular pot. However, if you played them on a regular basis you'd be destroyed. Don't feel bad. Doing the right thing is often painful at times. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". You are on the right road. In life, you must play the hand that is dealt you. In poker, you don't have to. Also realize that, "One mans trash is another mans treasure".... DEALER: "Show the winning hand". KEEP RECORDS. I can fit 40 winning hand results on one side of a paper 3 x 5 card, in shorthand. There will be four columns, ten deep. e. g.... 2p J9s = Two pair Jack nine, suited.... tp KQo = Top pair King Queen off suit, etc. Underline the Queen if, it was she who hit... I played literally thousands of hands before the idea of record keeping even entered my mind. When, I finally started to, I began to notice patterns about my game that I now consider flaws. You establish a baseline by doing this (record keeping). It's a bit clinical I admit however, you need a point of reference or, benchmark to start from. Enter the date or, dates you played to those winning hands. Tabulate the number of winners by type e.g. 4- boat's 6- straights 6- flushes etc. It is hard to know where you are going if, you don't know where you are. "Be not afraid of moving slowly. Be only afraid of standing still."_ Ancient Chinese Proverb..........Develop your own lingo along the way. What is commonly known as the Bicycle or, Wheel I call, "Tobacco Road" or, "Poverty Lane". Sometimes, it even wins..WHAT'S THIS? (tr sf 2-4)..A whopper! And what I have left for you here is vastly more than what I started with. Take it for what it is worth; a good place to start...showboatlou P. S. There will be some who scoff at all of this of course. Actually, I have only expanded on an idea that I stole from an old guy in an old taped interview. He talked about how he learned in his younger days. His name was, Doyle Brunson. He seemed smart enough to me whoever he was......