Can you learn poker watching it on TV?

I was watching the Full Tilt Poker million dollar cash game on TV a couple of days ago. So if, if not the best professional poker players in the world were sitting at the table. These included Patrick Antonius, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Andy Bloch, Mike Matusow, David Benyamine, Tom "Durr" Dwan, Phil Helmuth (until he walked out in one of his famous temper tantrums) and Phil Ivey.

In general I thought the standard of poker being played was very high - as you would expect. However, if you were a newcomer to the game of poker and were watching for the first time you could pick up some bad habits that would lose you a lot of money when playing real poker. The main reasons for this are because when good poker players are playing against other quality poker players they know that they can make some moves and their opponents can fold.

If you are a novice poker player and are playing against other newcomer poker players you should really play ABC poker. Bad poker players can't fold as they don't know the relative strength of their hands and so making moves, or bluffs against these players is pointless. Against bad poker players don't try to bluff pots because the likelihood is that you will just get called. Instead when you hit a hand bet big as most novice players will call to try and hit some sort of draw. The only time I would not bet massively is when you hit the nuts, you should probably try to milk as much out of the pot as possible, you don't want to lose your customers when you can't be beat.

If you would like to improve your poker game you can find a number of poker articles to read and think about. If you would rather try and improve your game by playing poker than by reading then why not try playing some poker freerolls as a poker tournament with free entry and real prize money will help you learn about the game but not hurt your pocket at the same time.