If you go to the website Wild Tangent Games (which is similar to Steam for those more familiar with Steam), they have an old game for purchase called World Class Poker with T. J. Cloutier for ten bucks. It runs fine on a Windows 10 machine - I've had a few hiccups with it, but one or two reboots and reinstalls and they seem to have gone away. I haven't tested it on Windows 11.

The reason I bring it up in this specific forum is it does have a DECENT low-stakes limit hold'em simulator. By decent I mean it will give you LOTS of chances to practice playing in multiway pots. But by decent I also mean, if you can believe it, the "players" are actually WORSE than what you'll find at most live SSHE tables. Most pots are raised before the flop, most often by hands you almost never see raised in live games. "Villains" make desperate crying calls on the river that you'll almost never see live - it's not at all unusual to bet one pair on the river and be called by ace high, king high and a busted OESD.

To give you an idea of just how bad they are, I've played 5,140 hands and won $19,957 at $10/$20. So let's say that's 1000 big bets I've won - 1000/5140 = .19 big bets PER HAND. So to translate that to live play where I'm being dealt 30 hands an hour, that's 5.84 big bets per hour. Let's say now I'm at a $4/$8 table where about $6 per hand or $180 per hour is coming off the table so I'm essentially paying $180/9=$20=2.5bb per hour in rake/BBJ/tips, so I'm still profiting 3.34bb/hr - that is an INSANE winrate LOL!

With that said, there are three levels of difficulty - easy, medium and hard. I wish there was a way to control their preflop raising frequency and calling/overcalling on the river standards - just tweaking those two things would make the easy level VERY similar to playing at a live low-stakes table. At medium level, you seldom have more than 3 players seeing a flop, so it's not that helpful for people like me who want to practice for low-stakes live. Back in the day, I did SOME study on short-handed LHE, but it's been so long and I didn't/don't really enjoy it that much so I can't comment on to what extent it helps people practice for the GTO situations you'll see in high-stakes LHE i.e. online.

FWIW you can also play fixed-limit Omaha Hi (why?!?!?!?!?), stud draw, no-limit and pot-limit hold'em and no-limit hold'em tournaments. It has some tutorials with T.J. himself as well.

Anyway, hope someone finds that interesting.

nice review.

recommend trying real-money low-stakes cash online. for LHE your best bet is ignition, followed by ACR

Hi BBB! Good to hear from you sir.

I don't think I've played a single hand of online poker since 2016 or 2017. Seriously. Back then, most of the Ignition LHE tables were 6-max, and on the 9-handed ACR tables you were lucky to get more than 2 people seeing every flop. Have things changed? (I know I could go look for myself I'm just making conversation for now ).

Most (if not all) online LHE tables these days are 6-max. If you only play full-ring, I recommend studying 6-max a bit and then diving in. Think of it as a new challenge! If nothing else, it will improve your play in heads up and blind defense spots back in your live full-ring game.