Because of Black Friday I'm taking a break from online poker until the situation becomes clearer in terms of legality and how confident I am that I can withdraw from the sites still in the US market. I can probably make it to the casino, long drive, once a month or 3 times every 2 months. So the amount of hours and frequency of days playing will be drastically reduced.
In order to practice playing will software be helpful? I'm talking Wilson software or Poker Academy Pro. I play LHE but may want to branch out into NL. I don't think free poker makes sense, the games are silly at best.
I don´t think it´s going to be usefull. I think you're better off depositing a small amount on sites that still accept american playes (ie. Merge). Even PlayMoney is better than simulation softwares imo.