There is nothing better for improving your game than getting as much play time on the felt as possible. Signing up for low buy-in satellite tournaments is one of the best options, but tournaments can be troublesome. Unless you've gotten a schedule of upcoming tournaments and live near enough to a casino to play for six hours straight and go home, tournaments aren't an option for the average non-professional poker player.
Home games also pose their own problem. Although a home game is one of my favorite ways to spend a weekend, it takes a lot of effort to acquire the supplies and arrange schedules with friends to get a game together on your own. And unless you have a competitive group of friends, home games will never challenge you enough to significantly improve your abilities.
Enter the alternative, the online poker room. Despite what you might think, playing poker online has several advantages that you can't find in a normal casino game, particularly if you're new to poker or have only played casually in the past. Anyone interested in significantly improving their abilities will find a focused learning environment in an online poker room. While many pros shun online poker play, for the small-time gambler and poker fan, it can be a useful tool.
First off, playing online allows you to focus completely on your game. You can play in your home without travel or sitting in an awkward chair at the gaming table. More importantly, you don't have the pressure of a dealer waiting on your move or other players staring you down while you think about your next move. There's no fear of embarrassment. Anonymity always makes people a little bolder, so you don't have to worry about looking like a fool for making a mistake or forgetting a point of etiquette.
Secondly, online poker allows you to concentrate on the fundamentals. While poker has recently been showcased as a televised sport, some shows air only the most dramatic points of poker, turning it into a Hollywood affair of stare-downs, table talk, and veiled tells. But playing good poker takes much more than just a stoney poker face and mirrored sunglasses. Although learning to read other players and retaining composure is a very important aspect of the game, those elements are a lot tricker, especially if you haven't yet mastered the basics. It's a lot easier to eliminate those less tangible variables for the moment and focus on the quantifiable aspects of poker. Although it may seem simple, concentrating on your opponents actions and bets to determine their hand strength is just as important as what their face or their body language might say.
In online poker, you're not worried about anything except for the cards, the chips, and your position. Because there aren't the extra levels of nuance, you learn to examine those things that remain even more closely. They become valuable sources of information that are often overlooked by unseasoned players. You learn to examine the situation based on what your opponent does. Moreover, you pick up the ability to let your chips speak for themselves; you learn to communicate through betting. Without those added levels of performance to distact you, you start to deconstruct your opponents actions: Player1 raised $100 in middle position. How heavy of a bet is that compared to the size of his stack and the big blind? Is it just enough that it would seem like he wanted you to call or is it supposed to threaten? Is he simply trying to weed out the limpers?
Analyzing game play on this level is very important, but many people get caught up in the theatrics of it all. But tone of voice and posture won't help you at all if you don't know when to bet and how much, which hands are worth keeping and what your opponent's bets might mean. Although it won't teach you how to calculate odds (I can suggest a few poker books for that), online poker does teach you how to hone your fundamentals by breaking the game down into smaller digestible components through which a new or casual player can greatly improve their game.