Long post incoming!
Reminds me of something I was part of a long time ago, at least a little bit in the sense that it was trying achieve more realistic play from what was effectively play money. It was called Poker School Online, but the way it operated was a bit different. This would have been around 2003-05 when I was there.
You'd pay a monthly subscription for access to the site and their poker tournaments. Think it was $10-$15. There were strategy articles from guest writers, community forums, and probably some other things I'm forgetting. The main attraction was access to their play money tables.
They had S&G's and tourneys for Hold 'em and Omaha (limit, pot limit and no limit), think they had some Stud, Razz and H.O.R.S.E. too but I can't quite remember!
The idea was that you were playing for ranking points, and there were leagues for each specific type of event. A no limit hold 'em S&G league, a pot limit Omaha tournament league etc.
If you were one of the highest ranked players each month you'd win a seat in the monthly finals where you could win points. These points could be exchanged for buy ins to real world tournaments in
casinos and you could choose any tournament you wanted. E.g. win 500 points, and you could enter a $500 buy in tournament. You'd contact them to spend your points and they'd pay your entry. You could save your points and build up a balance to enter bigger and better tournaments.
Every 3 or 6 months there was tournament called 'the big one' where the prize was I think 10,000 points. Anyone who had qualified for any of the monthly finals tournaments in the previouis months was given access to this. They'd also have an annual meet up in Tunica, MS where some players would gather to play some poker together in person.
During my time on that site there was player who used his points to enter the
wsop main event and he made the final table. A guy called Mattias Andersson from
sweden finished 8th in 2004 for a nice $575,000.
Did people take it more seriously than play money? Absolutely, it was because we were paying for the priveledge of being there and there were prizes on offer. There was a big drawback though, the ranking system was somewhat flawed when I was there.
You'd have to play a minimum of 5 or 10 tournaments a month to achieve a rank and once you'd hit a good score you could hurt your score by busting early in any additional tournamnets. The rankings worked on a basis of the percentage of the field you beat, so finishing 20th in a 100 person tournament would give you 80% for example as you beat 80% of the field, and your scores were averaged across the number of tournaments you played that month. It could discourage from playing after you registered a good rank. The scoring system also meant that it was almost training you to achieve consistently safe money finishes rather than going for wins too.
It was good practice for survivng the bubble if nothing else as you'd really have to dig in a stay a live as long as possible if short stacked. They might have changed things around after I left, I don't know.
The whole thing ran alongside an
real money online poker room called Bugsy's Club, using the same
App and they had some sort of tie in to that. I think that in turn was connected with The Hendon Mob group of poker players from the UK. I had a real money account on there.
Edit: Found a little article on Bugsy's Club and there's mention of PSO in there too! -
https://www.safestpokersites.com/bugsys-club/
The name Poker School Online ended up being associated with
pokerstars in the form of free online lessons for noob players, I don't know if they picked up the naming rights after the original PSO closed down or what happened. I was out of poker for a long, long time.
I found it fun back then. Would I play in anything like that now? Probably not, but there are defiintely ways play money tables can be made more realistic than they normally are and that was one one of them. Can it ever quite truly replicate real money play? I'm not so sure.
