A lot of poker sites these days are using poker training as a way to bring in new players. The thought of educating new players to help them play profitably and make more money appears to be a great way to entice more players. Sites like PKR have partnered up with popular poker training sites. In this case earning PKR points will allow you get access to Bluefire Poker Training with Phil Galfond. Bluefire pros are also writing strategy articles viewed for free on PKR.
Full Tilt has partnered with Cardrunners to offer Truly Free Poker Training where you can earn free subscriptions to the popular training site by simply playing. You don’t even have to spend your hard earned FTP points to pay for the subscription, its completely free. FT Poker also has their Full Tilt Poker Academy where you can earn FTP points by completing certain tasks and quizes while building up your poker education. This is a completely free service as well.
Party Poker will be eventually unveiling Party Academy, their version of a free online poker training school.
NoIQ tried going with a poker training section which lasted a few months. Was mostly a quiz to earn a $ bonus.
PokerStars has their Intellipoker, which is simply a Poker School run by PokerStars meant for the German poker community. Intelli Poker provides poker coaching as well as live poker training for their poker school.
Probably won’t be long before we see all major poker sites incorporate more poker training within their offerings or partner up with some poker training sites to provide additional incentives. Poker in 2010 should be interesting.