Yes, unfortunately it was only practice.

For anyone who has considered playing for real money on any of these on-line sites, I would advise quite strongly against it.

First of all, you don't know if you are playing against real people or a computer program designed for you to slowly but surely lose your money.

I have noticed, BTW, that the winning hands in these on-line games are generally a lot stronger proportionately than they are in real life, i.e. a lot more straights, flushes, full houses, etc. on a percentage basis than you would normally see in real life.

This makes it much harder to evaluate your hand.

For example, I've seen straights lose to flushes much more often on-line than I have in real life. In seven card stud, it seems that almost every time someone has three cards of the same suit showing, they have a flush.

You also seem to get a much higher percentage of "starting hands" than you normmally would (a pair, 3 card straight, 3 card flush, etc), which encourages more people to play each hand, so they lose their money faster.

Also, there is the danger of collusion.

While JG and I were playing last night, we were also communicating during the hand on Yahoo IM.

You can see the obvious danger in that in a real money game. Two or more people could be playing together and telling each other when to raise, when to fold, etc.