Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
Don't play play money.

Play money will only teach you bad habits when you make the jump to real money. Play money also does not expose you to many aspects in real money poker.
Agreed. When I first started playing I played at a lot of play money tables where the players would bet and raise big with crap, and as a result I ended up developing a very passive style of play. Once I moved the real money tables I had a lot of trouble extracting the value of my hands, since I could no longer just check-call all my chips into the pot with strong holdings. I had to learn several dimensions of the game that I was able to ignore in the past.

The best way to get better is to play against skilled opponents. I also spend a lot of time thinking about poker and analyzing decisions I've made in the past, or hands that I've seen, and this seems to help.