There are sites where you can play with play money and related sites where they use real money. The major difficulty in the US is figuring out how to deposit money to play with. The other issue can be withdrawing — but that’s not a problem for most people. Most people do not win enough to withdraw. Most people are not big winners. People who play like they see people play on the edited TV shows are big losers. Read some books. Join some poker forums. Learn how to play intelligently before you put money down.

The biggest sites are PokerStars and FullTilt. You sign up and you play. If you intend to play for real money at any point, you would do well to sign up through a rakeback site.

There’s some stuff on my blog for absolute newbies. http://confessionsofapokeraddict.webs.com/gettingstarted.htm