There are many poker players that choose not to take advantage of these facilities, electing instead to avoid them and just focus on the actual poker websites. While this decision is understandable, it is one that at the same time can be harmful to the natural evolution of a particular poker player because there are a number of advantages inherent to being a member of a poker community & forums.
Discussion
Since poker is a game of strategy with a luck element attached, there are many ways that you can actually improve your game through the studying of different actions. If you study the hands that you lose and even the hands that you win, you will find pieces of information that you can apply later on when those same situations arise. However, since you are essentially going to be studying your own hands, there is a certain amount of bias that might prevent you from seeing mistakes you made that others would have no trouble pinpointing.
Deals
Another reason to join an online poker community is to get the deals that the poker community has available. Since online poker communities and forums often have many different people as members, they can negotiate for better bonus offers and reduced release requirements through the promise of being able to deliver many new people to the website in exchange for those better deals. If you join an online poker community, you will also be able to take advantage of those deals.
Just how good do some of these deals get? Well, it is not uncommon to see either the percentage or the actual dollar amount double in a better deal bonus that you can get through a poker community and it is also not uncommon to see the release requirements of a particular bonus cut in half. These types of changes could really make your life much easier in the clearing of bonuses and therefore they provide a very strong reasoning for joining the poker community. You can even shop around different poker communities and join them all in order to get all of the bonus offers they possess.