Poker has always fascinated me, and I would like to learn it more. I think I would be into it much more if online poker, for actual money, were legal in my state. I find that people, including me, play vastly differently if its all fake and you just get more free chips tomorrow. Its probably better for me that I can't, would be yet another thing to spend way to much time on.
Stakes are definitely needed to make things interesting. You could try setting up your own game with friends. I've avoided regular online play because it really is a rabbit hole!
Solo computer games are probably the lowest stake activity you could think of. But some games have 'perma death' and 'iron man' modes. The former means that you or your pawns etc can't come back after being killed off. The latter means that there's only ever a single save file for one playthrough, ie you can save-and-quit to take a break, but you can't load an early save game when something inevitably goes wrong.
This kind of playstyle is common in rogue-like games. But can also be employed for strategy games like X-Com.
