As a person who no longer prays, at least not in any traditional sense or in any form that I would identify as prayer, I'm nonetheless interested in this phenomenon, particularly when people claim that it has worked for them. In those cases, I always look for alternate explanations. In a couple posts below, under the title Speaking of Prayer, Mr. Don implies, by first requesting prayer for his family's safety and then announcing they were kept safe, that prayer caused the hurricane to bypass his home.
A couple months ago I got an email from my niece that she had sent out to everyone she knows. It was an urgent request for prayer from a worried mother of two small children, whose husband had just completed an auto mechanics training course. Job prospects were bleak in their economically depressed region, the student loans they had been living on were depleted, he was not eligible for employment insurance, and welfare rates are impossible for anyone to live in. She was really worried about their short term financial survival. A few weeks later she sent a more detailed email. Apparently her husband had been working very hard at school, received an award upon graduation as the top student, and was recruited as an apprentice shortly after by a top company in that field. Things look promising for them now.
In both these instances there are several possible explanations other than divine intervention. And those possible explanations make far more sense to me than the idea that a god, any god, would have intervened in either situation. Yet I think it's fairly safe to assume that those who did pray sincerely believed that their prayers were answered.
From my current perspective, it is that belief in prayer that is really at work here, not the actual prayer itself. I liken it to the placebo effect. For those interested, here is an interesting article on the placebo effect: http://skepdic.com/placebo.html
These are just my casual observations since I am not well educated on either the topic of prayer or placebo. I am interested though in how others would answer the question: Does prayer work?