Home Game

I got invited to a home games this past weekend. It was the most interesting tournament i must i have attended. Why you may ask? Well, the fact it took so freaking long. 18 people SNG. Game started at 9:30Pm. Blinds started at 5/10 ??? LOL. Suppose to go up every 20 minutes. Well, I guess you mix drinks with that , and the tournament lasted for 4 hours !!!! WTF ?!?!?! LOL

I play in a once a month live tourney.
We start with 6K in chips and 25/50 blinds for the first hour.
It normally has 3 tables of at least 7 players (sometimes a full 9) and we go at least 6-7 hours each time.

Live poker can be a long time.

but i must say that its real similar in time frame 4-6 hrs with the ones falling out usually starting a ring game

Wow, you guys waste a lot of time 18 person game takeing 6-7 hours??? You need to get a timer that goes off at about 15-20minute intervals and need to structure your blind levels a bit. Also, don't wait for people to deal the cards, if they are in the bathroom or getting a new drink, their cards die when the action passes them.

Another thing that we do to speed up our home games is whenever anyone goes broke, the blind level increases. It doesn't matter if it just went up 30 seconds ago, it always goes up when someone busts out. Keeps things interesting. There is no reason that 18-27 people should take 7 hours to get done with unless every person is taking 30 seconds to make each move.

Live poker does take longer; fact of life. All these goofy rules I hear to make live poker move as fast as possible are silly imo. If I want speed poker then I'll play turbos online. I know a guy that runs a home game where they do SNGs at family parties; they wind up with 1 or 2 tables (10-15 people usually). Everyone gets like $500 in starting chips, blinds start at 5/10 then double every five minutes. It's completely ridiculous. The games (even with a 12-15 starting in them) are done in under an hour (usually like 45-50 minutes). As far as I'm concerned that whole structure is insanely stupid. But that's why I've stopped playing with them. I can crush the home games we had with reasonable levels and blinds where skill actually comes into play, so there's no reason to play silly rules and leave it completely up to luck of the deal.

In my live monthly game we start at 6 pm, take a 20 minute break for food at 8:30 pm and then play on till midnight or 1 am.

I like the structure we have, the first level is an hour long, then several levels at 30 minutes and the highest levels for 20 minutes each.

Considering that First Place usually pays more than $600, it's not a bad payoff.
(We also pay out 2-4th place)

I built a poker timer on powerpoint that counts down the minutes to the next level, next break and what the blinds are currently. It's got cool flashy pictures built in and 10 minute breaks built in. Once you reach a certain level it adds ante's into the mix. really keeps the games moving and adds a touch of class to the home game.

That's pretty nice BDDP. For home games I have a button that has the timer on it that works sometimes, but it is pretty quiet so we don't always use it. Another one of my friends rigged a program for his iPod, that is supposed to be for Power Hour/Century Club(drinking games), that in the original, every minute it would say "Drink". He changed it so that every 15 minutes or whatever it would say "Blinds". That way we are listening to some music while we are playing.