Home games experience?

How is everyone experience with home games?

I was looking for a thread about this.

We play two $5 Sit N Goes every weekend.

Pretty good for my friends and I. We are all extreme donks, but I consider myself to be the least "Donkish".

Let me give you guys a few descriptions of players that might make you laugh.

One player, will play any face card that is dealt to him. He will often call raises with these hands as well.

One player is known to fold TPTK on the flop containing 2 suited cards if someone bets because he is "Afraid of the flush draw."

The same player also refers to having a "Flush draw" if he has suited cards, and the flop comes with one of his suite.

Then you have the guy who never folds top pair. He could have A2 and would call an all-in on a AKQ suited flop.

And then you have me. Who raises 3x pre when I have a strong hand, and everyone yells, "HERE HE GOES AGAIN WITH RIDICULOUS PRE-FLOP BETS"

They never raise pre-flop. They all limp. They get mad when I raise. And when I fold pre, I am referred to as a PUS....

I have been able to win 5/6 of the last tourneys we played, so I hope my cards keep holding up.

I am interested in hearing about others peoples experiences.

oh okay i've been playing .25/.50 usally sitting with $50 with my friends around 9 people

I need in on that game. I wish I knew people that ran a homegame, but no one I know even plays poker let a lone wants a homegame.

Huge suggestion here. Drink some beers and have some fun with the boys. No reason to play cut throat and piss anyone off for $10 weekly.

I have attend an occasional neighborhood game where we play $10 turbo SNGs. We have no dealer button, host wants a big blind button and small blind button. 100 chips of all colors to start, Blinds are 2-4 until first one is out (or 10 mins go by), then it's 3-6 until next player down, then 4-8, 5-10, etc. Once it's heads up we go to 10-20 for rest of game.

Some other silly rules, but it a a great group of guys and most are clueless when it comes to poker. Alcohol is imbibed, good times are had, and laughs all around for the night. Poker game is very much secondary to the boys night out. I tend to force myself to dummy down and break even or worse to stay in the group.

Home games are a different animal! I won't play them like I would at a casino or non friend's home because to do so is to hurt relationships. If I were you, I might tone down the aggressive betting and try to have a "friendlier" game. I'm not saying don't try to win, just try to be more social in attitude. You might like it!

Whats more rewarding the bleeding your friends dry of all their cash? at least at my age of 21 any home game I participated in would be as competitive as anything. I mean dude.. you should see the monopoly games that used to go on at boarding school, and that was play money!

Yea, were all around 18. So I know exactly what your saying.

Just had to let you know this particular comment made my day... Haven't had the experience of playing 1 yet, but i'll stay subscribed. May pick up some things if I ever should...

It's just like that at the casinos as well. Everyone loves to limp. When you raise 4 or 5x they all moan and groan and curse under their breath. No cheap flops for them.

Yeah but it's like Larry' said G'... Do you really want to alienate the friends/associates that you see on a regular as opposed to some players that you may or may never see again? How do you go about avoiding this? There must be some ways that experienced players use to take opponent's(who might also be a friend, well at least until after tha game..) money w/o seeming like an *sshole in tha home games. Y'know, like being friendly and not coming across like they're there to take ya money, just there for a goodtime... When in fact... lol...

I actually stopped playing my home game because of this reason. We started playing for spare change initially after the Moneymaker boom. Moved to tourneys. Had leagues. Tourneys got bigger (like rent out a hall and have 60 players bigger). Moved away from tourneys to cash. Stakes went up (usually 1/2 occasionally 2/5).

Lots of friends lost a lot of $$s. It was nothing for a couple guys in particular to drop $1500 in a few hours. We'd hire local girls to deal for us for tips (low cut T's brought in bigger tips). I eventually felt bad when the same guy who dropped a grand to me on Saturday was calling to borrow $600 on Monday so his wife wouldn't find out how much he'd lost. Don't get me wrong I liked taking their $$s (we have multiple pieces of furniture that those games paid for) but it just wasn't worth the guilt anymore. They kept playing for at least a year after I stopped going until the main degen loser drained his 401k and stopped playing all together.

It was fun while it lasted and I have some stuff to show for it (in addition to the household stuff I still have enough chips to run a 50 man tourney and 2 additional cash game setups) but the guilt just wasn't worth it.

If you're just playing with friends, my advice is to keep the game small enough that no one has to lie about how much they lost the last time they played.

Thanx 4 tha experience WV'. This truly relates why home games are diff... I'll make sure I always take this into account if I ever should play one...

It was definitely a lot more fun when it was a smaller money. It got to the point where the $$s won/lost were so much that no one even drank more than a beer or 2. Even sober though some of the worst play you'll ever see. We called 1 guy Jackshit because his favorite hand was any Jx (he said he liked J little better "because then he had 2 ways to hit a straight"). The guy who dropped the most (Mr. 401k) would never bet if he had a strong hand but would shovel money in if he was bluffing. He'd complain to me at the end of most nights (unless he got lucky and won) how he just needed to play against different people because the problem was that we all knew his system too well.

lol, good stuff... y'know WV', it's kinda funny, even if it's only from my micros experience. When I first starting playing I didn't mind adding people to my buddy list. But now, I avoid adding people w/o serious thought or even conversating w/ players even more. What ends up happening is that I end playing some of these "buddies" at tables where it would really count and it hurt my aggression levels, so yeah, I can imagine playing friends, with a definite edge such as you have, as opposed to unknowns... I hold it akin to like martial arts. I took up judo for 10-15 years (10 straight & 5 on/off) and you're obviously not supposed to use such skills against opponents that don't know any better, at least, not w/o a warning first. Sort of the same situation when not just eliminating a unknown fish but a "fishy" friend w/o at least being friend enough to give them a heads up (which as we know, you better than me, goes totally against the purpose of a casino-type game environment...).

I tried educating the worst one repeatedly. I lent him books, talked strat, and pointed him here (he never joined) but he thought he knew how to play better and besides "playing tight was too boring". He would say stupid things like "Yeah, I could win too if I always had good cards like you but it's more fun to win with junk".

There is too much text to respond to it all directly, but what I will say is that there has to be a limit. I would love to win my friends money in a game of poker, would mean large bragging rights, but the next night out at a bar or club would be on me. Thats how we would run things. At my age, the most a young adult can lose is his university government loan or a few k's in saving.

I believe the game has to be reassessed when the limits are increased. Like hillibilly said it would be really horrible for my friend not to be able to pay the rent because I had all his cash. Someone has to make sure that the game does not climb beyond what everyone can afford to lose.

If the stakes are low(ish) then Id have no problem attempting to clean everyone out. Higher stakes and no thank you very much.

use to have a home games 2 or 3x's a week with 2 different groups of friends was crushing them at 5-10$ sng's was winning 200-300 a week off these guys until one of their wives said that i was always winning.now we play a .10-.20 cent blind cash game first buy-in 10 $ after u lose the first 10$ u can buy-in for whatever you're comfortable with. I get crushed in this cash game same group of ppl.

Haha thanks.

It's really funny, once I start reaching for chips, i can hear all the moaning and breathing deep. One guy said "You pulling #'s out of your ass?"

I responded, "Yea, I just go with what feels right"

In college, a big group in my Fraternity regularly played all-night sessions of cash poker for very small stakes. We were cut-throat with each other but we had fun. We would even take one weekend once or twice a year and play a 24 hour session, buy a lot of food and drink, and purchased trophies for the top three players in cash won.

After we all graduated we played a weekly game on Wednesdays, still cut-throat, still small stakes.

I moved away, and started playing some larger stakes home games, along with playing at the card club. It was not among a group of close friends so it was about winning money.

These days, there is no way I would play any significant stakes at a home game. Certainly I go to a game with good friends and small game for fun. But, increasing at an alarming rate are not only are the incidents of cops busting large games (note: when police bust game they take all the money), but robberies of the games as well, many with shootings involved and life lost. Many of these robberies are inside jobs.

Several people in my local casino have told me of robberies in their own home games, including one where a player also pulled out a gun and actually fired shots, but the robbers got away (several players in this game felt they actually knew who set them up, but police did nothing)

+1 JDAWG5

I can relate to this opnd'. Right after I earned the tiny bankroll at the funsteps initially I tried the micros and couldn't figure out exactly what to play. I chose the option of the .02/.04 PL games... Found out the hard way that when I knew I would have the best hand at the time I couldn't force weaker hands to fold by using AIs. So having to stick to a game that seems to based more on hand/pot odds relationships was harder for me because I was playing scared (hell, it took me some time to earn those few bucks...) It would seem in your case that when the wives forced tha game to lower stakes that the players were no longer scared to get it in against your bets/experience, huh?

Sorry to hear of those kinda experiences WEC'... I guess it's true when they say "...with more money comes more problems..."

This would never ever happen in England. Honestly I am glad I am not American.

You even have to be careful going to the casino in US as there have been several publicized cases of people following big winners home to rob them or worse. I was playing at Hollywood Park (LA) when a high-stakes lady was followed, and put in the trunk of a car, killed I think (I know of at least one killing there anyway). There have been several documented cases in Cali (also Commerce) and at least one famous in Vegas.

Online poker ftw.

homegames are what poker is about imo.

not sitting infront of a screen for hours on end

That sounds wicked fun!

Those games were crazy. They were $20 BI, $20 Unlimited Rebuys for 1 hour (3 blind levels), and $20 add on at the end of the 1st hour. Very common to have $5-6k total purse when it was all said and done. As people busted out they'd start playing cash games of varying buy-ins. Usually there would be at least 3 cash tables going after the tourney until 5 or 6 am (once went til 10am). We'd start the tourneys at 7pm and they were planned to be done by 1am.

I really wanna play something like that in the future.

i've done pretty well in home games over the years

first it is important to understand the tourney structure b/c many home games are equal parts social & poker and social is great but it also reduces the number of hands played between blind increases making most home games very turbo-riffic

also most home games i've been in have a wide range of skill levels and playing styles, so you have to quickly learn what type of player each person is

another factor is that less experienced and less skilled players want to be in as many pots as they can be and that, of course, creates opportunities

finally, i find my strategy tends to run along the lines of splashing around a bit when the blinds are very low hoping to have a bad player make a big mistake


if that doesn't work, then i really tighten up and play TAG, but again always taking into account my opponent(s) ... very hard to bluff bad players before the river, they wanna see cards

if that doesn't work i fall back on my online FOLD/ALL-IN experience

and if that doesn't work, i crack a beer and play some cash poker with other players that have been knocked out []

Finally the last line made some sense Cash game is where it is at for homegames. Cash cash cash.

I am usually just having consistent nights, only one night i started with 50 i left with 450 but mostly play tight. Most home games you are gonna see the typical fish that likes to call call call, so tight aggressive is my game play i use

Pretty rough night for me tonight.

Got it in pre with JJ and ran into QQ.

Then had AQ and flopped an A. I had position and kept calling.

River came K. He flipped KK.

I should have re-raised him all in on the flop.

yah pretty much turned into a no foldem game when they play now i just show up with a an 18 pack and see how fast i can drink it. Stopped playin with those guys now wasn't worth the hangover.

I played with my boss and a load of his mates (who i'd never met before)... we cut the cards for dealer, I got it, very first hand, dealt myself AA... the looks i got could have killed...

I went on to lose, i was very inexpreienced at the time, I ended up leaving my job a few months later, and my boss kept my very nice poker set, he just kept saying he couldnt find it (i'd left it there because they hadnt finished when i left).