Home game strategy..

So ive been playing with my buddies at home for months.. $20 entry fee 10-9 players, 1 hour re-buy, 1500 beginning stacks, 15 min blinds, starts from 5/10. I am a TAG player and somehow it's just not working out. Majority of my friends dont play that much poker and they dont really have a strategy, except 1-2 players. Most of them are very aggressive and loose. They raise almost every hand, and they bet no matter if they hit bottom pair, top pair, nothing at all, or the nuts.. It is also very hard to get them to release their cards... ex I`ll raise 4 times the blinds with KK and 5 of them will call me.. flop will come out 49Q i`ll raise and they call... turn 2 and i raise again , they call.. now i`m starting to question what is going on? set? 2 pair? Qs? i`ll raise again and the river will be an Ace.. I`ll check and the players left will show me one A5 another JK. i mean what the hell man... I can raise and raise and they just wont release their hand. So i`m wondering if any one of you has any tips on how to play this type of game... Also since the first hour is the re-buy hour a lot of them call any raise with anything.. and continue to do so even if there is no pot odds (they dont even know what does this mean).. so any1 has an idea what strategy could help me out?

play hands like kk. and play reallly aggressive so their putting a significant amount of their stack in the pot. this will eliminate the crowd. and if it doesnt u will typically win so in the long run you will be making money

j0sh1ngU said:

play hands like kk. and play reallly aggressive so their putting a significant amount of their stack in the pot. this will eliminate the crowd. and if it doesnt u will typically win so in the long run you will be making money

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problem is that 15 min blind increase in a live game without a dealer is not enough to wait for premium hands.. by the time i get premium hand we are well into bigger blinds and my stack has not moved anywhere, meanwhile those who have a lot of action because of rebuy have 2x 3x the stacks i have. There is no way i can survive playing TAG, then when i decide to raise more I get called. I can fold 10 hands in the row and raise the first hand 4 x the BB from the first position and still get called by 4-5 players with horrible hands.. These people have no respect for TAGS, they dont care about positions and they are not afraid to call anyones raise. HELL! i`ve been even called in the middle of the turnament all in preflop with KK, QQ, by hands like 85, J5, K4 and they would out draw me. lol.. so i`m really not sure how to play, but the funny thing is that few of those very aggressive players tend to win most of our games.. they dont care about the ods, position, what hands they have, they just raise and reraise and suck out and outdraw better hands and win the games.. lol i get so annoyed.. but since they are my buddies i can afford to lose $20-$40 once/twice a month...

Talk them into going deep stack (3000) and no rebuys -- you will clean their clocks!

Makwa said:

Talk them into going deep stack (3000) and no rebuys -- you will clean their clocks!

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i probably would, in the past just when we started, we had no rebuy but the same stacks 1500. and i was able to pull 1st place and 2nd place almost every game.. now with rebuy i tend to finish 3rd - 4th...

Home games are HARD to beat if you play with players that don't play often. It's almost like a freeroll, dont bluff them. If you do make the rights move, you'll end up winning $ for sure.

i played last night with 10 of my friends.. finished 2nd.. could have come out 1st was beat by a straight on the river... It was my best game in a while... Pretty fortunate i knocked out the worst players early that way i got rid of those who call when they shouldn't and those who wont release they hand because they have A high or because they have pair of 3s and end up outdrawing me once the river comes... I was fortunate that out of the last 5 players only 1 was aggressive and 4 were pretty passive so i turned my aggression on and with the luck of few nice hands i collected some nice pots..

without a live dealer those blinds will catch up to you quickly so it would be hard to sit back and wait for the premium hands. maybe raise the blinds after a certain number of hands rather than by the time. you could base this on how many hands on average you would expect to be dealt in 15 minutes with a dealer. i dunno, i've seen games where the blinds go up once the puck makes a full rotation or 2

if that doesnt work then just try to really take advantage of the weaker players when you have the nuts...but i know it can be frustrating to get 3 callers to the river when you are representing the best hand...but that's how the game goes sometimes, so just use their playing style to your advantage!

I know what you mean. You got a big hand but 5 people are calling and you are left thinking if your hand is good. I'd try bigger raise preflop maybe or anything to limit the callers a little more.

TheseNutsWin said:

i probably would, in the past just when we started, we had no rebuy but the same stacks 1500. and i was able to pull 1st place and 2nd place almost every game.. now with rebuy i tend to finish 3rd - 4th...

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Rebuys encourage donk play, especially among friends who will keep lending the donk money until he sucks out an wins... you have to decide whether to play poker or have a party with your friends... they are not the same at all!