Tips To Spice Up Your Poker Games At Home

April 28th, 2010

Playing poker in home games has been one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had playing the game of poker. Home games take place on all bankroll levels. You can go from one home to the next playing for as little as pennies all the way up to thousands of dollars. Although most of us do not play poker home games for thousands of dollars we do enjoy the camaraderie while sitting at the poker table trying to out whit our friends. Usually one night a week is good for most and it’s usually towards the end of the week when the game is actually played. Here are a few things that can help spice up your home game.

Automatic Shuffler

It may sound real simple but an automatic shuffler is a god send to any home game. The reasons are pretty obvious. The more hands you get in the better your of picking up chips and making a profit. The same goes for cash games. The bottom line is that no matter what format of poker you are playing you are going to want to see as many hands as possible. Automatic shufflers come in varying price ranges but the average cost is around $300 for a good one that will fit flush into your poker table. Others that are above table units run from $150 - $300.

Play Tournaments

Poker tournaments are wildly popular in home games and lend themselves to an atmosphere of competition by their very nature. You can easily determine the payout structure with a number of online applications that will calculate the payouts for you. Many of the poker tournament software applications have built in customizable tournament setups that will keep track of the blinds, antes, number of players as well as the prize payouts. If you happen to run a smaller home game and have a crew of 10 players or less you can do a “winner take all” format. That really gets the action moving and makes for some extremely entertaining situations as the field narrows and comes closer to the money.

Satellite Format

Yes, you and your friends can setup your own home game to send a player to a larger local tournament. You can do this by putting aside a fixed amount of every buy-in from each poker player. That number builds up over the course of a year. As your weekly tournament continues to occur each of the players is ranked based on how they finished and given a number of points for First, Second, Third and so on. Once the designated season is over the top one or two people get the buy-in to the larger tournament. Believe me this format is a whole lot of fun and makes for a very competitive environment because everyone wants to play in the big tournament. You can make the prize a local poker tournament or even a World Poker Tour event if you have large enough buy-ins and enough poker players. That is the beauty of having your home game act as a satellite. You can customize your home game any way you like.

As you can see home games do not have to be routine by any means. They should be fun to play in and if you have enough poker players you can certainly provide some additional incentive for players to compete. Some home games are played twice a week with one session held during the week and one on the weekends. I know that is certainly a lot of poker but if it works for you and your group of poker players then it is all the better.

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