Home game fun!?!?!?

[Rammy22]

Hi all...

Ok, so must of us here have played a home game once or twice in our lives (for some of us once or twice a week!).

I play a local game every fortnight at my bosses house (im a barman), so all very social and no-one takes themselves too seriously. We play a sit & go style tournement. (just to fill you in here im English so gonna be putting money in £ sterling (£1 = $2 or near enough)). Usually starting about 9pm on friday nights and continuing on until we get a winner!

There are usually between eight and sixteen of us playing, with the buy in at £20 with one rebuy allowed at any point of the evening (or in most cases the following morning!). We introduced the rebuy idea after people were leaving once they had been knocked out, and we wanted to prolong the enjoyment (and the money i won!). The first time we did rebuy's we had unlimited... the tournement finished at midday the following day! That we decided would end there!

We all like a drink... and working in a bar, obtaining alcohol is fairly easy! So what we do is we all put in £20 for drinks, and thats ALL your drinks covered for the evening (great value!), so the most money the evening will cost is £60, which over here in blighty is really really cheap for a night!

Slight interuption... Just got a straight flush in a tourney 4-8 spades!

Anyways... back on topic... We do a pay structure of:
8 players = 2 places payed 1st 70% 2nd 30%
9 - 12 players = 3 places payed 1st 60% 2nd 25% 3rd 15%
12+ players = 4 places payed 1st 50% 2nd 25% 3rd 10% 4th 5%

So when we have ten players the pot size is around £400 (give or take), which in anyones opinion is a nice little earner!

To add to this every season (spring, summer, autumn, winter) we have a trophy tournement, where the origianal buy in is £5 extra which goes towards a trophy for the winner as well as a medal for the best hand of the night (not neccessarily the best hand value wise, but often a hand that was played the best).

I have had a straight flush to the queen, in one of the trophy tournements but was beaten to the best hand by someone who played a full house brilliantly to get to get four players to go all in on him.... At least i won the tourney at the end though!

We do our starting stacks differently as to what certain magazines suggest, we each have 50 chips to start with with blinds starting off at 1/2 and going up every 1/2 hour, we find this makes it more enjoyable, and less confusing when there are split or side pots going on!

Also in the room we play in, there are fruit machines, quiz machines, and many other toys to play with if you fancy a breather or once you have been knocked out!

Since the tournements began a couple of years ago, every player who has played has one the tournement at least once (except one person..... my boss.... he should pay me better!), so no one person has dominated the tournements, which imho make it more enjoyable, because you turn up knowing you have as good a chance as anyone else to win.

How can we improve this for our enjoyment?
Can it be improved?
Should we mess with a method that is already working?

All opinions on this subject will be greatly appriciated!

Oh and great site by the way, i havn't signed up for any deals as yet... aint deposited any money yet either, just play with freeroll winnings (less serious that way especially when on minimum wage!)

[liladypokerpro]

hey, if it aint broke, dont fix it but now if you want to do something different once in a while, you could advertise your game with flyers every now and then, and really get a bunch of people to show up. Put a little variety in the game, since it sounds like you have been playing with only the same group of people every week. Throw a little variety in there by adding new people every so often and get ready for a whole new ball game. Otherwise, sound like u have a good little game going just the way it is, and people keep showing up which means they are happy with it, so honestly why mess with a good thing.

Have fun!

[gamer4life27]

If you guys like your own playing SnG's, why change that? But ifyou really want a challange, here's the game I play.

I'm U.S. so I will be posting in $'s.

We each meet every Thursdays for a $20 plus one re-buy and one add-on. We each get 2k in chips, blinds at 25/50 and are raised every 20 minutes. We have two decks being shuffled at once, so it makes the game go a little bit faster. The Re-buy gets you another 2k in chips, but you can only re-buy once you get KO'd. The Add-on gives you 1k in chips. Add-on/Re-buy is up untill first break (with Add-on's being at the atual break.) This makes it so at the break, the blinds at already at 75/150. We never have an ante, so theres no pressure later on, but the blinds do get pretty hefty pretty quick. After the break, the levels last only 15 minutes with no more breaks.

We keep the group really close. Friends only (and rarely, friends of friends). The max is 20 people, so there is a reservation period. And we usually only have around 12-17 people show up though out of the reserved 20. We pay top 3 places. And this is where it gets really interesting. Instead of the 60%, 25%, 15%, it's 60%, 30%, 10%. So basically, 3rd would almost get there money back if the pot is big enough.

This is so that people really fight for the top spots.

And if you want to keep your style, but just wanna add a little flair (sp?), then heres something you could do that I personally love.

This is for our league games on Sundays. We play 8 games per league. These 8 games are in relation to who will win over all. Each game is $20 + $5 for the over all leader in the points. We each play our regular games (Sundays are a different structure than Thursdays and would take another 4 paragraphs to explain.)

The last game is $50. Each of our games has no re-buys, but add-ons.

Our points system works like this:

You are deducted the money you put up for each game as points (So say you played the first game, paid the entry fee, lost. Your points would be -25). The PROFIT you make is then added to your score. So say you come in first in one tourney with only one buy-in and win $175. Your points would read +150. The last game is really big because it's a $50 buy-in. So each of the $5 from each of the players for each game goes to the over all winner of the points.

Hope you have fun in yoru home games from now one.

[frob23]

We do a weekly two tournament series where I play. Most of the people are not big spenders and we like to keep it friendly. We do $20 buy-in, $2 high hand, and the first tournament only has a $3 host fee. So, you're looking at $25 for the first tournament and $22 for the second. It's a freeze-out although sometimes a few people will do a quick rebuy tournament between the time they bust from the first and the second starts. That's usually a $5 rebuy turbo type thing with people being able to buy-in right up until the BB is 20% of the starting stack. That's the 7th level the way we play so it's enough time for a few people to jump in even if they're not knocked out of the main event until after it starts.

It's a private group so it's invite only. And only long term members are able to invite new people. Basically, if you've been playing there for 6-8 months, you can consider asking if you may bring someone.

The number of players in the big tournaments is capped at 27 but we average about 18 for the first and 13 for the second game (which often starts after midnight).

Between games, if there isn't a tournament, they usually run some $0.25/$0.50NL dealer's choice games with a $5 min-buy-in (which can be insane if you're playing something like follow the Queen). But you don't need to play in those if you don't want -- I often pass if I happen to be out when one is running because it's extremely volatile.

If you have a bad night, you're out $47 bucks. If you got in on the rebuy and/or cash game... well it could be more. I remember one time when we were playing $0.25/$0.50NL Omaha, Hold'em, and Follow the Queen in rotation three handed (8 of each game then switch). And with the way things were going we soon had over $250 on the table between us... and casual swings of $20-$50 were common. The cash games RARELY ever get to that extreme. We're usually wimpy poor people in this game. It was a bunch of fun but that cash game left me down about $35 alone. I felt lucky to get off that cheap with the hands I had busted. Note: that game started and ended 3 handed... with no other players joining... and $5 rebuys at a time... so we're looking at 50+ buy-ins between the 3 of us... or about 17+ buy-ins each.

I don't see anything to change in the OP's game. It seems fine to me. Private live games can be fun. Just keep them cheap enough that no one's going to be too upset to donate to the game once in a while... and you're fine. Don't mess with what's working.

Note: The only change my current game is considering is adding a points system to rank players and having a special event for the top players at the end of a certain amount of time. So far, thankfully, nothing's come of it.

[Marie]

One thing we use to make our home game games run really smoothly is a home game organiser that you can download for free from pokerroom.com.

It enables you to to set blinds and levels as you want and even plans in breaks. We run it on a laptop in the back ground and it keeps everyone informed all the time.

Worth a look for free!!