Make Your Poker Home Game Fun Again!

7 years ago
How to Make Your Poker Home Game Fun Again
16:47
01 Oct

(Photo: Cardschat.com)

So your usual weekly poker home game isn’t as fun as it used to be right? Not much laugh, no more all-in thrill, just the same old routine. All of you have honed your poker skills, either online or live, and now, most of the talk revolves around the general strategy and how you should play the proper way. And everyone participating in the home game are so competitive that they have almost forgot the whole point of a home game is to have fun and NOT necessarily to win money.

Now what you may wonder? Do you just stop organizing it? You could do that OR you could add some extra spice and make your home game fun again. How? Well, Daniel Negreanu and his longtime poker buddies - Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, Patrik Antonius to name some - could actually point you to the right direction because they have done it for a long time and still meet to play the game they love most. And guess what? They still have a lot of fun. Below you can read more about their secrets.



Home Game Fantasy Anyone?

First thing first, how about creating a new game aside the actual card game you play, much like fantasy poker? So you basically wager on who do you think will win the weekly tournament at your place and reap the benefits. You could very well try Negreanu’s system explained in his latest blog. He and his friends call this side game Calcutta. It works like this: before every tournament, the players who want to play Calcutta gather and organize an auction. The auction involves the players who will participate in the tourney. A sum is thrown into the mix alongside the name of a participant and whoever bids the highest buys that player’s rights. After several auctions, a total prizepool (all the money raised from the auction) is set.

For example, you are about to start a shorthanded Sit & Go. Before the game, you decide to play Calcutta. Your name pops up with the initial sum of $10. After a hard-fought auction, confident in your abilities, you win your rights for $50. Remember, you can buy your own rights if you think it is worth it. The rights for your friend Billy are up for grabs and some other poker buddy wins them for another $50. Joe is a weaker player but knows poker is also about luck so he buys his own rights for just $10. At the end of the auction, the total prizepool is set at $200. You can make it a winner-takes-all game so you basically get 4-to-1 odds if you win the SNG. Joe on the other hand gets a 20-to-1 odds which is a very decent price even though he’s not that good at poker.

You can also copy the SNG structure and make it a 70/30 or 65/35 game and that can change the way you play. Interestingly enough is that anyone can participate and play Calcutta even if he doesn’t play the actual SNG. So if a friend of yours can’t come to your home game, he can still wager on every one of you and still have fun away from the poker table.

And there’s more…



Homegame Prop Bets

Daniel also talked about how he and his friends enjoyed a mixed game at Bellagio just by adding some interesting prop bets into the mix. The prop bets were all about the board and to feel the poker thrill once again, you could do try that too next time you organize a home game.

The possibilities are endless here as you can wager on many different things: if the flop is all red or black, what specific cards will be dealt on the flop, if a certain card of a certain suit will hit the board and so on. Negreanu also talked about choosing your suits, so if a face card with your suit is dealt in the middle of the flop, you will win a prop bet. The list of course can go on and on as you can create new pro bets on the go. And at the end of the day, you may have a piece of paper that could look a lot like this:

Be careful though: the poker icon lost $436,000 playing props on one degen night so don’t get overly excited about these prop bets. Make them fun and make them small so you afford to lose them. And as Daniel said in his blog, by making such prop bets, you will pay much more attention at the table, looking at the board and less time checking your Facebook or Twitter account. And in no time, the home games will be fun again.

So try these tricks next time you play or organize a poker home game and never look back.

What other tricks do you use to make your poker home game fun? Please share with the rest of the community in the comment section below.


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Florian is a freelance journalist and avid poker player with a strong passion to create unique and appealing stories.He is an experienced researcher on various topics, from business and the financial markets to psychology and the gambling industry.He blogs at Florianghe.com.Read more

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