How to Host the Perfect Poker Home Game: The Set-Up

For our fourth article in the How to Host the Perfect Poker Home Game series we’ll look at the basic set-up for your home game.

How to Host a Poker Home Game: Keep it Simple

This refers to how much money to put in the game, the chips you’ll need and whether to host a small tournament or cash game. To keep a home game running smoothly is have one person handles all the buying in, cashing out and re-buys. Because if you have everyone getting their own chips mistakes (both honest and not) are bound to happen. It’s an all too familiar situation where at the end of the night two guys go to cash out and there isn’t enough money to cover the chips that are in play. That’s when people get upset.

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How to Set Up Home Cash Games

Hosting a successful cash game is very simple – though we’d suggest going with one for your first poker home game. All you have to do is keep the buy-in at a comfortable level, keep play running smoothly and keep track of the cash.

1. Set chip denominations & starting stacks

With chip denominations, simple is better. Don’t use all five colors in your chip set just because you can. If you’re setting up a standard $.50/$1 game, then two colors are all you need. One to represent $.50 and the other to represent $5 chips. Meanwhile if you’re setting up a 1,500 starting stack tournament, use three colors for 5 chips, 25 chips and 100 chips. Stick with the same colors for every game because it reduces confusion for regulars at the table.

2. Max buy-in should be 100 big blinds

So if you’re playing 5¢/10¢ blinds you should have a $10 max buy-in. Most games operate this way – both live and online, because it allows sufficient play and doesn’t make it a shove-fest. When running a home game, ask all players and don’t make the buy-in higher than anyone feels comfortable playing. Make sure people are OK with losing a buy-in or two.

3. Say your action out loud

To avoid confusing hands have all players vocalize their actions. Instead of just shoving your chips in the middle actually say “bet” or “raise.” It’s a good habit to get into regardless of where you will be playing.

How to Set Up Home Poker Tournaments

Single table tournaments are arguably the most popular home poker games right now. They have been popularized by TV shows like Poker After Dark and even the World Series of Poker. Players typically enjoy tournaments because they last a set length of time and one player walks away the clear winner. The games start with 3-10 players and it plays just like regular Texas Hold’em. Except that you can’t get more chips. And one by one players begin to fall until only the winner remains.

One challenge with poker home game tournaments is the lack of a tournament clock. This can lead to blinds going up slowly and subsequently the action will start to drag in a big way. To keep the game going, blinds must go up at regularly scheduled intervals. We suggest you use an online tournament clock or app.

Using the PokerListings Tournament Clock

The tournament clock on PokerListings is a professional-grade clock that you can use to easily run tournaments from your own home. It’s simple to use and you can customize it in a variety of ways.

• Step 1. Add all the standard details. Give your tournament a name. Select how many players will be playing and enter the buy-in.

• Step 2. Choose the starting stack. A good starting stack usually has players starting with 100 big blinds. If your first level is $50/$25 – why not make your starting stack $5,000?

• Step 3. Select how long you want the tournament to run. Once you choose the length, the tournament clock will automatically update the level times.

• Step 4. Finally choose what kind of payout structure you want. It will automatically adjust for the price of the buy-in! A good standard is top three players get paid.

With all those details in place, you can just hit the play button and the tournament is live. No more guessing when to raise blinds or what the next level will be. You can even get information such as the average stack. The tournament clock handles pretty much everything for you.

Access our Tournament Clock