Organizing a Poker home game in form of a cash game is the simplest thing in the world. All you need is a table, enough chairs, chips and a deck of cards. Obviously if you are thinking about making a home game you should already know the rules of the game you want to play, but… if for what ever reason you don’t know the rules yet, you can find them here.
Now let’s get started:
Everybody buys in for a certain amount, everybody gets that amount in chips and after a player decides he has enough play he cashes out the chips he has in-front of him. That’s all!
But watch out for a couple of things:
1. Setting the right stakes is important. It’s even more important in cash games(if you want it to remain fun). Keep in mind that if you’ll set the stakes at for example 0.05$/0.10$ and a minimum buy in of 5$ and max 20$, it can very well happen that after a few hours of play some players will have 60$+ or even 100$+ in-front of them. What I’m trying to say is that what seems like a small game at the beginning can turn to a much bigger game after a few hours, so be careful.
2. Make sure you have some change ready. If, for example, all players buy in for 10$ with 10$ bills and you don’t have any change on you, it’s gonna be pretty hard to cash somebody out for 16.45$:)
3. This isn’t really something to watch out for, but more of a useful tip. If you are using chips that don’t have their values written on them, you should make some kind of a refinance table for chip values. You can do this in a really simple way and just paint different colors(chip colors) on a sheet of paper and put their respective chip values next to them. Then just make sure that that sheet is in a visible place so everybody can see it. This is especially useful if you have people coming and going through out the evening.
Now the only thing left to do is to enjoy your home game and try to own your friends as much as possible. If you want to learn more on how to improve your chances of doing so, check out the strategy section.
Enjoy!
