Well as you know there are different payouts, buyins, and a variety of characters at poker home games so covering a blanket strategy is very difficult to do. I’m going to try to break it up in different groups to give you a decent strategy plan. Let me say though that if it’s a group of friends playing together, have fun first, then play to win for bragging rights. Otherwise, it’s not a fun game and no one will want you back.

Sit N Go Style Home Games

You can call these mini tournaments or sit n go’s they fall into the same category. In these tournaments you have x amount of players (maybe 2 tables, maybe 4 players, it varies depending on the game) where you either increase blinds based on a clock, how many players are remaining (this is the most common), or whenever the guy who’s running the tourney decides to raise them. Your strategy will vary slightly depending on starting chips and how many people get paid. A lot of the home games I’ve played in involved paying the top two players, where player one got most of it and player two got his money back. If you’re going this route its very important to put yourself into a situation to win, as even second place won’t really give you any sort of reward, and if they talk you into playing again, well, that probably won’t go very well as its hard to shift back to low blinds and large stacks after playing large blinds against an opponent or two.

First things first, analyze what kind of opponents you’re up against. I’ve ran into a lot of people who will push all in on a pair, and a lot of people who will chase everything under the sun. The other thing I’ve seen common is that they know nothing about odds and will call away their stacks on a 2 outer. This is typically great for you as you’ll win most the time but being that we’re playing tournament style, if they get lucky you’re out, and yes it does happen.

The most common thing you’ll see is a new player taking a ton of chips from another bad player and then dumping them off to the next bad player. You need to pick your battles here, there’s no need to get mixed up in situations where you’re trying to outdraw each other. Wait until you have something good then make your move, if they outdraw you, oh well they got lucky. Making the correct play will make you the better player and put the odds in your favor every time you play.

The best piece of advice I can give you is not to push all your chips into the pot before the river as anything can happen before the river. Yeah odds play a huge factor but when you’re playing against people who know nothing about odds, making pot sized bets to “scare them off” is not only illogical, its just dumb. Bet what you’re comfortable with, as you know they’ll call. Perhaps a smaller bet will scare them away, instead of the proper sized bet.

Home game strategy coming tomorrow…..