Since Jenn and I have been watching the live coverage of the 2011 WSOP Main Event, I've been hankering to play some pokaaaaah!
So I did some searching and found a home game in my town that's been running for a few years. They have a game every Tuesday night (i.e. last night) but I was pretty beat from work and opted to skip it.
They also do a game every other Saturday, so hoping to check it out this weekend. Crossing my fingers they won't be too loose with the application of rules, but I don't expect much since it's not a casino and my track record for finding a home game with decent rules is like 0/938723
With the price of gas, driving over an hour to the casino to play some of the lower stakes games just isn't feasible right now, so we'll see what's available locally.
Anthony Martino said:
They do a $0.25/$0.50 and 1/2 NL cash game plus some lower buyin tournies (15-20 bucks).
At least you don't have to worry about a rake. Here in Michigan, it's illegal to run home games with a rake.
Anthony Martino said:
As far as I know it's illegal to run home games with a rake anywhere in the States.
The horse says: "It's only illegal if you get caught" lol
It was less than a mile down the street, super convenient for me to find. Got to play with some cool, laid back people (reminded me of my home game back in MA)
We played a $15 bounty tournament first, I wound up taking first place for $45 (top 2 paid with 8 players)
Then we played a $25 bounty tourney and when down to 4-handed I got the monster chip leader to agree to take $85 and let myself and the other two guys get our $25 back (plus our $5 bounties so we made a small profit)
The cash game was afterward, a $0.25/$0.50 NL Hold Em game. I bought in for $50 but most of the people bought in for $20 or even less!
A little later in the night two other people showed up and bought in for $40-$60 each.
Anyway, in the cash game I managed to turn my $50 into $68 before I departed shortly after midnight (with the excuse that they shouldn't feed me after midnight or get me wet)
They did have a dedicated dealer and we each paid $3 extra for him to deal each tourney, and then there was a small rake in the cash game.
But the house provided pizza, soda, beer and water and we could help ourselves as much as we liked.
Was a well-run game without any fights or issues (although someone wasn't happy when my 77 sucked out on her Aces all-in preflop, I hit the case 7 in the door!)
The only issue I had was the use of too many denominations. In the tournament they used:
$25
$50
$100
$500
$1,000
I would eliminate the $50 chips, just messes things up. On the cash side:
$0.25
$0.50
$1.00
$2.00
$5.00
I would yank the $0.50 and $2 out of the equation to make it easier to figure out pot and stack sizes, but that's about it.
Good job! (for a gremlin!) It's funny -- always happened in our home game -- the new person always wins.
Did bride of gremlin play too?
What was the starting chips and blind time intervals?
Ours is only 1800 in chips -- it gets ugly fast. In home games (or just about any game) I like longer blind times. More time -- more hands. Then just grind it out. So many people have so very little patience.
and no horse.