Home game starting stacks? |
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Posted Thu Jan 25, 2007 5:53 pm GMT by Irish
Hey everyone. A bunch of guys from my high school and I play regularly. There's normally about 8 players all at one table...the games seem to go late into the evening. Here's how we're doing the chip divisions right now, but I'm pretty sure there's a better way of doing it.
$5 buy-in
8 blacks (.25 each) = $2
20 reds (.10 each) = $2
20 white (.5 each) = $1
A few questions:
1. We generally do re-buys. Is this a bad idea?
2. Would it be better to start at $10?
3. What chip divisions are best in your opinion for a small cash game?
4. Sometimes we'll go over players. At how many players should we make 2 tables and at how many should we make 3?
We also seem to have a problem with the blinds. We like the games to go for a while--but not 10-hour marathons which is what they generally turn out to be. So, we don't start raising the blinds right away. We normally wait a little bit for everyone to get settled (2 hours maybe) and then start raising every 30-45 mins depending on the number of players. I have a question, what would be the best way to do blinds in a home game like this?
If someone can clear all this up for me, I'd really appreciate it.
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Posted Thu Jan 25, 2007 9:41 pm GMT by Iron Butt
| Irish wrote: | A few questions:
1. We generally do re-buys. Is this a bad idea?
2. Would it be better to start at $10?
3. What chip divisions are best in your opinion for a small cash game?
4. Sometimes we'll go over players. At how many players should we make 2 tables and at how many should we make 3?
We also seem to have a problem with the blinds. We like the games to go for a while--but not 10-hour marathons which is what they generally turn out to be. So, we don't start raising the blinds right away. We normally wait a little bit for everyone to get settled (2 hours maybe) and then start raising every 30-45 mins depending on the number of players. I have a question, what would be the best way to do blinds in a home game like this? |
1. Nah, rebuys are great, they really boost the payouts and it's nice in a friendly game for everyone to have a second chance. There should be a limit though, like no more rebuys after X number or X hours in. You can adjust the blind structure to allow for rebuys in the time you want.
2. Whatever people want to do. If you would lose players by upping the stakes you need to decide if it's worth it.
3. Chip divisions? Cash game? Do you mean chip values and tournament? For a tournament, usually you want chip values to be spaced 4-5x until the higher ones, like 25, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, or you can start at 1, 5, 25, etc. This allows for a minimum of chips on the table which is easier. Also in a tournament, you don't need the chip values to be fixed to the buyin value; you can say, well, your $5 gets you T1000 (a thousand in tournament chips) or whatever suits your game structure. For a cash game you usually don't need as many values and they are fixed to the buyin value.
4. Hold'em can be played up to 11 players at a table I believe. At 12 you would have to go to 2 tables of 6 players etc. You want the same number of players or as close as possible at every table.
Blinds - Well um, if the game's too long, you need faster blinds. Not raising the blinds for 2 hours is a big part of your problem right there. I might make the first blind period a little longer, but I'd never go 2 hours. Stack size is also a factor; generally a starting stack of 100x your starting small blind is considered to be a good amount play-wise. A good simple format I've used is charge X buyin for T100, blinds start at 1-2, 2 rebuys allowed, blinds go up by 1 every 20 minutes, but we'd skip the awkward ones like 9/18 and once we got to 10/20 we'd color up the ones off the table and blinds would go in 5s or 10s until 25/50 and so on, we'd kinda do what we felt like. Made for usually a 4-5 hour game. Another one I used recently is buyin for T2500, 1 rebuy in the first 2 hours only, blinds start at 25/50 and went up by that increment every 15 min. for the first 2 hours, at which point we colored up to get the 25s off and started doubling the blinds from 100/200. Made for about a 3 hr game.
One rule of thumb I've heard is that you can expect the game to end around the time the big blind is around 1/10 of the chips in play. I think that's pretty accurate in my experience, like with the T100 structure there would usually be 1500-2000 in play by the end and the game would end sometime between 50/100 and 100/200. So you can set up the blinds however you want as long as you get to that 1/10 amount around when you want the game to be over.
Hope it helps, have fun.
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