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Home Sweet Home Game
By Richard Lederer, July & August 2005
The father of the first family of poker explains how to run a home game
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Poker played in a home is generally a social event as much as an adventure
in gambling. As my son, Howard, the poker champ, observes, "We hear how
hard it is to have friends in today's alienated society. Well, just become
part of a home game, and you can meet plenty of friends. There's a lot of
bonding and schmoozing."
Pay close attention to these elements to set up a popular, regular home
game:
The environment. Provide a comfortable, attractive, and efficient
setting for play. The room should be well lit to minimize any misreading of the
cards. The table should be large enough to accommodate the number of players in
your game—six to eight is ideal. You might want to purchase a poker table
(or tabletop) with green felt, padded edges, and compartments that allow
players to organize their chips.
The host should provide two decks (different colors, please!) of new (or
fairly new) cards and two cut cards—blank cards that are placed under
each deck so that no one can see the bottom card. If the game is Hold 'Em,
you might wish to provide a dealer button to designate the dealer for each
hand. Have a classy set of chips on hand. (Believe it or not, there's an
ideal heft for a poker chip—eleven and a half grams.) Two or three
colors, representing different denominations, will do the trick.
Set a policy for refreshments. Is the repast just pretzels, or are we
talking about pizza and beer or sodas—or something even fancier? Will
guests chip in to cover the costs, or will each host simply take a turn feeding
the fellow players as the game moves each week to a different house?
Unlike bridge and most other card games, poker is a game that works only if
you play for prizes. Its charm is its balance between fear and greed. If the
stakes are too paltry, players will chase every low-percentage possibility that
comes along. Set the stakes to a level that won't break anyone but makes
them think before trying to fill every inside straight. This policy will put
the emphasis where it should be—on skill and trickery.
Avoid speed bumps in the game. Home games vary a great deal in the
proportion between play of the hands and socializing and eating. Here are some
suggestions for making sure that the poker-playing part of the evening moves
along as efficiently as possible:
- Set the rules ahead of time. Each player should have, via e-mail or
hard copy, a brief description of the games the group has agreed to play. This
avoids having to review and repeat the rules throughout the evening.
- Keep shuffling. Develop a system wherein the extra deck not involved
in the play of the current hand is shuffled and ready to go for the upcoming
hand.
- Bet neatly. Players should place their bets in stacks in front of
them. Only when players have folded should they move their stacks into the
middle. This procedure reduces doubt about whether a player has bet the right
amount, as the stacks can be easily compared. Stacking in front of each player
still in the pot also speeds up the division of the spoils when the hand is
over.
Your attitude. Be patient. Playing poker is a marathon, not a sprint.
You won't be a winner every session, but you do want to have a winning
year. If you've experienced a bad streak of luck, don't feel you have
to recoup your losses before you go home. Over time, your superior skill and
eschewing of impulse betting will win out.
On the other hand, don't be afraid to take some risks. If you are afraid
to lose in the short run, you'll seldom win at poker in the long run. Life
usually rewards the thoughtful taking of risks. Good poker players show
assertiveness—not unconditional, out-of-control, ballistic aggression,
but the intelligent imposition of one's will.
To put it simply, if your opponent bets and you fold, you have no chance to win the pot. If your opponent bets and you call, you will win if you have the better hand. But if your opponent bets and you raise, you now have two ways you can win: if you have a better hand or if your opponent folds his or her hand. Take advantage of the raiser's edge.
Do a little studying. Read a good book about the game you're playing; a
little advice from a professional can give you just the edge you need. Watch
the pros on television. Perhaps even play a little online, even if it's
just for funny money. That way, you can pick up a lot of experience fast.
Finally, come to the table with a few trash-talking lines, ready to shoot
from the lip: "Grab a spoon. Taste defeat." "If you'd
remember to put your money in the middle, you wouldn't be so rich."
"Hey, are we here to play poker or go on vacation?" "You're
having a lot of luck tonight—all bad." "If there wasn't
luck in poker, I'd win every time."
Who knows? You could be the next terror of the rec room circuit. It's
time to shuffle up and deal!
Richard Lederer's next book will be Comma Sense, written with John Shore (St. Martin's Press, August
2005). He cohosts A Way With Words on public radio.
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