I play poker with a group of friends in weekly homes games. We take turns hosting the games. Over the past year our little group of five has grown to eight regulars and a few stragglers. I mainly play poker as a social get-together. It’s a fun and a challenging way to spend time with friends and get out for the night. It’s also inexpensive. I always figure there isn’t much you can do for a social activity for the same cost. Where else can you go out for a few hours with friends and even if you lose your whole buy-in you are out only $20 for the night. You can hardly go to the movie theatres for that price. I say it’s a cheap form of entertainment!

With only a $20 buyin, we don't play for really large stakes, as you can guess from above. We usually play a ten-dollar tournament and then buyin for another ten dollars to play ring games as people are knocked out. If you win the tournament, of course you tend to take home more money than you came in with, enough to buy say, breakfast the next day.

The “core” group that I play home games with consists mostly of women and we are of varying ages. There is me, who is in my thirties, a woman around the same age, Sally, a woman in her forties, Kathy, another woman in her sixties, Patricia, and Sally’s girlfriend, Joan. We also have a couple of men who play as well - Kathy’s husband Steve joins us some nights, but thinks he’s unlucky so doesn’t play every game, and my boyfriend Nathan gets dragged out occasionally. There are other players who drop in from time to time but those are the core regulars. Outside of the core, is a brother and sister team who come to play once or twice a month. They are in their early twenties: she is a riot, a very fun and a very loose player, who often gets into re-raising and bullying with her brother, Steve. Its fun to watch the sibling rivalry going on between them.

The brother and sister team of Debbie and Steve prefer to play tournaments. They play in other home games with their younger friends. They are part of the new generation of poker players who watch too much televised poker. People who think they know how to play by watching professional players on TV often think that calling 2-5 offsuit, like Gus Hansen, is an ok call to make. They don’t realize that televised poker tournaments show only a portion of the hands that are played, and as television does, it will broadcast the hands that will cause the most controversy for their entertainment value. They don’t realize that many things come into consideration when you make a call or a raise, such as, position, pot odds, reads on the other players, and your chip stack. It is very hard to get either of them to fold their hand in a tournament before the river card. They will fold at the river if they still haven’t caught anything, but up until then they are relying most of the time on pure luck of the cards.

Kathy is our resident “quarter bully”. She earned the nickname from always betting a quarter when she catches something on the flop. Other players may bet a dollar, but not Kathy, she always bets a quarter only and rarely waivers from this betting amount. If the rounds go by with nobody betting until the river card, out will come Kathy with her quarter bet, even if she is just trying to steal with ten high. Betting a quarter when she has a hand does get her callers so perhaps its not a bad way for her to build the pot. Most players will not fold to a minimum bet, but the risk for betting minimum is those same players have a better chance to make a hand as they hang in until the river card.

Joan is a hard read, she is a very nice woman and is the type of woman who is a bit of a librarian type, in that she is quiet and soft-spoken. She sort of looks like a librarian with short red hair and glasses, maybe I should say she looks like the librarian that I had in high school, because now that I think about it she does. Joan was only a mediocre player until just the past few months. I know that Sally and her have been playing at home in heads up games, and I believe she has been reading poker books as well. She has improved her game a lot and is winning frequently, and the thing is that you can never tell what she has in her hand. She gives nothing away through visual tells and really has no betting patterns to speak of. She really could be an excellent player because when she bets it is hard to put her on any type of hand. I have been playing across from her for two years and I never know if I should call or not.

My boyfriend Nathan is a good player. He plays online a lot, and the other players know it. When he makes a large bet, the other players will most likely all fold. He doesn’t always have a hand when he bets out, but if the flop has odds like 3 suited cards for a possible flush, he takes advantage of it by betting. His reputation at our home games is of a player you don’t want to be heads up with. They all seem to think he has the nuts at all times. His aggressiveness at poker games works well for him. He is a student of poker and is consistently reading every poker book he can get his hands on. He knows pot odds and position and putting players on a range of hands as he plays. He loves to be in a pot with Sally, especially if she tries to bully some of the weaker players.  I think he believes its his duty take those chips from her.

Patricia is a new member of our home game. She loves to be playing poker with us and is learning the game. She is at the point where she seems to be going up and down dramatically in her wins and losses. I believe it is because she is trying new strategies in her game and gaining experience. I expect that she will become more consistent as she plays more. She is a lovely person and tells me that although she has signed up at an online poker school, she really only plays for the social aspect and likes learning new skills

Sally on the other hand, is a very serious player, she keeps tedious notes in her little notebook at the table during all the games. I get the feeling that every hand is very important to her and she is out to make the biggest investment on each dollar she plays in. If she loses a hand, especially bluffing, she seems on edge for the rest of the night. Even a week later she is sure to talk about the hand she lost again while throwing daggers with her eyes at the player who beat her. Yet when she wins she is jumping for joy and wears a Cheshire grin. We all make jests at her because of the way she acts, and it provides great entertainment.

Sally takes her game seriously and is a good poker player, but not a great poker player. In order to be a great poker player, you have to let the hands you lose just roll off your back, and not get emotional about it as it affects your play. We all have “those” hands. My famed bad beat story is losing with quads to a straight flush. When it happened, I was playing in a freeroll at an online site, and had pocket 5’s with two other 5’s on the flop. I was so excited that I was sure that I would win a huge pot - who wouldn’t be with quads? I did even see that there were three diamonds on the flop, but my quads beat a flush anyways so who cared! I raised and was reraised allin. “Sucker” I thought as I pushed my chips in. But all of a sudden my hand was mucked and all the chips went to the other player. I was stunned! “There must be some mistake, maybe the software had a glitch in it” I thought. I looked back at my hand history and there it was, he had held a straight flush.

Oh sure I have experienced other bad beats when I have played: higher full houses, even another time that I lost a pot when I held quads, but nothing sticks in my memory as much as that first truly bad-beat and the shock I felt about there being some mistake when I lost the pot.

It’s easy to start learning how to play poker at home. For one, it’s more relaxed. You are most likely around other people that you know or that your friends know and it takes place in the comfort of someone’s home. All it takes to host a home game is some poker chips, a deck of cards, a table, a chair for each player, and some sort of timer if you want to play tournaments. In our home games, each player brings something in the form of a snack or a drink that we all share. Actually, if it weren’t for our home games, I probably wouldn’t have put on so much weight the past couple of years. Those potato chips and little cakes are hard to resist every week!

As I mentioned above, we spend the first part of the night playing ring games with a two-dollar bet maximum. Every player is given ten dollars worth of chips and the dealer button gets moved around the table. When it’s your turn to deal you get to choose what game you play. That way, I have had to learn all the different variations of poker. People tend to mix up the games as we go around the table. It’s also a way to find out who likes what. I know for example that Sally really hates Omaha high low, so when its my deal, what do I call? Omaha high low mostly of course. Sally has this habit of always sitting two seats to my left, which of course means she is sitting at the big blind when it’s my deal. I think she actually secretly likes Omaha High Low; she just doesn’t want to show it.

We use blinds in our home games, so the blinds when playing ring games are a quarter for the small blind and fifty cents for the big blind. When the group of us plays a tournament, we time the blinds to raise every 15 minutes. So we start out at $1/$2 and raise up until a final winner is declared. It’s a good idea to work out the blind structure on a piece of paper before you start playing. At our home game, we generally start with $100 in tournament chips each. Remember that more chips per player will result in longer tournament play and a later night. The buyins for our tournaments are usually $10 each and that goes into the prize pool. Depending on the number of players the prize pool is split up between first at 60% and second at 40% placing. I find our tournaments are fun and my friends do seem to take turns winning them. We normally play no limit hold’em tournaments or pineapple, which is good for a smaller group. Pineapple is a variation of hold’em where you are dealt three hole cards, with one discard after the flop. This makes for better odds for all players to make hands, and normally causes more action in the game.

Because our tournaments are no limit players will go allin on the pot. Unless you are playing with very loose players, which most of the time our home games are not, this only starts to happen as some players become low in chips as they try to steal the pot, or to steal blinds. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t have a hand, but it’s less likely. Blinded out is when you don’t make a raise before your chips are all in on your blinds. That is merciless to be allin on your blind, and then you are truly relying only on the draw of the cards.

More people are including poker in their weekly activities and playing at home games. Most of the time these games are lower buyins and more of a social evening out than a way to supplement your income.

The point to my story is that you don’t have to have a large budget for poker to simply enjoy the game. Many players play soley for the social aspect of poker. I play tournaments in casinos at times and online as well, but I still enjoy my home games the most.  Two years later, I can still learn a lot from watching my friends while they play poker.