Blind/ante for dealer's choice

[MattB]

Please suggest options for blind and ante structures for our home games. Many different games are played; some needing an ante and others needing a blind. How can we keep the blind/ante structure fair, so certain players are not routinely paying more before the hand is dealt?

Thank you.
Matt

[Mojo Tooth]

At my Dealer's Choice game, whenever someone calls a game that tends to work a bit better with posted blinds rather than antes (basically Omaha or HE), we just play a whole orbit of that game so that everyone posts the blinds equally.

You can either choose to have the person that called the game deal first or last. But when a complete orbit is played then the game call passes to the next person.

Since everybody is more or less okay with HE or Omaha, this works out fine. Then we just ante up normally for games like Chicago, Baseball, Draw, what have you, and do one deal.

I think that is an answer to your question.

[MattB]

Good, thank you MoJo. Any more ideas?

[elwoodblues]

I, too, like playing the same game for one orbit. It tends to cut down on the REALLY odd games, because people just don't want to call a stupid game for eight hands. Also, if you are doing an ante game I like having the dealer post the ante for everyone. This avoids the whole: Who forgot to ante?

[Fins]

I like the idea of calling a game for a round.

In the dealer's choice home game I play in we use dealer ante only - no blinds... a $1 in our case. Games are usually $0.25/0.50 (~75% Omaha hi/lo & HE, ~10% Stud with every street going up a quarter & 15% crazies). Last half of the night bets raise to $0.50/$1.00 but we keep the ante the same.

[chesspain]

What I've done for my home game, when it's dealer's choice, is to have the game which is chosen continue for the entire orbit. When the button gets back to original dealer, the button then jumps over this person to the player on his left, who now chooses the game of his choice for the next orbit...and so on.

[chesspain]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, if you are doing an ante game I like having the dealer post the ante for everyone. This avoids the whole: Who forgot to ante?

[/ QUOTE ]

This also avoids the need for smaller denomination chips which would only be used for individual antes.

[Mojo Tooth]

[ QUOTE ]
What I've done for my home game, when it's dealer's choice, is to have the game which is chosen continue for the entire orbit. When the button gets back to original dealer, the button then jumps over this person to the player on his left, who now chooses the game of his choice for the next orbit...and so on.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is basically what I suggested, except that for you, you apply it for all games.

I think that can work fine, except that it will discourage people from trying a game that they may have read about and wanted to try but don't know if it's worth playing a whole orbit of. So maybe you should give dealers at least the option of calling a single-shot game, as long as it's ante-sylte instead of blind-style. /images/graemlins/smile.gif