Encouraging action in home games (cross posted in small stakes NL)

[AZK]

Hey all,

I host a regular college small stakes home game, which is decent when it gets a few maniacs every once in a while, but is dry most of the time. Being broke college students, who have only been taught things in this world from reading, most players have read a few books and play on the tighter side. This doesn't make them phenomenal players, they can be outplayed postflop, but this does result in pots contested heads up, or 3 way most of the time. I would like to encourage action, i.e. 6 people seeing a flop, or 3-4 in a raised pot etc. Currently it's .5/1 w/100 buyin. I'm wrestingly with a few different ideas, let me know what you think will work best.

.5/1 with a kill
.25/.25/.5 just 3 blinds
or game structures I've only read about on 2+2 from cali games, i.e.

.5/.5, $1 to open
.25/.25/.5, $1 to open, pot can be killed from anywhere.

Let me know what you all think, thanks.

[TomCollins]

Another possibility is adding an ante. You also can raise the blinds or lower the max buy-in.

[pukenpete]

Try playing a NL tourney every week to start off. Even if the buyin is low, people will have no choice but to play looser once the blinds start going up. You could have some kind of rotating trophy or bracelet (the cheezier the better). At least from my experience, tilt and maniacal play seem to increase when egos get involved. Tourneys also tend to attract those who've never played poker before but have seen it on tv.

I'm not sure changing the game structure will work as you might meet a lot of opposition. You could also try playing NL in a ring game as many limit players can't initially adjust to that game as they are deceptively similar. The action may still be dry, but those few moments they are not...

[Nick_Foxx]

haven't read the other replies but the answer that jumps out at me is to change from no limit to pot limit... just my personal experience, pot limit games always get the most action - no limit cash games where everyone is playing "by the book" tend to be really boring
and if you REALLY want action, change to pot limit omaha or pot limit triple draw...

mike

[Fins]

We mainly play dealer's choice limit games so this may not be of interest. We ante for all games ($1 ante w/ bets 25¢ & increasing a 25¢ with each betting round - the last half of the night we double everything). Most of the games are hi/lo declare. For more action, we often play what we call "double omaha" but you could easily do this with HE... basically run two rows of community cards & can only play out of one row so there's 2 flops, 2 turns & 2 Rivers. Don't know if your into "crazy games" but it's in option to mix it up for action. The ante's certainly make it more worthwhile to play + hi/lo + crazies help increase action.

What about lowering the blinds to 25¢/50¢... lower stakes sometimes loosen folks up... just a thought.

Find some LAG's... host some tourneys to look for others to add to your group.

- Fins

[jmark]

If you want action I don't think a full NL $100 cash game with cash-strapped players who know preflop strategy is what you want. How about a tournament or limit game? Or you could always drop the stakes, $10 buyin, 0.10/.20 blinds. You might not get as much excitement from betting $75, but you might generate more multiway pots.

[AZK]

Thanks for the advice, there is plenty of action in the .25/.5 $20 buyin campus games all over the place, but i've reached a point where i'm tired of playing capped buyin push fest like on party...i wanted to host a deeper game to improve my NL game as well...a few weeks ago i had a maniac who made it 7xbb every hand, we had $25 chips going back and forth preflop, that was a fun night. I need to find more maniacs/lags, i figured a change in structure might fix it up.

[AlphaMeridian]

I'm thinking if you want a deeper game, you're going to have to change your audience. You nailed it in the OP that these are college kids with not much money. Being a part of this grouping, I can tell you, the .25/.50 game sounds good (and we occassionally play this at my local home game) because I know I can blow $20 and not be too bad off. I'm thinking you need to try to get people for better or for less, "out in the real world" who may have bigger funds for "blowing" a night or two and keep coming back.

-Alpha

[Conspir8or]

I run a low-limit structured-bet hold'em game -- 50 cents/$1, with .25/.50 blinds, three raises max, heads-up raises unlimited (but structured). One of my players asked last session if we could go to no limit if the game got heads-up. I put it to a vote, and the rest of the table went with it.

It didn't have an effect on preflop action -- as it is, about half the time 50% of players drop preflop, 10% of the time it's a family flop, with the rest in between, few heads-up flops -- but when it did get heads-up it definitely got more aggressive. More bluffing too.

I should note that it was shorthanded for this first experiment (5 players vs. our usual 7-8), and that two players, a tight-passive and a tight-aggressive, both with NL experience, were not present. It will be interesting to see how this changes matters.

This could give an indication, though: After our nominal ending time, one guy way behind wanted to deal a circle of pineapple to get his $ back, same structure as the HE we had been playing. After that, yet another guy wanted to deal blackjack. I sat this out and watched them trade their winnings back and forth, take chances on marginal hits, etc. Very educational.

PS. Sinatra's "Here's to the Losers" came on the radio while I was writing this. An omen? /images/graemlins/laugh.gif