Suggestions for beating this home game structure?

Generator · #1 02-23-2005, 08:06 PM

My low-stakes home game has recently adopted this structure:

4-6 players

$5 buy-in, 1 re-buy per player if busted.

Blinds start at $.05/.10, with the small blind increasing by .05 and the large by .10 every 15 minutes.

What starting hands would you recommend playing at the outset? There isn't much preflop raising going on in the lower levels, so I've been playing hands as odd as Q-8offsuit, hoping to hit and get ahead early. What do you guys think?

RED_RAIN · #2 02-23-2005, 08:13 PM

Lots of suited connected, raise good pocket pairs hard preflop.

Try to push out drawers with bets.

Don't bluff a ton.

Don't mind building pots with good draws.

smoore · #3 02-23-2005, 08:15 PM

As long as you play well postflop then playing trash hands early in the game will be fine. The blinds must get pretty weird later if it's not half of the BB. That'll change your SB strategy quite a bit.

Generator · #4 02-23-2005, 10:09 PM

Thanks, guys. Just to clarify - this is no-limit Hold'em that's being played, and the small blind does stay at half of the big blind. For example:

Level 1 - .05/.10
Level 2 - .10/.20
Level 3 - .15/.30
Level 4 - .20/.40
Level 5 - .25/.50

...and so on.

The Armchair · #5 02-23-2005, 10:42 PM

Remember that there's an incentive to rebuy earlier rather than later. If you rebuy at level 5, the blinds eat away at your stack too quickly.

If you get down to, say, $2, I'd be hyper aggressive. If you can double up and then some, great. If you bust? Well, you're tossing in another $5, which is better earlier than later.