Online Home Poker (6 Viewers)

[LotsOfChips]

If one of your players busted their single max buyin early in the game, then that person is done for the night?

No, they can rebuy again for the max (total transfer limit = 2x max buyin). The min and max buyin is the amount a player can buy in or top up to at any time. The transfer limit is how much I allow him to put in his account for the game.

For example in a $20 min $50 max $100 transfer limit game, if he transfers $100 and his initial buyin is $25, he could bust three times and rebuy for$25 each time, or top up to $50 later, or any combination up to $100 limit

 

[naked_eskimo]

I see, thank you.

I am going to give this all some good consideration and possibly run some proposed changes by my player base. I'm fine with the way things are. I adjust my play style accordingly, but if the majority are in favor of some changes, then I will implement them happily.

 

[BGinGA]

the one player who texted me has a very one sided way of looking at poker things. He texted to complain about the large buyins, but in our home game, he is the one who will always buyin for $300 or more late at night if he's having a bad session. I've remarked at those times about a larger stack can lead to bullying other players and some may not like it. His response is always a heated explanation about how it should not matter because no one can lose anymore than they have in front of them. But yet here he is commenting about the discomfort at so many large starting stacks. He will also only make comments about the best starting hand winning the pot when it's to his advantage. If he rivers a winner with the best starting hand, then all is fair. If someone else rivers him after he flops a set or something, and someone points out that the player did have the best hand preflop, he will snap back that who cares because "it's a five card game after all".

I don't really know how to address it

Personally, I'd address it by removing that player from the invite list. /problem

I don't host so that others can use me as their personal bitch bag.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Personally, I'd address it by removing that player from the invite list. /problem

I don't host so that others can use me as their personal bitch bag.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Ain't nobody got time for THAT!

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

No, they can rebuy again for the max (total transfer limit = 2x max buyin). The min and max buyin is the amount a player can buy in or top up to at any time. The transfer limit is how much I allow him to put in his account for the game.

For example in a $20 min $50 max $100 transfer limit game, if he transfers $100 and his initial buyin is $25, he could bust three times and rebuy for$25 each time, or top up to $50 later, or any combination up to $100 limit

This is kinda what I was thinking, but hadn't considered limiting the amount of times they could buy back in. I was more thinking just of limiting the opening stacks so everyone started pretty much on the same level. I think it's just a matter of putting together a group that all have the same objectives. If you've got 6 guys that just want to play some poker, drink a few beers and shoot the crap, and 3 guys who are out to take everyone's cash, to me that's a mis-matched group. So you can look at this group in two ways. 1 - find some new guys to replace the guys that don't fit, or 2 - at least limit the stack they can start with, so the're not able to bully the rest of the table, unless they actually earn a big stack with good play.

I'm not against having aggressive players in a group with passive players. Both playing styles can be successful if you know what you're doing. But if 6 passive guys who just want to play and have fun start out with $50 stacks, because that's a reasonable amount for the game, (say a .10/.20 game) and the aggressive guys have $300 stacks, it just seems that might not lead to the type of game the majority of players came to play. Then again, if the small stacks are the better players, then they'll probably do just fine and be happy to take the deep pocket guy's money.

 

[naked_eskimo]

I was thinking about this a bit more this morning. Some players who have never played online before and play a loose, random sort of home game style will probably suffer the most. Specifically, I was thinking about flops seen percent (roughly the closest thing to VPIP stat you will find in poker mavens). I tend to be kind of nitty. Especially when it comes to pre-flop hand selection. Not a total nit, but my UTG raising range would be 98s and up for suited connectors, KQ, AQ, AK maybe QJ, and 55 and up for pairs. Anyway, I looked at my flops seen % during a game the other night and it was 38% I am usually somewhere between 31 and 44% typically. I asked one of our home game regs who is very loose in his pre-flop hand selection and his flops seen was 70% Maintaining preflop discipline may be easier online.

Hands come by so much faster that I don't struggle with the patience required to maintain my preflop discipline. For the loose folks who just have to give any two cards a spin, they are going to be playing so many hands that they are going to be limp folding so many times that they will be constantly leaking chips at a high rate.

In a home game where hands can take forever as people stop dealing to chat, or shuffle slowly, etc, etc, it can get hard to resist the temptation to play crap cards out of position because you are bored out of your brain and just want to play. Online fits my preflop strategy so much better. Fold? No biggie, another hand will start in very short time. Bored? I can watch the action without distracting conversations or even browse the web in the background.

 

[MrCatPants]

I was thinking about this a bit more this morning. Some players who have never played online before and play a loose, random sort of home game style will probably suffer the most. Specifically, I was thinking about flops seen percent (roughly the closest thing to VPIP stat you will find in poker mavens). I tend to be kind of nitty. Especially when it comes to pre-flop hand selection. Not a total nit, but my UTG raising range would be 98s and up for suited connectors, KQ, AQ, AK maybe QJ, and 55 and up for pairs. Anyway, I looked at my flops seen % during a game the other night and it was 38% I am usually somewhere between 31 and 44% typically. I asked one of our home game regs who is very loose in his pre-flop hand selection and his flops seen was 70% Maintaining preflop discipline may be easier online.

Hands come by so much faster that I don't struggle with the patience required to maintain my preflop discipline. For the loose folks who just have to give any two cards a spin, they are going to be playing so many hands that they are going to be limp folding so many times that they will be constantly leaking chips at a high rate.

In a home game where hands can take forever as people stop dealing to chat, or shuffle slowly, etc, etc, it can get hard to resist the temptation to play crap cards out of position because you are bored out of your brain and just want to play. Online fits my preflop strategy so much better. Fold? No biggie, another hand will start in very short time. Bored? I can watch the action without distracting conversations or even browse the web in the background.

I have players doing this in high low and they are getting crushed. Playing hands like 2599 and continuing after flops like 678 and wondering why they are getting crushed both ways.

 

[DoubleEagle]

in my room, we dropped our normal live blinds from $1/2 to $.50/1. There are still lots of big pots. But like others have said, play is so much faster it seems as if if we are player larger. We have a game almost every night. Sometimes two tables. I keep a spreadsheet for every day‘s play as well as one with aggregate totals.

 

[MrCatPants]

in my room, we dropped our normal live blinds from $1/2 to $.50/1. There are still lots of big pots. But like others have said, play is so much faster it seems as if if we are player larger. We have a game almost every night. Sometimes two tables. I keep a spreadsheet for every day‘s play as well as one with aggregate totals.

Are you sharing the spreadsheet? Do the losers know exactly how much they are losing?

 

[jja412]

Are you sharing the spreadsheet? Do the losers know exactly how much they are losing?

In my experience, this is a bad idea. Best case scenario in a social game is you scare away the happily oblivious. Worst case, you harvest animosity between the good and bad players as they realize the way the money flows (which taken over long sample sizes, will definitely favor a small few.)
I keep a spreadsheet of every game that we play in Mavens with the buy-ins, cash outs, and some notes. It is not for public consumption. If a player asks me about their results, I will honestly answer them. But IMO, it's a bad idea to publicize them voluntarily.

 

[MrCatPants]

In my experience, this is a bad idea. Best case scenario in a social game is you scare away the happily oblivious. Worst case, you harvest animosity between the good and bad players as they realize the way the money flows (which taken over long sample sizes, will definitely favor a small few.)
I keep a spreadsheet of every game that we play in Mavens with the buy-ins, cash outs, and some notes. It is not for public consumption. If a player asks me about their results, I will honestly answer them. But IMO, it's a bad idea to publicize them voluntarily.

Agreed. That's why I was asking because that was my feel too.

 

[DoubleEagle]

Are you sharing the spreadsheet? Do the losers know exactly how much they are losing?

No, not sharing.

 

[naked_eskimo]

There is an email discussion going on with my players right now about feeling pushed out preflop by people opening with ridiculous raises. There are some players who will open preflop with a 15x or higher raise sometimes. Personally, I think this is ridiculous. You should be able to accomplish the same thing with a 5x open in my opinion--and even that feels kind of high to me.

Some players have asked for a max preflop open, but there is no function in the software to allow for that to happen--in a no limit game anyway. I suggested that they might want to play limit poker, but that was quickly shot down. I don't think anyone wants to raise the blinds, either. A table agreement to not open for more than 5x has also been suggested. Not really sure the best approach.

Personally, I think that if a 3x open feels too small, then the blinds do need to raised. We play .50/$1 and a 3x raise gets you absolutely nowhere preflop insofar as thinning the field. Any 3x open is almost guaranteed to be called by almost everyone at the table. Yet they balk at the idea of raising the blinds.

 

[BGinGA]

Just change the game to pot-limit Hold'em, if the software won't let you limit pre-flop action to pot-limit. It won't change much except opening raise sizes.

 

[MrCatPants]

Table agreement might be the best way to handle it. That's what I do with my buyins - live we have a rule that after the initial standardized buyin people can buy for up to half the big stack.

Had a "money is no object" guy buy well over the big stack after his first busto. We just talked it out and made it a virtual house rule as the software cant enforce it.

Pot limit as @BGinGA mentions is also an option, but it does prevent overbet which does limit strategy a bit.

 

[naked_eskimo]

That's not a bad idea. I never considered pot limit hold em. So if UTG want to open for a raise, then it can only be $2, then the next player could make it $7 (in a .50/$1 game). I think I have that right?

EDIT: Ok, I had that wrong. UTG would need to call $1 plus the pot $1.50 and then the pot raise would become $2.50..I think that is right? Never played pot limit before.

 

[naked_eskimo]

Had a "money is no object" guy buy well over the big stack after his first busto. We just talked it out and made it a virtual house rule as the software cant enforce it.

You can limit the max buyin for a table in the software. If I understood you correctly.

 

[BGinGA]

An initial pot-limit raise pre-flop in a .50/1 game would be to $3.50 (1.50 pot amt +1 call amt = 2.50 raise amt = 3.50 total), assuming no house rule that the small blind was considered a full bet for raise purposes (more common in tournament than cash play).
.
The second raise (maximum) would be to $15 (5 pot amount + 5 call amount = 10 raise amt = 15 total).

 

[naked_eskimo]

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[MrCatPants]

You can limit the max buyin for a table in the software. If I understood you correctly.

You can, but as stacks increase through the night people then are forced to buy in short if I set it too low. So it either allows people to buy the big stack early, or not be able to buy in competitively late.

 

[AceFour]

Someone shot me a link to this drama

https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/s...acked-to-allow-superusing-for-shady-operators

 

[BGinGA]

Someone shot me a link to this drama

https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/s...acked-to-allow-superusing-for-shady-operators

Fixed in the latest PM patch, as I understand it. And previously discussed itt.

 

[naked_eskimo]

I'm not worried about that cheat. The cheat is for site owners as you require access to the server exe file, and I only play on my own poker mavens based site, and it is for earlier versions. But thank you for the heads up.

 

[naked_eskimo]

So, an ugly accusation has been brought up by some of my players that they suspect two guys of cheating. Collusion, specifically, would be the claim. There is no way they are cheating based on the software. I am the only one with access to the server itself and I do integrity checks on the executable daily. But there are two players who are almost always winning. There have been private messages to the effect that back in their college days they used to brag about colluding on pokerstars. Ugh, such a headache. I don't know if that rumor is true.

The two players suspected of cheating are not bad poker players at all, and I would say rank near the top of the limited talent pool in my smallish group. I know when online is involved, losing players are always looking for something else to explain the losses. But the suspicion is coming from several people, not just one losing player with bone to pick.

How would one even go about exposing collusion online?

 

[MrCatPants]

How would one even go about exposing collusion online?

Whats the accusation specifically. Is it sharing of hole cards? Or are they not going after each other in pots?

And that sucks - empathy your way as I've got a similar but different situation. My players luckily realize the guy is a donkey dumba$$ after having played with him for years live.

 

[naked_eskimo]

The accusation is sharing hole cards. I don't think it is happening, personally. But I am going to watch their play more carefully now.

Turns out I had misunderstood the comment about previous cheating on pokerstars. The person was saying how people he works with would brag about colluding on pokerstars back in college themselves. I thought he meant that his coworkers happened to know these two players back then, but he meant the coworkers were bragging about how easy it is do to do, not that they knew these two did it in the past. That makes me feel a bit better.

 

[naked_eskimo]

These two players are recent additions to our home game--that's how they are now players on my online site since it's invitation only. The one I have played live with probably half a dozen times, maybe more, and the other one twice. They were good, I noticed that right away, but not absolutely crushing it like they have been online lately. That is also raising suspicion in some peoples minds. As I said, I'm not buying it just yet. They are just good players who adjust better to online, I think.

The worst part is I really like them both. I know one of them better than the other and he's been a great resource for recruiting friends to come play and organizing tournaments on my site, etc. I would be personally very upset to find out that my trust was betrayed by this person. And surprised. I just don't see it, but I can't just ignore the comments, especially when they are coming from good friends that I have known for 30 years in some cases. Not a comfortable spot for me to be in.

I lost a large pot to one of them the last time I played, but it was flush vs flush and he had the nut flush. It's not like he was pushing a medium flush knowing that I didn't have the ace or something. Doesn't smell like collusion in that hand.

 

[BGinGA]

Try splitting them up and see what happens..... how they react to it will be as telling as anything you can observe online. Make up some story as to why one of them can't play (either invite only one, software glitch issue, missing bank transfer, new maximum table size, whatever) and see if one guy doesn't want to play without the other one at the table.

 

[naked_eskimo]

You can, but as stacks increase through the night people then are forced to buy in short if I set it too low. So it either allows people to buy the big stack early, or not be able to buy in competitively late.

Also, if a player gets up above the max buyin and disconnects and has to reconnect, then that player would be forced to "go south" by the software.

 

[naked_eskimo]

Try splitting them up and see what happens..... how they react to it will be as telling as anything you can observe online. Make up some story as to why one of them can't play (either invite only one, software glitch issue, missing bank transfer, new maximum table size, whatever) and see if one guy doesn't want to play without the other one at the table.

That is a great suggestion, but we only usually have one table going at a time. It's usually full with 8 or 9 players. I could maybe say that everyone wants to play at 6 max tables only and force a 5/4 split or something...