Venturalvn
Full House
For the better part of 2 decades now our crew has always played quarter cash games. Around 16 years ago I entered the fray as the youngest player in my uncle's game at 16 years old. I won the monthly tournament the first time I ever played, and never stopped playing. The game used to be $20-50 tournaments, and quarter cash games for whoever wanted to stay and play. Circus games abound, and no-skill games like challenge, F your neighbor, and anaconda were mainstays and we played with thousands of dice chips of any color that all equaled a quarter - a tradition that went back 2 more decades to when my uncle and his friends were kids and would play with change on the kitchen table
I continued to play monthly and when I turned 18 and could go into my first Indian casino and started getting into strat, online poker, etc, as did everyone else in our 2- and 3-table during the poker boom. We would still play gambling and circus games, but any-color dice chips were upgraded to semi custom denoms, and eventually my ASM set.
Fast forward to recent years and while we still play quarter circus games occasionally, the majority of our games are .25/.50 NLHE and O8 mix. Aside from the blinds, the quarters see heavy use in betting in the form of fractional additions to bets (elite strat obv) and things like high-level preflop raises to 1.75. Buy-ins averaged $40, rebuys averaged maybe 1-2 a person. Pots averaged $5-10.
This weekend I hosted a game with the Native Lights that I billed as a strict NLHE/O8 to have a more focused game, and used the Native Lights with nothing lower than a 50 cent frac. The game was .50/.50 now, but it couldn't have been more different. Average buy in was now $40-60, rebuys averaged 2-3 a person. Average pots were $20-30.
The same crew, but a single quarter add to the small blind, and the game more than doubled in size. Mind you, the quarter NEVER stopped a person from folding the small blind, but what would have normally been a $100 profit on the night turned into $260.
I often see on this site when designing a set that one should just skip quarters and move .25/.50 in their game to a .50/.50 because it doesn't make a difference to the game but makes the set more buildable. I couldn't disagree with this more after doing it myself.
Was it different? Yes. Was it better? YES. To be honest I'm now thinking of replacing my quarters in my custom with 50 cent fracs. Without quarters on the table, players weren't able to bet off amounts and just under or over single dollar amounts. That in turn resulted in bigger initial pots, bugger ensuing bets, and bigger rivers.
The flip side is we have players that will come with only 1-2 buy ins that are used to playing all night that would now be forced into a more aggressive and uncomfortable structure. Even those with more buy ins that are obvious marks and who routinely drop three buyins in a night will burn through it in 3 hours rather than 6. So if this becomes a regular change, we will face a change in the player pool.
Anyways I just thought it was extremely wild that taking quarters off the table changed the game so much, even though the blinds are wholly unaffected. It made such a big difference that I'm thinking of spending hundreds on new racks of a 50 cent frac just to get the quarters off the table.
Anyone else experience this? Or have any thoughts on sidelining 3 racks of custom ASMs and spending hundreds more just to force a dynamics change?
I continued to play monthly and when I turned 18 and could go into my first Indian casino and started getting into strat, online poker, etc, as did everyone else in our 2- and 3-table during the poker boom. We would still play gambling and circus games, but any-color dice chips were upgraded to semi custom denoms, and eventually my ASM set.
Fast forward to recent years and while we still play quarter circus games occasionally, the majority of our games are .25/.50 NLHE and O8 mix. Aside from the blinds, the quarters see heavy use in betting in the form of fractional additions to bets (elite strat obv) and things like high-level preflop raises to 1.75. Buy-ins averaged $40, rebuys averaged maybe 1-2 a person. Pots averaged $5-10.
This weekend I hosted a game with the Native Lights that I billed as a strict NLHE/O8 to have a more focused game, and used the Native Lights with nothing lower than a 50 cent frac. The game was .50/.50 now, but it couldn't have been more different. Average buy in was now $40-60, rebuys averaged 2-3 a person. Average pots were $20-30.
The same crew, but a single quarter add to the small blind, and the game more than doubled in size. Mind you, the quarter NEVER stopped a person from folding the small blind, but what would have normally been a $100 profit on the night turned into $260.
I often see on this site when designing a set that one should just skip quarters and move .25/.50 in their game to a .50/.50 because it doesn't make a difference to the game but makes the set more buildable. I couldn't disagree with this more after doing it myself.
Was it different? Yes. Was it better? YES. To be honest I'm now thinking of replacing my quarters in my custom with 50 cent fracs. Without quarters on the table, players weren't able to bet off amounts and just under or over single dollar amounts. That in turn resulted in bigger initial pots, bugger ensuing bets, and bigger rivers.
The flip side is we have players that will come with only 1-2 buy ins that are used to playing all night that would now be forced into a more aggressive and uncomfortable structure. Even those with more buy ins that are obvious marks and who routinely drop three buyins in a night will burn through it in 3 hours rather than 6. So if this becomes a regular change, we will face a change in the player pool.
Anyways I just thought it was extremely wild that taking quarters off the table changed the game so much, even though the blinds are wholly unaffected. It made such a big difference that I'm thinking of spending hundreds on new racks of a 50 cent frac just to get the quarters off the table.
Anyone else experience this? Or have any thoughts on sidelining 3 racks of custom ASMs and spending hundreds more just to force a dynamics change?
