Cash Game Home game with a lot of players new to poker - looking for structure and starting stack advice (2 Viewers)

[demax51]

Hey everyone! I've just started a home poker game that I hope will become a steady monthly game. We've played two months in a row now, and we set a date for next month at the end of the last session, too, so it seems like things are working out well so far. Nevertheless, I've lurked on these forums enough to know that you guys could definitely offer me some advice to help refine my game.

First and foremost: most of my players are pretty new to poker. Only one of them has ever played in a real card room, and none of the others had ever even played in a cash game before our first game last month. The max most people seem okay losing in a night is $50, so I've been trying to keep things pretty tame with limit structures so far. Last month we used .25/.25 blinds with a .25 to $2 spread limit (3 bets max per street). I thought that worked pretty well, but I wanted to test a traditional structure, so this month I went with a .50/$1 limit setup (blinds .25/.50, 4 bets max per street). It also worked pretty well, but I figured it was still worth asking if you guys have any thoughts.

I'm obviously going to talk to my players to see if they have any feedback or preferences so far, but I'm just curious if there are any options I haven't thought of. We've talked about doing sit-and-go's, too, and we probably will run some at some point, so I'd love to hear options for good tourney setups as well as cash games.

I'd also love some advice for starting stacks. I've been doing 20 x $.25s, 25 x $1s and 4 x $5s, but I think my players might prefer larger stacks of lower denoms, so I'm thinking of picking up a few more barrels of $.25s and $1s.

For reference, my cash chip set is as follows:
200 x .25
200 x $1
100 x $5

I also have a tourney chip set:
150 x 25
75 x 100
50 x 500
25 x 1,000

We haven't done one yet, but my initial idea for a NLHE tourney is a $25 buy-in with a top-3 payout of $100, $60, and $40; starting stacks of 4,000 (16 x 25s, 6 x 100s, 6 x 500s), with 20-minute levels.

Thanks for taking the time to check out my post, and thanks in advance for any replies!

 

[SteveEH]

My game mostly also has inexperienced players with a lot of pre flop limping (which requires more fracs to minimize making change).

Post COVID we ran between 5 and 10 games that were .50/1 fixed limit with a $40 buy in. That was enough to last everyone the entire evening, usually about 5 hours, without needing to rebuy. The largest swings were -35 and +45, but on an average night people won/lost around $25.

Since then we mostly play .25 - 5 spread limit, originally with a $40 buy in, but we increased it to $60 after we started including Omaha, pineapple and stud in the rotation and the inexperienced players started losing more.

If you stick to hold'em, you could probably up the fixed limit stakes to .75/1.50, or spread limit to
.25-5 with $50 buy ins.

My games are 6 max. I'd love a 2 chip/4 chip fixed limit set where each player starts with a rack of chips, but it's hard for me to justify being somewhat of a minimalist. Fortunately one of my sets was designed for 10 and 25 no limit and I decided to buy lots of quarters and $1 chips vs. including a higher denom $5 (which would rarely see the felt). This is not an 'optimal' breakdown but I wanted more chips on the table. It works really well for .50/1, or even .75/1.50 fixed limit where a $5 isn't needed. For these stakes players start with 2 barrels of .25s and the rest in $1s. For micro stakes in general, I wouldn't want any player to have less than 30 workhorse $1 chips.

I haven't run tournaments for years as I want all players playing the entire night.

 

[demax51]

My game mostly also has inexperienced players with a lot of pre flop limping (which requires more fracs to minimize making change).

Post COVID we ran between 5 and 10 games that were .50/1 fixed limit with a $40 buy in. That was enough to last everyone the entire evening, usually about 5 hours, without needing to rebuy. The largest swings were -35 and +45, but on an average night people won/lost around $25.

Since then we mostly play .25 - 5 spread limit, originally with a $40 buy in, but we increased it to $60 after we started including Omaha, pineapple and stud in the rotation and the inexperienced players started losing more.

If you stick to hold'em, you could probably up the fixed limit stakes to .75/1.50, or spread limit to
.25-5 with $50 buy ins.

My games are 6 max. I'd love a 2 chip/4 chip fixed limit set where each player starts with a rack of chips, but it's hard for me to justify being somewhat of a minimalist. Fortunately one of my sets was designed for 10 and 25 no limit and I decided to buy lots of quarters and $1 chips vs. including a higher denom $5 (which would rarely see the felt). This is not an 'optimal' breakdown but I wanted more chips on the table. It works really well for .50/1, or even .75/1.50 fixed limit where a $5 isn't needed. For these stakes players start with 2 barrels of .25s and the rest in 30 $1s. For micro stakes in general, I wouldn't want any player to have less than $30 workhorse $1 chips.

I haven't run tournaments for years as I want all players playing the entire night.

I haven't had anybody get felted yet, but at least one person each night has come pretty close, so I'm hesitant to bump my stakes up anytime soon, but we will probably move to something like .75/1.50 or .25-5 spread eventually.

My group was initially hesitant about doing a cash game as most of them had only ever played in tournaments before, but after I kind of went over the pros and cons of each, and especially how shitty it is to be knocked out early, everyone said they were okay at least giving the cash game a shot. They enjoyed it enough to do it again the second time, so it seems like it worked. I'm just also quite sure that this group will not be playing no-limit cash games anytime soon, so if people want to have that playstyle for a night, a tournament will be pretty much our only option.

 

[NeutronHim]

I don't really know anything about limit games besides PLO, so I was hesitant to comment at first, but I also come from the somewhat shared background of being very anti losing money. (My first night, I was in a .25/.5 nl game very uncomfortable. If I ended up down 100 that day, I'd probably never play the game again.) Here goes -- a 25$ tournament sees quite a lot of people down 25 bucks, and while I don't know your players, it might be worse for a bunch of people to lose 25 than for one person to lose 50. It's kinda like running .1/.25 NLHE with more variance (esp if in this imaginary analog cash game, nobody ever rebought.) Tournaments are high variance -- I know a group that regularly plays .5/1 nlhe that won't host a tournament with a buyin over 25, for example, and while they might sorta be outliers I don't think it's too far off the mark.

Don't really know how to engage such groups as I don't know how limit works; just would suggest being wary with tournaments. (Unless these people are, for example, well-off but frugal -- if losing 50$ in a given night is a huge mental hurdle for them but they make more in an hour, so losing 25$ means nothing to them.)

 

[TudiscoKid]

Not sure if this would help, but here's my Rules & Structure doc that I use for my home games (Cash and Tourney)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nZ9qm2liC0UUlKeKLDsEolLqQO1C5IzVZITrdo5tr4c/edit?usp=sharing

 

[NeutronHim]

Not sure if this would help, but here's my Rules & Structure doc that I use for my home games (Cash and Tourney)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nZ9qm2liC0UUlKeKLDsEolLqQO1C5IzVZITrdo5tr4c/edit?usp=sharing

2/5 is microstakes?!!!!

 

[TudiscoKid]

2/5 is microstakes?!!!!

I play in Mexico, so currency is in Mexican pesos!

It's 12 cents / 30 cents after conversion.

 

[DuckFat]

I haven't had anybody get felted yet, but at least one person each night has come pretty close, so I'm hesitant to bump my stakes up anytime soon, but we will probably move to something like .75/1.50 or .25-5 spread eventually.

This sounds like a nightmare and way too many .25 needed, might feel like a drag at some point because the game will move slower. I suggest making the blinds 1/1 or 1/2 (.75/1.50 is basically 1/2 anyway) for simplicity and reduces the time spent making change so you can play more hands. You'll probably need more 1's and 5's but as most people here will say, more chips is always better.

 

[demax51]

This sounds like a nightmare and way too many .25 needed, might feel like a drag at some point because the game will move slower. I suggest making the blinds 1/1 or 1/2 (.75/1.50 is basically 1/2 anyway) for simplicity and reduces the time spent making change so you can play more hands. You'll probably need more 1's and 5's but as most people here will say, more chips is always better.

I actually expanded my cash set last week to 350 x $0.25s, 350 x $1s, 125 x $5s, and 25 x $20s, so I've got plenty of chips for the time being no matter which way we go. You may be right about .75/1.50 being a little cumbersome in practice, but we'll probably at least try it and see how it goes.

 

[demax51]

Welcome to PCF! My first sets were from The Poker Store as well. I have a Monte Carlo cash set and a tournament set of Turbo ceramics. Your setup looks great! It is miles ahead of ours when we first started.

Not sure if this would help, but here's my Rules & Structure doc that I use for my home games (Cash and Tourney)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nZ9qm2liC0UUlKeKLDsEolLqQO1C5IzVZITrdo5tr4c/edit?usp=sharing

2/5 is microstakes?!!!!

I play in Mexico, so currency is in Mexican pesos!

It's 12 cents / 30 cents after conversion.

That $2/$5 as microstakes threw me off too! I did actually have a similar idea, though, of trying a no limit game where the chips have a value of 1/100 of that printed (so $1 chips would actually be worth a penny) and running it as a "$2/$5" game, with each player starting with "$2,500" in chips. Definitely worth a try sometime, but I do worry that even a micro no limit game may get too expensive too quickly for these folks.

 

[NeutronHim]

2c/5c nlhe is a great idea! If the players start wisening up to how to play, it'd be pretty hard to be down more than 20 bucks (pretty ridiculous to be down 400BB at nlhe imo, especially if people buy in for 5)

Dunno if there's a dynamic where they'd think buying in for 5 is too little (if they'd like to "play with more money" while not actually playing with more money,) but this might work!

 

[Larold]

Hi!

I'd like to point something out that is specific to cash games that will absolutely ruin peoples' night if you don't clarify this at the outset of a cash game:

Table Stakes Wikipedia entry

TL;DR: Only money on the table at the start of the hand plays, and ideally, only chips play.

Let me explain how people can get burned by this:

Dude has $20 in chips and $50 cash in front of him ready for a rebuy. Someone moves all-in on him and he says 'Call.' He loses the showdown.

If the table stakes isn't declared ahead of time, he can weasel out and say "This $50 cash wasn't part of my stack yet - so I only owe you my $20 in chips,"

Or it can run the other way. Say he WON. He could say "Wait - you don't just owe me $20 - you owe me another $50 because this cash -was- part of my stack."

So, if lots of your crowd are new to poker, you gotta' get this decided and announced right away. I highly recommend:
- Table stakes AND
- Only chips play, not cash.

Good luck!