One of the interesting things about a casino poker game is that usually a tiny percentage of the people who play in it are there for the beginning or the end. A well-run game in a popular casino can run literally for days, around the clock. So most of the players experience it as an ongoing phenomenon, with no beginning or end – they buy in while it’s going and ultimately cash out without interrupting the flow for a moment. It’s like jumping on a city subway and getting off at your stop – the subway train just doesn’t care.

But a home game is different – most of the players will be there when the first card is dealt (they didn’t wait all week to miss the first few hands, thanks very much). And they will be there when the last hand is dealt, modulo unfortunate restrictions such as a husband who doesn’t understand why one would want to play poker until 3:00 AM, or (Gevalt) a j*b forces you to get a sane amount of sleep that night.

So home games have their own arc which is quite different from that of casino games; it’s important to understand that for both social and strategic reasons.

When the game starts, everybody is just settling in, catching up on the week’s news, how the new baby is doing, etc. It’s still light outside and the end of the game seems as far away as retirement is from a 16-year-old. Everybody has bought in for the usual amount, nobody’s stuck, and around the table, silent vows are being taken to “play my A-game.”

In this environment, you can raise and win the blinds. If a usually rational player puts in a big bet, he probably has what he’s telling you he has. In short, while not everybody’s playing “well” (some of your companions simply aren’t capable of it), most people are playing about as well as they can.

A couple of hours in, we have gotten to the mid-section of the game. There have been some changes. Specifically, Harry, who’s not considered the toughest player in the game, hit a miracle set on the river in a $300 pot to bust Denise and Al. Those two, eager to get their money back, have both re-bought up to the $300 that Harry has. Mike decided that he wanted to aim for Harry’s entire stack too, so he’s topped up to $300. Now our $.25-$.50 blind game has four 600 big-blind stacks, and the calculus has changed. Any time those players get into a hand together, they could build the biggest pot the game’s seen in the last four months.

The friendly banter continues in most places around the table, but Al is uncharacteristically silent. He lost a moderately big pot to Denise, so now she’s almost back to even, but he’s stuck $250. He’s usually one of the big winners; this is chafing at him.

In this regime, pick your spots carefully. Denise is a great target for a bluff. Any time a player has gotten stuck badly and recovered, she is likely to play quite snugly for a while. The pain of that earlier pot is still fresh in her mind, and she’s not going to play a big pot unless she’s pretty darn sure the chips are coming her way. Al, on the other hand, is looking to get unstuck in one big pot – don’t try slipping something past him.

The last 60-90 minutes of the game are just pure poker. There’s not much talk – everybody just wants to keep cards moving, and three or four people have their sights set on Harry’s stack, which somehow has managed to stay intact near $300. The only two words in anybody’s mind right now are “implied odds,” so don’t think you’re going to win the $.25 and $.50 blinds with a raise to $2. Now everybody calls, because they have 85s and it’s obvious you have AK, and if the flop comes K-5-5, they’re getting all your chips. At this point, most players will be loose with their preflop calls and on the flop too (for moderately small bets). But the winners, in particular, will be tightening up dramatically – they don’t want to give back the evening’s hard-won profits. You can bluff them, but you’ll probably have to fire a barrel on the turn. If somebody who is up a bunch for the evening calls a big bet on the turn, don’t bluff the river – they’ve got it.

The closing minutes of the game. The host declares it’s the last round. Everybody begs for a second final orbit of the button, except Harry, who’s sitting on the biggest stack he’s ever cashed out from the game. In fact, Harry would have left earlier, but knew that he’d never live down the ribbing from his friends. Don’t expect to see any big fireworks hands unless two true monsters tangle with each other or two of the players who are the most stuck decide to gamble it up – one of them getting crushed and the other getting even. Your job is to target bluffs against the winners and value-bet mercilessly against the stuck players (who don’t care any more).

And finally, it is the last hand. The nits fold, but most people want to at least see a flop. The action is desultory; it rarely changes the grand outcome of the game. Everybody cashes in and is happy to see that the game bank balances perfectly. Handshakes all around and an agreement to reconvene a week later for more of the same. The winners walk out into the night (or pre-dawn) smiling. The losers remind themselves that they’ll recoup their money next week.

And thus the curtain falls on another petite drama in a home poker room. Most of us were there from overture to curtain-calls, and there’s an order and predictability that doesn’t exist in casino poker. You can see why home games can run for years (or decades) virtually uninterrupted, like a great show whose ending changes every night.

See you at the next one.

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Lee Jones is the cardroom manager of Cake Poker and has been in the online poker business for over six years. He is also the author of Winning Low Limit Hold’em, which is in its 15th year of publication.

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