Home Game

Playing in a regular home game can be beneficial to one's poker development. By continually playing with the same players, you are forced to change your style of play as your opponents will easily be able to exploit any tendencies that you have. Of course, the social setting and being able to share a bad beat story or two also helps. A good home game can also serve as a forum to discuss how some hands might have been played differently. Everyone has a unique approach to the game of poker and I think that there is something that can be learned from everyone about how they play.

When you play with the same group over and over, your reads on what your opponent might have can sometime be extremely accurate. In one session, I called out the hand of my opponent twice. The easier one of the two was K-K. I flopped top pair and my opponent made top set on the turn and put in a big bet on the river after checking the turn. The other one was 6s-8s. Maybe it was a lucky guess, but I knew my two small pair was no good with the nut straight possibility out on the board. I pull off bluffs and play hands in a variety of different ways in my regular home game. I wouldn't even consider to try some of those moves in a cash game in a casino. Once, a player in the game commented, that I tend to make pot sized bets with hands like A-K when I miss on all streets. I got called down and lost a big pot once. However, I turned around and made the same big bets against that player with the nuts and got paid off. Had I been up against another player, I would have bet differently.

The point of this is that you can use a home game as a place to experiment with new plays and bluffs. Most likely, you are not paying for that much money, but it never hurts to win.