Casino News: How to make your online poker home game more fun

Wednesday 1 April 2020

How to make your online poker home game more fun

Webcam poker, side games, free money and more – if you want to make playing private online poker with friends more enjoyable check this out.

Set up a webcam for online poker

While PokerStars, Unibet and 888poker all offer the option to play online poker with friends, none of them currently have private online poker tables that include webcams so you can see each other.

Thankfully there are a number of great solutions to this and you probably already have your favourite. Google Hangouts is probably the easiest to use and best for hosting more than three people, but Facebook Messenger, Skype, Discord and Zoom are all also great alternatives (the latter you have to pay for).

It’s one thing to have banter with your friends in the chatbox, but a whole other thing to see their faces when they get a bad beat.

One quick note, however, make sure everyone in the group is aware and has access to use the video chat service. You might unwittingly be accused of cheating if one friend got left out of the call and they didn’t do so well.

Play social formats

No Limit Hold’em tournaments are by far the easiest format to get a game going in, but if your friends are relatively experienced then we suggest you set up your game in a different format now and then.

Formats like PLO, Omaha Hi/Lo, Stud and HORSE tend to have more players volunteering money into the pot per hand, and the Hi/Lo formats have a lot of split pots. This is perfect to keep more people engaged for longer and encourage more conversation.

You can play all these formats (and more) in cash or tournament variants with the Home Games at PokerStars.

horse poker — Formats like HORSE get more players involved every hand

Make a leaderboard

One way to make every game count and give somebody bragging rights forevermore is to have a leaderboard for your home games. This solves any arguments about who the best player was based on any single result (you can even make a trophy for the end of the league).

Home Games from PokerStars does this automatically, so you can see who is winning even if it isn’t an official league.

If you want to do it at another site, it’s pretty easy to set up a leaderboard online using free websites like keepthescore.co or something simple like Google Sheets.

home game poker — A Home Game leaderboard

Make some side bets

One way to spice up any home game, live or online, is to add a few side bets to keep it light hearted.

You could play the 7-2 game (where you collect a side pot for bluffing, then showing, with 7-2 offsuit). Another common one is betting on the colour of the first card on the flop, or an over/under bet on the ranking of the card. Or a plain old last longer bet with a buddy will change the dynamic too.

You might also want to put a bounty on one player’s head that goes to the player who busts them, but they keep it if they win the tournament. That also will change the dynamic as everyone will play looser against them.

Play Home Games with free poker money

Finally, one way to make it more fun is to make it a no risk game of real money poker. We have exclusive free poker money offers with our partners to get you started and you can even earn money by showing them to your friends.