[gedanken]

home games with friends can be very loose. When 3 or 4 people call your all-in, the chances of one of them sucking out are pretty good, even if you have the current nuts.

I play a regular game like this and do little better than break even. I figure I should be able to crush it: 5 loose bad players drinking, and me with my mad 2+2 skills. Here's what I can offer:



It helps to play hands that draw to the nuts or near nuts. It didn't help you this time, c'est la guerre.

Also, when you enter a hand, push hard to punish draws. If people will chase with any draw (typical), overbet the pot so you make lots of money when they don't hit. This is painful, though, because they call preflop with garbage and hit two-pair on you all the time, and you're giving good implied odds with your top-pair hands.

When you say small blinds, do you mean small in comparison to stacks? My friends don't adjust to stack size at all.

I find that playing insanely tight helps preserve my sanity and limit the downswings. Makes for a good joke at the table when I raise and 4 80/5's prove they actually do know how to fold! Next hand though, I raise and get 3 callers, go figure.

Be on the lookout for profitable draws. Setmining can be the most profitable thing you do. The guys I play against often offer pot odds to call with good draws (they don't have a clue what the pot actually is). This is why they're calling with a four-flush -- they've learned that it's generally profitable because the other players don't charge them enough.

This sort of game has extreme variance, you just have to roll with it. I find it very frustrating because they're also very slow and you don't play enough hands per night to average things out.


lucky I like my friends and have fun anyway.

If you figure out how to beat this game, let me know!