Introducing No Limit

[jeffnc]

Unlimited stakes is fine for limit poker, but NL poker is simply not NL poker unless you play table stakes. It's that important. I would go so far as to say if you're not playing table stakes in NL, then you're simply not playing NL.

Pot Limit is a complete waste of time for a home game. Any nuances between that and NL will surely be lost on anyone, and it's just way too hard to keep track of how much can be bet and raised. No fun, don't bother.

NL adds new dimensions as long as you come up with clear rules for how you can rebuy. But remember what I said, it's imperative that you know how much someone has in front of him for any particular hand, and that's the only amount they can play with.

In our home game, we have a fixed buy in. The interesting thing is that we cannot buy in again until we bust. You can never just top off. This adds some interesting tournament-type situations, but without knocking people out or raising blinds.

You might not like this, in which case you can play however you like. You can have cash play, but it must be on the table when the hand starts.

To a lesser extent, money shouldn't be taken off the table either, but personally I find this to be pretty unimportant as it doesn't affect the strategy of any particular hand.

[Chump Change]

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This may sound odd but at our home game we never play no limit. It's always $3 max raise ("spread limit") hold 'em, omaha, omaha hi-low, stud ("follow the queen") - or some variation of guts ("bama guts" "bloody 7s" - don't ask me about "booray").

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This game already sounds like a blast, why do you want to introduce NL. If you want bigger pots you can just make the spread bigger. (I think 'wider' is actually the correct adjective.

Whatever you do don't make it PL. It is a major drag getting people to understand and then calculate what pot limit actually means. And if you're the guy that can do the arithmetic on the fly then you'll ALWAYS be the one doing and can never rest and relax.

[Doc T River]

If you are running a home game, might I suggest The Rules Of Poker by Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky. It has the basic rules for many games including what is a pot bet and what is a pot raise in a pot limit game.