Tips For Hosting A Successful Mixed Ability Poker Night (Including Beginners)

So you want to host a poker night for your family and/or friends? Well, everything is pretty simple, isn’t it? All you need is a pack of cards and away you go!

Only, it isn’t that simple. While a pack of cards is the bare minimum for a poker night, to make it more like what you see on the TV, you’ll need other items too.

Furthermore, if you are playing with friends and family, you need to consider the different abilities of the players present and how much knowledge they have about the game.

Sure, there may be a few at the table who have played a fair deal of poker but it is a good bet that you’ll have at least one player who is a complete beginner or relative novice at the game.

And you do not really want to alienate a novice player by having them lose their money and lose interest in playing because they are being torn asunder by the sharks at the table.

There’s also a big difference for people who have played primarily online too. If you play at a site like bet365 Poker, then online you don’t have to hide your expressions or emotions when you play. In person at the table you do.

So, a good, enjoyable and friendly poker night does take a little more forethought than you would expect and in this article, we’ll explain how you can take the right steps to get your poker evening off to a positive start.

Part One – Planning

The best way to make sure your Poker Night goes off without a hitch is to ensure that you plan it in detail.

There’s a lot more to planning a successful poker night than simply inviting friends round and having a pack of cards. Here’s some of the things you ought to consider:

1. Gauge interest amongst your invitees

Just because you think a poker night is a great idea, doesn’t necessarily mean your friends or family will. Gauge if there is enough interest to run a poker night with those you intend to invite.

• Invite the right number of people to play

A good poker night will involve a sweet spot of players. Any fewer than four and things can get a bit repetitive, any more than eight or nine and you could find your game extends into the wee small hours a lot longer than you expected.

Ideally, we’d aim for between 6 and 8 to play in your first game. It will give you enough variety and competition to keep things interesting without taking too long to finish and it will also give you time to give some guidance ahead of the tournament to the less experienced players.

• Set the entry fee at a sensible level

I always suggest a first home game or poker tournament should be played for a small entry fee so people can get a taste of things without risking larger amounts of money. £5 or £10 entry is enough to give you a nice amount for the winner to take home without making people feel like they are spending a great deal.

In terms of rebuys, I tend not to bother with these, but if you do want to offer the chance to rebuy for some extra chips, then set the amount to buy more chips to no greater than the initial entry fee and cap it at that amount.

• Set a sensible time and date

Rather than say a date and have people pull out, negotiate a time and date which suits most players and set the date well in advance so people can get the date in their diary.

Remember, a poker tournament at home, starting from 1/2 chip blinds and doubling in value every 15-20 minutes or so, will likely take you about 3-4 hours to complete if you start with a decent amount of chips (more on these below).

• Pick Up Your Poker Accoutrements

A great poker night needs more than just people and cards. A good idea is to buy a piece of baize or cloth to cover your poker table. Depending on your table size this can be a relatively inexpensive way to create a poker table (just remember to give the cloth an iron before you start!).

If money is no object then you can buy poker tables, or poker table tops to play on too, but I’d advise against that unless your home game is already well-established.

More important than the baize though are chips. You can buy chips very cheaply but these are often coloured only and do not have denominations on the chips like you see in real games.

Chips with denominations on are available in packs and they aren’t too expensive and well worth it as they make the game feel much more ‘professional’ and it is easier for players to add up how many chips they have.

Investing in a set of chips is a great way to make the evening feel special. And a great tip is if you buy a set in a case, you’ll find that denominations may go up to 100 or 500, but you can buy additional chips online in packs of 25 or so to increase the number of chips available. I bought 1,000, 2,500 and 5,000 chips to add to my set which has given them a whole new range.

Also, bring your phone to use it as a stopwatch for an indicator of when to raise the blinds.

• Plan any food or drink

A good poker night will need some nibbles and drinks for everyone, so it is worth getting that organised. As host, you may feel comfortable providing both, but it is also fair to ask others to bring something with them to enjoy at the table.

You don’t need a banquet – just something to nibble and drink while you play, while ordering a pizza at some point after the game has finished is always a nice way to bring everyone back together (we always play winner pays for the pizza!).

Part Two – On The Day

1. Set up your table before your guests arrive

It saves a lot of time if you set up the table in advance. Lay down the baize, put any drinks mats, bowls etc on the table (or nearby) and then divide the chips up into equal amounts for each player.

I personally find it easier to offer chips that are easily translated into cash amounts. So for example, if players are buying in for £10 in a game, I would give them 1,000 in chips, which mean that each chip equates to £0.01p.

There’s no need to do that of course as it is usually winner takes the top prize, but that is just something I try to stick to when hosting my own evenings.

• Play a few ‘dummy’ hands for the novice players at the table.

If there are beginner or novice poker players in your group then I always like to give them an idea of what will happen as a hand plays out and the best way to do this is to play a dummy hand with cards face up.

You can show them how the betting rounds work, how the community cards are shown and give them advice on the etiquette of playing poker (such as not playing out of hand, revealing cards to opponents etc).

• Start the watch and begin!

Set the stopwatch going and now your tournament can begin. Remember to raise the blinds when the stopwatch sounds and restart it when it does.

One final tip, if you are the most experienced player at the table and start to win lots of chips, it is perhaps kind and friendly to perhaps play a bit looser, to give the other players at the table a chance. There’s nothing likely to put players off playing in a regular game than the same person winning every week!

But at the end of the evening, if you and your friends can sit down and say you enjoyed it and want to do it again, then win or lose, your poker night has been a success!