This is a good tournament structure for a single table home game. Setting the blind levels at 15 minutes per round results in a game which is generally 3-4 hours long. If you want a longer game, which is more skillfull, you can set the blind levels to be 20 minutes per round and get a game that is 4-5 hours long.

 This Tournament Starts with a $5000 chip stack with a chip distribution of

8 x $25
8 x $100
4 x $500
2 x $1000

The blinds are set to 10 minute rounds. This is a very quick tournament. Having two tables of players will last between 2-3 hours. This is a good tourament if you would like to to get in multiple games in a single night

Here are some poker tips to help improve your game.  They aren’t tips on how to play specific hands, but essential tips that you will need to internalize if you want to improve your game.

1) Stay when you’re winning, leave when your losing - Avoid getting in situations where you are playing to get your money back.   There are several things wrong with continuing to play at a table where you have been losing money, first you could very well be on tilt and not realize it, second, if you are losing, it might be because of bad luck.  It might also be because you are playing against players more skillful than yourself.   If you have been losing, and no new players sit down or old players leave, you have to consider that you are the mark at that table.   Conversely, if you have been winning, you are likely on your ‘A’ game, so stick around and keep making money.

2) Observe your opponents - What you do when you aren’t in a hand can be very important to your winning.  When you aren’t in a hand is the best time to watch your opponents and observe their tells.  Make mental notes about who you’re playing against.   Do their hands shake when they bet a big hand?  Do they like to bluff and get cocky when they pull one over on someone?    It is difficult to learn those things while you are in a hand, and are focused on not giving away tells and making the right moves, you need to have spotted their weaknesses ahead of time.

3) Guess your opponents hands - While you are observing your opponents, whether you are in the hand or not, you should constantly be trying to put them on hands.  Would they make that play with top pair?  With a flush draw?   Do they have a made hand, or are they on a bluff?   When you try to put players on hands, you get feedback at the end of the hand whether you were right or not.  It lets you judge whether you have a good read on the player, and can be essential for you to know who you can safely bet large amounts against.

4) Change up your own style - If you see that other players are observing you, you need to shift gears and make sure you aren’t too predictable.   Oftentimes you can shift gears without changing your playing style too much.   Sometimes tight players will go out of their way to show a big bluff after they made it.   Most opponents will only judge you on the basis of the last couple big hands you were in.   Showing a big hand played contradictory to your usual style, or sitting playing tight a couple of rounds instead of ramming and jamming, can greatly throw off players reads.

5) Avoid bluffing multiple opponents - The more players you are up against, the less likely a bluff is to work.   Often times, a bluff can get one player to fold, but if there are multiple players someone will eventually call and say something like “just to keep you honest.”   Selective bluffing against lone opponents can be positive expected value, but against multiple opponents you should often stick to value betting.

6) Study Poker books & articles - Paying $20 for a poker book can save you a lot of money if it saves you from learning the same lesson the hard way at a poker table.   Other people have taken the time to study poker for years, make mistakes, learn through trial and error, and then write it all up and print it out for you.   With all the available information on poker, it is foolish to think they don’t have anything to teach you.  Even if you don’t agree with everything the author has written, it can make you think what you believe the best course of action in a hand would be.   Thinking it out ahead of time makes it much more likely you will make the right move at the poker table.

7) Avoid alcohol at the table - I look for tables with drunken players to play against.   Players who have been drinking simply do not play as well people who are sober.   They are less selective with their hands, more apt to bluff in poor spots, more likely to rebuy when they have gone broke.   That is knowledge that you can use against your opponents.    If you are the one drinking at the table, you opponents can use it against you.

8.)  Don’t overplay marginal hands - If you have a statistical program such as poker tracker, you should check it out.  Are there some seemingly strong hands that you have lost a lot of money on?   Chances are, hands such as A-J,  Q-J, small pocket pairs, are break even hands or small money losers.    It isn’t that those hands are bad, they are above average hands, but they are easy to overplay.   Marginal, middle of the road hands are often beat in any kind of big money pot.   They will win a lot of small pots for you, but lose the big ones.   If you get into a big pot with a marginal hand, ask yourself what your opponent could have he would be betting with.   The likely answer is your outkicked or outpaired.

9) Don’t get superstitious - Try to avoid having a favorite hand, or playing against the odds because you’ve been running hot.   Poker is a game of odds and of outplaying your opponents.   Putting too much thought into if something is lucky or not will distract you from making the best choices for your hand.

10)  Set up a poker support structure - Having friends who are interested in poker, and a spouse or girlfriend who doesn’t give you a hard time when you play, can make all the difference in the world between being a winning player or a losing player.   Poker friends can help you improve your game, and keep you from turning a bad losing night into a disaster.   Making sure your wife supports you is essential to ensuring your head is in the game when you play.    If you haven’t taken the time to make sure the other important people in your life are on board with your poker playing, it is worth making an effort to do so.

Here are some tips to help your poker game, they aren’t tips on how to play a specific hand, but a list of quick tips that you should keep in mind when ever you play poker

1) Know why you take each action - Too many people play poker by rote, without really thinking about why they do each thing they do in the hand.  If you want to consistently win, you need to understand why you are taking each action.   If you bet, think to yourself, am I betting because I’m ahead, am I trying to push the other person off the pot, am I trying to get information on the other persons hand?   If you call a bet, are you trapping them for a later bet?  Are you drawing to a hand you think will win?  Are you setting them up for a steal attempt if a scare card comes out?     If you know why you take each action in a hand, you’ll save yourself money in hands that you can’t win, and make more money in hands that you’re ahead.

2) Take control of your emotions - Poker is a thinking game.   It is best played when you are cool, calm, and collected.   If you are angry, or sad, or in a generally bad mood, then don’t play right then.  If you aren’t on top of your game, then you are just throwing money away, and losing money sure isn’t going to make your mood improve.    If you need to, leave the table for some time to get in the right frame of mind.  Alternatively, come back to play another day.

3) Know your poker skills - Take the time to rate where your strengths and weaknesses are.  Are you really good at calculating the odds, but not very good at reading tells?   Are you good at calling bluffs but not good at value betting winning hands?   You need to know what your strengths are and play to them at the table.   At the same time, learn your weaknesses and try to improve them.    If you aren’t good at tells, try Caro’s book of Tells.   Not good at odds?   Practice with a poker calculator.

4) Guess the skills of other people at the table - When you sit down, you should be watching the other people at the table.  Try to figure out how good they are, and what they are good at.  Try and judge to see who is watching the other players, and looking for tells, and who is simply playing their own cards.   Look for who is ahead, who is behind, who is playing loose, and who is playing tight.   Try to identify the person at the table who is winning and the person who is steaming.   Once you peg a person with a label, be prepared to change the label when the mood changes.

5) Play to your bankroll - Don’t play in games that you can’t afford to play in.  If you are taking a shot in a game that has too high of stakes, you will likely be playing with scared money.  You will be worried about losing the money, and not focusing on your ‘A’ game.   Make sure you can afford the game your playing in.   At the same time, make sure that you aren’t playing too low, at stakes that bore you.  You need enough of a risk to stay focused on the game.

6) Be Aggressive & Steal Pots - Whenever you go against a single opponent, the odds of him hitting the flop are 2-1 against.   That means that almost 66% of the time, with two players,  there is a pot sitting in the middle of the table begging for someone to be bold enough to grab it.   Even if your opponent thinks that you missed the pot, he will know that he missed it.   Unless he is very bold as well, (and you should know that from observing his play) he will not want to play back at you.

7) Dump the loser hands - If you have a hand, and you think that it is a loser, then it probably is.   Don’t get married to hands that you don’t think will win.   Don’t pay people off at the river just “To keep them honest”    With the average take for poker professionals around 1-2 big bets per hour, you can’t afford to throw away any money that you don’t think has a good chance of coming back to you.   Whether you have two aces, or you have a straight when a flush comes, you are never owed anything.  The other players want to take your money, don’t make it easy for them.

8.) Pay attention to position - Paying attention to position is a huge step in most people’s games.   It is usually enough to advance some-one’s game from beginner to intermediate.   Position by itself isn’t enough to make you win, but if you don’t pay any attention to position, you are almost sure to lose.

9) Vary your play - Change your playing style whenever you think people have begun to figure you out.  If you have you pegged as being very tight, then take advantage and steal some pots.  If they think of you as being loose and bluffing, slow down and trap them.      This only works if the people are paying enough attention to notice however.   If you are with beginners, or with players who only play their own cards and not the players, then stick with ABC poker and take their money.

10) Track your results - Whether you use poker tracker, or a notebook, keep track of your results from each session.  You need to know when you where playing, what stakes you were playing at, how much you won, and what hands you played well / screwed up.   You need to be able to analyze your game to fix weaknesses.   Tracking you results and going over them is one of the best ways to do it.  (Another is to ask a poker friend what they honestly think of your game)

When you are buying a poker set, you need to decide how many poker chips to get, and also what colors you want your chips to be.   It isn’t too difficult deciding what colors your poker chips should be, you just need to decide how many different colors you want in your set, and then look for a set with colors you like.

You need 4-5 colors

You only need 4-5 different colors to run a home poker tournament.   If you look at the example poker tournaments, all of them can be run with 5 colors or less.   There is no need to get more than 5 colors unless you plan on running an extremely large tournament, with 50-100 people.   If you do run a large tournament, you will need several additional colors, 6-9 colors in all, so that you can chip up as the tournament progresses.  If you have too many colors for a small tournament, and don’t have enough chips of a given color, you can always double up on colors and make two different colors worth the same value.

What are the standard color values ?

If you would like to get chips representing the standard range of values, you can see the table below.   Although there is no rule that you must keep these values, you should keep the order rankings of the chips the same, or your experienced players will get confused

Many poker sets come in 5 different colors, White, Red, Blue, Green, Black.    Those are the only colors you need to host a good home poker tournament.   If those colors don’t suit your style, then you can get the colors you want by buying an empty chip case, and then buying racks of 50 chips in the colors you desire.

Home Poker Tournament Check List

1-3 Weeks Prior

•   Decide how many tables & people you can fit
•   Invite your guests – inviting at least 1 week in advance will help ensure they come
•  Cards – Make sure you have 2 decks per table
•  Chips – Make sure you have enough for your blind structure, at least 20 per player
•  Timer – Have a kitchen timer, a count down clock, or sometime to time blinds

1-3 Days Prior

•   Print out the rule sheet and post in the room
•   Print out the blind structure and post in the room
•   Set up tables and chairs
•   Count out the starting chip stacks for each player and store in a zip lock back
•   Double check blind structure to make sure you have enough chips for the players and to chip up
•   Food – decide what food to provide.   Set up a table.   Chips, pretzels, lunch meat & bread are all good
•   Drinks – Beer & Liquor.    Bottled water.      Pop or Juice
•   Plates, Napkins, & Plastic cups
•   Set up a radio for background music
•   Get plenty of $1 and $5 bills to make change and pay out the winner
•   Plan on having a side game for early bust outs

Just Before Guests Arrive

•   Set out cards, dealer buttons, and blind timer
•   Set out printout of dealer errors and the solutions
•   Set out food and drinks

When Player Show Up

•   State house rules, blind structures, rebuys, breaks
•   Handle all buy ins.   Record who bought in on a piece of paper
•   Store money in a safe place
•   Seat the players using a deck of cards or slips of paper
•   Shuffle up and deal