Hey guys,

I'm playing in a little cash game tonight which has a very "weird" (I'd say ****ed up) structure:

max buyin is $500 and you only have $10 chips. so the blinds are $10/$10 all the time. I know that the players in that round are all rookies with no experience at all (only a lot of money) but I have never played against them before (only heart from friends that they suck). What would be your advice for me to get all their money? I hate playing against amatuers / maniacs in home rounds. I mean playing cash games in a casino is very different to this

bring a gun.

but on a serious note, home games that suck, people tend to chase any draw they have. They usually dont worry about position and such..

take advantage of that and value town the stations when u hit or get a good hand.

Play tight.

Pot bets like always unless you have the uber nuts.

If everyone is buying in for the max, this isn't an awful structure. Swingy, but if $500 is like your savings account, don't play.

Well first don't take all their money. If this is a regular game the only goal you should have the first game or two is to get invited back. You show up with a "You all suck and would go broke playing REAL poker", you will just piss everybody off. These guys are there to have a good time with some friends. Buy in for the minimum play wild and loose until you loose it all. Re-buy and just play like everybody else for a while. Fit in. Make somebody feel like a hero because they called you down to the river and their A9o beat your A3s on a king high board. Make sure they do not see you as a threat. Once you can have fun with these guys, you can show up every friday and take $200 home have a good time and suplement your beer money. If you ever walk out of the house with 1/2 the money in play the game will die or you will never get invited back. These guys know they suck, don't rub it in.

As for how to play, keep pots small when you have big draws and then push when you complete your hands. Check raises in some of these games are a cardinal sin so make sure you understand the 'unwritten' rules before you pull out every trick in your book. On line you piss somebody off, you hit a new table and all is good. Make one of the key people in a home game mad and you don't make it back to the party.

The difference is Phil Hellmuth v. Doyle. Doyle will never make anyone mad at the table, because he grew up needing to get invited back. Phil doesn't care who he piss' off because that is publicity and he is much more a celebrity than a poker player. You want to be a poker player.

Is it a limit or no-limit game? In New Hampshire, they have limit $4/4 games. They play fast and loose, and the pots swell in size so you can no longer protect your hand. The game plays like a typical low stakes limit holdem game with 4-7 players to a typical flop. So if a couple players chase to an inside straight draw, they'll be wrong to call on the flop at 7:1, but correct to on turn at 14:1. Makes for very weird/odd games. I just stopped playing them b/c so often I would get beat on the end (played a ton of limit and am used to this), but when I looked back on the hand, I said I couldn't blame the player.

+1

Also, if they're all drinking, drink a beer. Drink it very slooooowly so you stay plenty sharp, but blend in and let yourself seem like you're there to have fun.

Also, I tend to disagree with Donkslayer here. Limping in late position with suited, semi-connected cards can work great in these games. You want to pick up a lock hand, then enter valuetown. In games where five people are routinely calling preflop (which the $10/10 structure probably encourages), you want to see more hands, rather than less, and you want to see flops with hands that are likely to improve beyond tptk.

Nice thing is, that limp-from-late strategy can work real well with your "just one of the guys" attitude. Limp more than usual, tell some jokes, and then occasionally get lucky and hit that gutshot on the turn (which actually was two overcards, a flush draw, and a gutshot straight draw, but who's counting?).

Wait for good hand.
Overbet.

Big screen TV?

I completely agree with this you are going to make your money with the nuts. Unless a raise gets some respect, which is highly unlikely in these games, you will drive yourself bonkers with TPTK getting outdrawn on the river. Also Banner17 may be right, everything is NL now, but once upon a time most homegames were limit. 10/10 sound more like a limit structure, that will play like 5/10. If it is limit then you'll never get paid off on your nuts unless you have top straight v. bottom straight. Better to play limit uber tight. Jam Big Pairs, AK, AQ, KQs, play enough other hand to the flop and fold so you don't come across as playing UBER tight and you'll do fine.

Let us know how it goes.

Wait... wut at the advice in this thread?

I guess this comes from my SNG/Tourney experience but bigger blinds should not induce tighter play, it should induce looser play because there will be more dead money to pick up in each pot

assuming you are rolled for this game just be aggro in position and hit the gas with any piece of anything

Yea, that's your SNG advice talking. This is a cash game with guys who have plenty of money. The blinds are kinda insignificant. The blinds stay at 10/10 the whole night, and the min buy in is $500 and these guys can easily afford to go thru 3 or 4 buy-ins. You're not gonna be pushing many guys off pots.

Not entirely really. The concept still applies, because a blind bet is exactly that, a blind bet. I'm not talking about push/folding ranges or anything that's totally an SNG concept.

Seriously this game is an aggro player red-line dream. And if guys aren't getting away from hands great, but the answer is not to tighten up it's to value bet thinner and harder. The pots that we are going to be creating will have entire stacks in by the turn so you're going to be able to beat loose players mistakes to death by making hands postflop and slamming them... and we don't go all limp crazy because there's so much value in going for the dead money.

Well, you can't just get super-aggressive trying to c-bet and double guys who don't fold and have plenty of cash with little knowledge of the game. I am going to assume these are the types of guys who get excited by being dealt a "pocket pair" or any ace-rag maybe even king-rag. You gotta put hands together versus guys like these because they'll just call you down with A6o on a J 7 2 board. That's just my opinion.......

Thanks for your comments I basically played the way most people here told me to do. I started playing slow and kinda sloppy (compared to a normal cash game) and lost $400 in 2 hours. I made a rebuy and won $400 playing more seriously (but I hope they didnt notice I was chatting with them, having some beer to make a good impression on them. They are nice guys and they are only playing for fun not for money.

LOL.

And "Bring a Gun" comment.

Funny stuff.

Though Phil has made more WSOP money and has more bracelets than anyone of us can dream of...