How to Host a Virtual Game Night. Don't let COVID-19 ruin your game night or trivia party. Here's what you'll need to conduct a virtual game night using video chat services and top mobile games. My suggestion is to host your home poker game on Thursday nights, and I’ll tell you why. Sundays aren’t ideal because they’re usually devoted to spending time with family and going to church. Sunday is the last night you have to rest before going back to work on Monday morning. PokerHost is a virtual play poker platform for entertainment purposes. Chips have no real cash value. The games are intended for an adult audience. The games do not offer real money poker or an opportunity to win real money. There are several popular online poker platforms. If you're playing cash games, DonkHouse is simple and customizable, allowing the players to create virtual rooms for no fee. Each player must visit donkhouse.com and create a profile. The host can set up tables with specific stakes.

Poker Night Wikipedia

Playing online poker from the privacy of your own home is something that all poker players love to do. It's a great way to learn, considering the number of hands you'll play compared to live poker, tremendous fun, and can even result in you winning some cash if you're a good player.

Determine your chip denominations. A typical casino standard is $1 for white, $5 for red, $10 for blue, $25 for green, and $100 for black. Note that chip denominations don't necessarily have to relate to the cash involved if you are playing for money.

That said, sometimes there's nothing more fun than a home game with friends.

Good conversation (especially the brutal post-hand rubdowns), great food, a few drinks and the chance to play for bragging rights and a few bucks with your buddies just can't be beaten. But before you can host the ultimate home game there are several things you need to do. Luckily for you, the PokerStars Blog is on hand to walk you through it...
Get The Right Gear
Know When To Hold'em
In poker, it starts with the cards.

Not all decks are built the same, and while buying paper playing cards at the store might be the cheapest option, it's not the best one. These cards are easily bent and destroyed, and will end the game as fast as it started.

You don't have to push the boat out and play with the COPAG brand cards they use at PokerStars Live events; in fact, any brand of plastic playing cards will do, but plastic cards are a must for any successful home game.

If you can, get two decks of different colors. That way you can always have one deck shuffled and ready to go, which will speed up the game significantly. Plastic cards should last, even if it's an all-nighter or all-weekender.
Chip In
When thinking about poker chips, a dollar store or something similar might seem like the best option. The blue and red plastic chips they sell cheaply will work. However, these flimsy chips just don't feel right when you're mimicking a Phil Ivey staredown, hoping your friend folds the best hand to your epic bluff.

Casinos use clay or ceramic chips. Investing in a set can make all the difference and they are easy to find with a few simple clicks on your favorite online search engine. There are a ton of great chip sets available. You can get a custom set with your own picture or logo on them and PokerStars players can use StarsCoin to buy ceramic chips in the VIP Store.

A quality chip set might not loosen up the action, but it'll certainly give your home game a professional feel and will leave your friends nodding their heads with approval whilst thinking back to how great your poker night was.
Put Your Cards On The Table
If you don't have a huge place with its own man cave, a custom-built poker table with brass cup holders may not be a viable option. Don't fret, there are dozens of nifty portable poker tables or table tops on the market that you can use to transform your living room into a PokerStars Festival final table.

If an extra table takes up too much space, you can order up just the felt and drape it over your regular dining table, which will do the trick too. Playing on some sort of felt is the only way you'll be able to keep all the chips, cards and action on the table where they belong.
Rules of Engagement
Be The Bank
To avoid confusion, one person must be the bank, handling all the buy-ins for cash games or tournaments.

Double check all your math, hand out tournament chips or cash-value chips for cash only and make sure you're the only one who has access to the bank. No one is accusing anyone of trying to pull a fast one, but making one person responsible for the bank is the best way to ensure it's never short.
Cash Is King
Cash games are often the best choice. Playing cash allows you to set affordable blinds and buy-ins while also allowing players to sit in and out of the game as they see fit. The ability to reload also means no one has to sit on the sidelines and watch others play.

When you're playing no-limit hold'em, or other flop games, the key is to set blinds and buy-ins at a level players are comfortable with. Different stakes appeal to different crowds, but no one is ever comfortable losing a mortgage payment. Blinds and buy-ins should be set accordingly.

As long as your home game isn't filled with self-made multimillionaires and trust fund babies, set the blinds at $.50/$1. Allow players to buy-in for anywhere from 50-200 big blinds and reload when they go broke or close to it. At this level, even someone cursed with the worst luck imaginable won't lose more than they can afford.

If your friends have a little more in the way of disposable income, you can up the blinds to $1/$2 or any level affordable to them, but capping the buy-in at 100 or 200 big blinds should keep things friendly. Unless someone hits a one-outer, of course...
Tournament Poker Glory
Tournaments offer the best opportunity for glory and bragging rights among friends. They also give players the chance to play at higher blinds with moderate buy-in levels.

The only issue is players who bust early need to wait for a winner before getting back in. To avoid lengthy wait times, follow a turbo structure. The speed of play will ensure you can host a handful of tournaments over the course of a night without anyone being forced to sit out too long.

Set the buy-in at an affordable amount with the idea that each player is going to jump into four or five tournaments before the night is through. Since you'll likely have six to 10 players, think of each tournament like a Turbo Sit & Go you may have played on PokerStars.

That means giving players 1,500 in chips. Traditionally, blinds begin at 10/20, but you can make things easy and speed them up by starting at 25/50. You won't see as many hands per level as you would online, so instead of five-minute blind levels, try 10. Increase the blinds according to the structure found on PokerStars and these tournaments should go no more than 10 to 15 levels. If they're moving too slowly, skip a few levels. Just make sure everybody knows about it and agrees this in advance.
Poker is Poker
It's the Cadillac of poker, but no-limit Texas hold'em isn't the only poker game on the planet. Most people know how to play hold'em, and even if they don't, it's easy to learn, making it the top choice for a home game.

However, there are dozens of poker variants you can spread just to spice things up. Hosting a Dealer's Choice game can be fun. Simply add a second button to the table that moves with every orbit. The player it lands on chooses the game and can give a quick lesson to those who haven't played it. If anyone is having trouble, just refer them to PokerStars' How To Play pages online, where the rules of a dozen different poker variants are explained in detail.
The Devil Is In The Details
You've got the right gear and the right game. You've invited the fishiest of your friends and you're ready to play. Now you've got to make sure the horses are fed and watered.

Having great food and drinks can turn your home game into a truly enjoyable evening, which, outside of fleecing your buddies out of their cash and earning their acclaim, is the real point of all this.
Cheers To You
A good selection of craft beer is a start, but poker and whiskey have gone hand-in-hand since the dawn of time. A bottle or two will add a little old-school authenticity to the game. On the flip side, plenty of drinking water is also required and the availability of great coffee can help turn an early night into a marathon session.

It's All About Pizza
When it comes to food, pizza has always been the top choice for home games. However, there is a downside to this. Add in the usual potato chips and snacks and midway through, the poker chips and cards will end up as greasy as the bags and boxes!

Steak and lobster may not fit in your budget, nor are they that easy to carve into at a poker table, but there are plenty of options for food you don't eat with your hands that will keep the game clean. A selection of pastas and salads served with the proper utensils will do the trick.

Of course, when you run out of food, or give in to the overwhelming demand for pizza, just remember to have plenty of napkins on hand.
Good People, Good Fun, Good Game
When you've got the right gear, food and drink, a home game can be a great night out, or in. Invite men and women who tell great stories, love good banter and see the game as an opportunity to bond with one another, instead of a chance to make money. Win or lose, you'll be a home game hero, and all who come are sure to leave asking when you'll be hosting again.

Starting your own home poker game is a great idea. These kinds of games have been going on throughout the world for decades.

Not only are home games a lot of fun, but they can be easy to profit from. If you’re starting your own home poker game, I recommend not charging a rake.

You’re probably not interested in starting what could possibly be an illegal business. You just want to have fun and get some money into action, and your friends probably do, too.

If you’re charging a rake, it’s not really much of a home poker game at all. Most people can just have the same experience at a land-based casino.

Read below to learn more about how you can plan your own home poker game.

Decide on a Schedule

It’s okay to host a real money poker game as a one-time event, but it’s more fun and more traditional to host on a weekly basis. I know people who do a bi-weekly game, and I even know some folks who host monthly games.

But I personally think weekly is better. My suggestion is to host your home poker game on Thursday nights, and I’ll tell you why.

Sundays aren’t ideal because they’re usually devoted to spending time with family and going to church. Sunday is the last night you have to rest before going back to work on Monday morning. Most people also watch football on Sunday.

Mondays are bad because it’s your first day back at work from the weekend. No one likes Mondays, and a lot of folks prefer to just go home and relax.

Tuesdays aren’t the best choice either, because it’s still a bit too early in the week. Wednesdays might be okay, but a lot of people actually go to church on Wednesdays, which can limit the number of players who show up.

Fridays and Saturdays are tough because a lot of people use those nights for date nights with their significant other. College football fans are often busy on Saturday because of the games, too.

That leaves Thursday as the obvious choice. Starting around 6 PM or 7 PM is a good option, because people need time to get off work and commute to your game.

Finishing around 11 PM or midnight is okay, too, as it allows you to still get a good night’s sleep and still get in a solid four to six hours of poker.

Pick a Game

When I hosted a weekly poker game, we played low stakes, dealer choice games. These are games where the dealer gets to decide what poker format to play. And since everyone gets to take turns being the dealer, the game changes from hand to hand.

There’s nothing wrong with this setup at all, but you should let everyone know what the stakes are and which games are going to be played when you invite them.

Nowadays, a more common format is to pick just one game to play. I play in a monthly poker game which is played in tournament format. The buy-in is just $20. Everyone who wants to play in the cash game afterward has that opportunity, too, and we play NL Hold’em with $1/$2 blinds.

No one’s allowed to buy into the cash game for more than $100 to start, and we’ll accept buy-ins as low as $40. I think poker’s more interesting when there’s enough money on the line to make the game interesting.

If you’re young and live in a college town, a game with a 50 cent/$1 blind structure is probably plenty interesting, but a higher stakes game is going to be more interesting to adults established in their careers.

No matter what kind of game you host, you should know how to play it. I think it’s a good idea to keep a book of rules for various poker games around, too.

Make Sure You Have the Equipment You Need

If you’ve never hosted a home poker game before, you might think it’s as simple as picking up a deck of cards for a dollar down at the local gas station and sitting around the kitchen table.

And yes, you can do that. But that’s far from ideal.

You can buy a table top with green felt on it and drink holders without spending too much money; you can just put it on top of your dining room table.

Another option is to buy or rent a table you use just for your weekly poker game and nothing else. You should also invest in clay poker chips. Don’t use cash. Don’t use plastic poker chips. You can get a decent set of clay poker chips for less than $50.

If you’re willing to spend $100, you can get even better chips. If you’re serious about hosting a home poker game for a long time, you can even get chips that are personalized with your name or slogan on them.

You should also invest in at least one deck of quality poker cards. The better they are, the more expensive they’ll be. I like plastic cards (like Kem) which will last for decades. They’re not made out of paper, so they’re almost impossible to damage. With a deck of Bicycles, you have to worry about them being ruined by someone who might spill a drink on them.

Hosting Poker Night

I like having two decks of cards so that one deck is constantly ready to deal. That way, people aren’t sitting around waiting for the cards to be shuffled.

Some people like to have a button, but that’s not necessary in a home game. The button is just a plastic chip used to track where the dealer would be. Since you’re probably not hiring a dealer, the deck of cards replaces the button.

I personally like to have drinks and snacks of some kind when I host. I keep it cheap, though. I ask everyone to pitch in $5 apiece for this. If people want beer or liquor, I ask them to bring their own.

Sometimes, I like to serve sandwiches, especially hot sandwiches that can be serve-yourself from a crockpot. Meatball subs are popular and so are barbecue sandwiches. But you can keep it much simpler if you like.

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Think About Who to Invite

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In my experience, only 80% of the people you invite are going to show up, so keep in mind how many people are going to show up reliably when you start inviting people. Also, it’s best to keep a tight rein on who gets invited to keep your poker night safe.

You don’t want one of your guests inviting buddies of his to your house if they’re shadier characters than you want to deal with. Also, when you start bringing a lot of strangers into your home, things can start getting weird faster than you might believe.

Heck, I even run into people at my buddy’s house that I’m not entirely comfortable with. Also, I DON’T recommend loaning money to people just so they can make it to poker night. If they can’t afford to buy in, tell them to let you know when they can afford to do so. You can put them on the guest list once they’ve met that requirement.

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Conclusion

Planning your own home poker game isn’t hard to do, but it does require a little thought and some organization.

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It also involves making sure you have a minimum amount of equipment. Most importantly, the point is for you all to have fun!