PokerStars Home Games (1 Viewer)

[Eloe2000]

Some of our local casino poker rooms are no shutting down and I may be postponing our home games but we all gotta get our fix. So, I figured I would open a thread for PokerStars questions.

I will start: I can see how to open up tournaments under the Home Games section and I see references online to the ability to set up home cash games but I am unable to figure out how to do it in real life. It seems like Poker Stars may have recently updated their website because all of the google search results for related topics go to dead pages on their website. Can anyone help?

 

[BGinGA]

You first have to create a home game club on p*. Then you can have people join the club (using a code you supply to them). You can then set up tournaments for members of your club, in which they can register and play.

 

[palindrome]

I was looking into setting this up too. I see the tournaments are an option but it looks like the cash game options are pretty limited. Anybody have any luck running those?

It appears they take a rake off the play money on these too.

 

[Eloe2000]

You first have to create a home game club on p*. Then you can have people join the club (using a code you supply to them). You can then set up tournaments for members of your club, in which they can register and play.

Thanks @BGinGA. Sure, I have set up a tournament. But I am trying to set up cash games. I see people mention home cash games on P* but cannot see how to create cash tables or alter the settings to do so in the Home Games area. I just edited my OP to make that more clear.

 

[Eloe2000]

I was looking into setting this up too. I see the tournaments are an option but it looks like the cash game options are pretty limited. Anybody have any luck running those?

It appears they take a rake off the play money on these too.

Oh, is that right? That is a no go for me I think. If that is the case then we may have to try the Pokerrrr mobile app.

 

[BGinGA]

Don't have the software in front of me atm, but I've set up cash tables before in the PCF home group. Pretty similar to setting up a tournament iirc.

They don't stay active long before disappearing however, and p* takes a healthy rake even on play money tables. Much more limited options in cash tables vs tournaments regarding game choice/selection/stakes, too. Definitely not advised for trying to use it for real $$ play with payments handled elsewhere.

For cash games, I'd try the poker mavens software and see if it supports cash play.

 

[timinater]

We ran our league game on Saturday on P*. We had a video chat going along side. It worked really well.

There was definitely a fair amount of extra communication needed. People need to load up their play money accounts and the formats didn't quite line up with how our league works (Single re-entry) so we used the single re-entry + add on format and just communicated that nobody should add on.

We also ran into server issues at our start time that further put a wrinkle in. Once we were up and running though, everything went great. I would recommend it, but definitely take the time to plan ahead and communicate to your group.

 

[Eloe2000]

We ran our league game on Saturday on P*. We had a video chat going along side. It worked really well.

There was definitely a fair amount of extra communication needed. People need to load up their play money accounts and the formats didn't quite line up with how our league works (Single re-entry) so we used the single re-entry + add on format and just communicated that nobody should add on.

We also ran into server issues at our start time that further put a wrinkle in. Once we were up and running though, everything went great. I would recommend it, but definitely take the time to plan ahead and communicate to your group.

thanks. Sounds about like what I expected. I am trying to get it set up and do a test run with a buddy for our league. Seems like it will work well for tournaments. But we also play cash and was trying to figure that out. Unwilling to get raked though so we are going to look to other options for that (probably Pokerrrr).

 

[timinater]

thanks. Sounds about like what I expected. I am trying to get it set up and do a test run with a buddy for our league. Seems like it will work well for tournaments. But we also play cash and was trying to figure that out. Unwilling to get raked though so we are going to look to other options for that (probably Pokerrrr).

Yeah. We aren't going to go do cash either. a bit too complicated at the moment.

 

[grantc54]

There was definitely a fair amount of extra communication needed. People need to load up their play money accounts

Do you need to buy play chips? Any other way to load up play money accounts? Can you transfer play money (could I buy some and distribute it to my players?).

 

[BGinGA]

Do you need to buy play chips? Any other way to load up play money accounts? Can you transfer play money (could I buy some and distribute it to my players?).

You can purchase play money chips, but transfers to/from other players are no longer allowed. You can get a free 15k from the cashier every four hours.

 

[grantc54]

You can purchase play money chips, but transfers to/from other players are no longer allowed. You can get a free 15k from the cashier every four hours.

Can you create a cash game and chip dump? Or is that frowned about and get you in trouble?

 

[timinater]

You can purchase play money chips, but transfers to/from other players are no longer allowed. You can get a free 15k from the cashier every four hours.

That’s what I advised my gang to do

Can you create a cash game and chip dump? Or is that frowned about and get you in trouble?

Yeah we opened up cash tables and just dumped to guys that didn’t listen to my pleads to load up their account. Can’t imagine p* cares at all.

 

[Eloe2000]

[copying my comment from the other thread because of relevance]

We just wrapped up a STT on PokerStars and god it was painful. There is so little tourney setup customization that it was a really rough game with the preset blind structure. Unless I am missing some settings somewhere it is something I dont think I can go back to. It took us 3hrs to get through a 6 player STT with 10min levels. I really like how smooth the program is once you have the game going and we really had confidence it the play. We all had a separate google hangout window open which made it fun. But we lost one guy who just couldnt figure out the terrible un-intuitive setup. But its the lack of customization that may just be a deal breaker. It is obvious the software was designed 10+ yrs ago. Tomorrow night we are going to give Pokerrrr2 a go.

As far as lack of randomness I was dealt 7-2 nine times in three hours of play. That doesn't seem right. I actually won twice but wasn't able to collect my usual bounty on it.

 

[grantc54]

[copying my comment from the other thread because of relevance]

We just wrapped up a STT on PokerStars and god it was painful. There is so little tourney setup customization that it was a really rough game with the preset blind structure. Unless I am missing some settings somewhere it is something I dont think I can go back to. It took us 3hrs to get through a 6 player STT with 10min levels. I really like how smooth the program is once you have the game going and we really had confidence it the play. We all had a separate google hangout window open which made it fun. But we lost one guy who just couldnt figure out the terrible un-intuitive setup. But its the lack of customization that may just be a deal breaker. It is obvious the software was designed 10+ yrs ago. Tomorrow night we are going to give Pokerrrr2 a go.

As far as lack of randomness I was dealt 7-2 nine times in three hours of play. That doesn't seem right. I actually won twice but wasn't able to collect my usual bounty on it.

Please keep this thread updated on what works. I have my first online league game Friday and was going to use pokerstars.

 

[BGinGA]

If you want to see what formats work, just view the 11 PCF games offered here every week.

20k/5-min = roughly 2 hours for single-table play.

 

[timinater]

We used 3000 chips/15 min levels with 10 players with 3 re entries and it was excellent. Our tournament started late at 8:40 after some server issues I mentioned, and wrapped up around midnight or shortly after, which is roughly equivalent to our usual tournaments.

I plugged numbers into a spreadsheet, (example below) until it resembled the run time/structure of our typical tournaments. some of the later levels might be wrong, I only copied down 10 or so and then just filled in guesses. I was just looking for a general idea. I also wanted to over-shoot it a little bit because this spreadsheet didn't take antes into effect.

 

[BadCardHaver]

Very long time lurker to this forum, first post. I've gotten the guys from our home game to do a tourney on Mon night. We are looking to do a no rebuy tourney that would last about 3 hrs. Based on some other posts I've seen on this forum it looks like 10 min blinds and a 10K starting stack might fit the bill. Any thoughts? Also, I see an option for breaks. Is this only after level 6? How long is the break?

 

[BadCardHaver]

Very long time lurker to this forum, first post. I've gotten the guys from our home game to do a tourney on Mon night. We are looking to do a no rebuy tourney that would last about 3 hrs. Based on some other posts I've seen on this forum it looks like 10 min blinds and a 10K starting stack might fit the bill. Any thoughts? Also, I see an option for breaks. Is this only after level 6? How long is the break?

This would be a 9 player tourney

 

[BGinGA]

Very long time lurker to this forum, first post. I've gotten the guys from our home game to do a tourney on Mon night. We are looking to do a no rebuy tourney that would last about 3 hrs. Based on some other posts I've seen on this forum it looks like 10 min blinds and a 10K starting stack might fit the bill. Any thoughts? Also, I see an option for breaks. Is this only after level 6? How long is the break?

This would be a 9 player tourney

A single-table rebuy event with 10k stacks and 10-minute blinds will run close to 4 hours pending the number of re-buys and player aggression. Our T2000 rebuy/addon events with 10-minute levels ran 2 hours on average (7-11 players).

If selected, breaks are 5-minutes long and always occur at 5 minutes before the hour (xx:55), regardless of tournament format.

 

[BadCardHaver]

A single-table rebuy event with 10k stacks and 10-minute blinds will run close to 4 hours pending the number of re-buys and player aggression. Our T2000 rebuy/addon events with 10-minute levels ran 2 hours on average (7-11 players).

If selected, breaks are 5-minutes long and always occur at 5 minutes before the hour (xx:55), regardless of tournament format.

Thanks! This will be a no rebuy tourney, so hopefully we will be able to get it closer to 3 hrs.

 

[BGinGA]

Oh, and rebuy periods are always six levels long, regardless of the selected blind level times. So 18 minutes for 3-min levels, 30 minutes for 5-min levels, and 60 minutes for 10-min levels.

 

[codeman00]

Poker Mavens software will fix your problems. I suggest quit trying to force p* to do what it’s not designed to do.

https://www.briggsoft.com/pmavens

A lot of how to’s half way through this thread
https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/online-home-poker.54141/

 

[jazzV3]

Just looking at the Pokerstars Home Games again a couple years after Covid.
I am traveling and wanted to set up a forum where the group could play together online.

I remembered that Pokerstars Home Games offered some variety of games.
Last night, I created a Club on the main Pokerstars site and there's a wide variety of games (Holdem, 5 Card Draw, Badugi, Razz, 2-7, etc..)

The problem that came up is that it appears you can set up several cash game "tables". I was able to create a first cash table - Badugi.
When I attempt to set up a second cash table (Holdem), I get an error message saying something like "Sorry, but we're experiencing some technical trouble with Home Games. Try again later or contact your Club Manager".

Anyone know if there is really a temporary technical issue, or is this message due to only being able to set up a single cash table??