Playing poker with your closest friends may be one of the best memories of your life. People who love card games and raising the stakes during a competition appreciate the thrill and unpredictability of poker.
Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life that you may not get to see those friends as often as you would like. You may have had a group of five or six very close friends when you were in high school or college, but as you get older, you may not get the chance to meet up as often.
Between your work, family life, and the fact that not everyone is in the same city forever, playing online with friends may be easier than trying to meet up to play poker in person. The only problem is that if you’re an online poker newbie, you might not know the ideal way to set up an online poker game.
Below is our in-depth guide that explains how you can set up poker games that involve real money while only inviting a select group of people. Such a setup ensures that you get to enjoy all the perks of online poker while only playing with your close friends.
Here is a step-by-step guide to organizing a friendly online poker tournament.
Choose the ideal platform
The first step to organizing an online poker tournament is to decide on the ideal platform to play on. While you can play for free using any poker app, most of these programs do not allow you to bet real money. They are great if you haven’t played poker for a few years and want to hone your skills, but they are not ideal for setting up a tournament that involves higher stakes.
What you must do is find an online poker site or an online casino that is legally playable in the state where you and your friends live. If you have friends in other states, then you’ll need to find a site that services all or most of the United States.
After you have found a legal site, you can go about signing up for an account and adding an initial sum to start betting on poker and other casino games. Likewise, your friends will also need to create accounts on the same platform.
Create a club or group of your friends
Many poker sites and online casinos allow the creation of private clubs and groups. The purpose of these clubs or groups is to have private games where you only invite specific players.
If you only want to play with your group of friends and possibly occasionally invite another acquaintance to make up the numbers, you should set up a club where only you can invite new members.
Having the club in place will ensure that any time you want to set up a game, you simply create a room where only the members of your club are allowed to enter. This ensures that strangers can’t join your game.
Choose the format for your poker games
Most of the top online casinos offer various versions of poker to their player base, including five-card poker, Texas hold ’em and live dealer games. Choose the game format that everyone in your group is familiar with and would enjoy playing.
Aside from the format, you must also choose the stakes for the tournament. For instance, are you playing with $1 and $2 small and big blinds, or are you upping the stakes by using $10 and $20 blinds?
Talk with every member of your group about the financial aspect of the tournament. All of the group should feel comfortable with the blinds and the total funds required to enter each game, as you do not want friends to feel excluded because of a lack of funding.
Players should also feel comfortable with folding in-game and not risking their pot, so have a group discussion about the rules of your friends-only private tournament.
Set a regular tournament schedule
Now that you have your game mode and the financial aspects set up, you can focus on creating a schedule. The best way to maintain a regular game of poker with your friends is to pick one or two days of the week when you all agree to play.
If you have a smaller group where everyone must be present for each game for it to be enjoyable, then you should only pick days and times when everyone is available. In contrast, groups of 10 or more people are free to set up multiple time slots in the week, as not every player has to be present for the rest to enjoy a game of online poker.
Remember to have fun playing poker
The competitive aspect of online poker is exciting, as we enjoy the thrill of seeing whether a particular hand is going to land us with a big win or a significant loss. Focusing on the financial aspect of playing online poker is understandable, as everyone wants to win, but your group should always look at the bigger picture.
The main goal of setting up a friends-only private online tournament is simply to have fun. While you may not be able to replicate the in-person games you enjoyed in your youth, having an online poker night with your closest friends is still a great way to get together and have a fantastic time.