I am looking to start up a $0.50/$1 home game in the next few months, and am contemplating including a BBJ as part of it. I want some input on whether you think I am on the right track, and I want to avoid raking or making any profit other than what tips might be thrown voluntarily my way.

I was thinking of seeding it with like $1,000 of my own money to draw people to come play. This would not be a freeroll, but rather reimburseable over time.

--full house or better beaten by quads or better (holdem)
--aces full of kings or better beaten (omaha)
--both hole cards must play
--quads must consist of a pocket pair
--full houses may not make use of three of a kind on the board
--5 or more players and shuffled by shuffletech or no pay/play

Jackpot $750
Backup Jackpot $250

50% to 2nd best hand, nothing but the pot to the best hand, and 50% split among the remaining players dealt-in.

Contributions:

--small blind contributes an additional $0.50 preflop, which is contributed to the jackpot pool
--dealer rakes another $1 on the river if it gets that far

Jackpot contributions are counted in front of the players at the end of each session so there is no question about whether some of it is being raked.

50/50 split of contributions between reimbursing my $1,000 and increasing the jackpot pool, until my $1,000 is reimbursed, after which 100% of contributions go toward increasing the jackpot pool

All increases of the jackpot pool go 75% to primary and 25% to backup.

The strict qualifier rules and requirement that it be shuffleteched is to lessen the risk of cheating.

I also will be switching between 6 decks, one per hour, and washing each card with damp cloth after each session to remove any marks that may have been put on, as I also want to make sure my game stays squeaky clean.

Down the line might do something with hole card cams and then do video development, sell the videos to players so they can see what their opponents had, sell pokertracker / HEM-type stats on players (VP/PFR/AF, etc)

What do you guys think? I've played a lot of poker, dealt on rare occasion, and want to host a nice clean game that is high enough stakes to be interesting, but not so high as to attract the wrong element.

If you like some ideas, say so and why. If you don't, offer alternatives or constructive criticism. Otherwise just enjoy your popcorn. K thanks.

BBJ's for home games (and I mean actual home games, not underground clubs running a for profit operation) are problematic since you usually want the people contributing to directly benefit from it. Unless you have the exact same group attending each game you can run into situations where a random player who came over to play once benefits from a BBJ funded by the regulars. That can upset a number of them, I know it would bother me. I'm funding the damn thing, I want one of the guys who plays regularly to win it.

If you want to run these type of promotions maybe try a high hand jackpot distributed at the end of each session. Keeps the people staying til the end + benefits directly the pool of players who contributed to that specific jackpot.

As for the hand history stuff and recording other players hands to sell to others that's a REALLY bad idea. I would not want to play in a home game where my game is being recorded just so the host can profit on it and benefit others. If I were to play in this type of setup it would only be where the recorded session was made available to everyone for entertainment purposes.

Terrible idea. What happens if the pot reaches 100k? What do u do with The cash? Obviously you're not keeping it hanging around. So what?

OK, I like what Im hearing, lanyi.
--record session for entertainment, not for profit, got that
--BBJ needs to gravitate toward regulars

I was thinking about how to reward attendance...I had thought of as a player accumulates X number of playing hours or sessions or whatever unit of measure you choose, you would incrementally:
--decrease their qualifying bad beat hand requirement, and/or
--decrease the qualifying hand necessary to beat them.

However, I did not want the BBJ best hand to be worse than quads nor the BBJ 2nd-best hand to be worse than full house. I like knowing what the probabilities are of hitting, and there just isn't odds that I can find on the internet for any structure where flushes are a qualifier. Straights are out of the question, as you can have more than 1 player with the same straight, but not more than 1 player with the same flush.

A more elegant solution is to say, look, on Day One, everybody starts out with the following payoff:

Second Best Hand: 100% of 50% of the jackpot (seems redundant to say "100% of" but it will become clear in a moment).

Best Hand: Wins only the pot.

All other hands dealt-in: Equal shares of the remainder of the jackpot

Then, as you accumulate experience, your 100% share increases at the expense of the share given to the table. For example, for every full hour of play, you earn a 0.1% bonus to the 100%.

Example 1:

John, a regular, has been playing for half a year when he hits the BBJ as second best hand. He has 110 hours logged. 110*0.1% = 111% of 50% of the jackpot = 55.5% of the jackpot for John and 44.5% for the table share.

Steve, who just dropped in an hour ago, hits the BBJ as second best hand. The rest of the table is regulars. He has 1 hour logged. 1*0.1% = 100.1% of 50% of the jackpot = 50.05% of the jackpot for Steve and 49.95% for the table share.

This way even if a random player hits it, the table share is going to the regulars, and the regulars get a significant bonus for playing regularly. It could cap at 1,000 hours so if you play for that long before hitting, you get all of it when you hit. But at 6 hours per session and 50 sessions per year, it would take over 3 years of playing ever minute of every session to log that much time.

I don't want to go too high on the percent bonus or the table share starts to take a serious hit. I expect it will get hit every 2 or 3 months, give or take.

How would you feel knowing that when you hit, you get a bigger percent of the pot because youre a regular than if the random player hits? You might still be mad because it could be a really high jackpot from not having been hit in a while and he comes and hits it and you get a higher percent a couple weeks later but it's of the relatively low old backup / new primary. So new guy still got more than you. But all else being equal, and it is, your being a regular gives you greater EV.

We can't forget the new guy is contributing, too. And will probably become a reg if he hits the first time he comes over. Unless somehow he managed to cheat my a shuffletech, which I doubt, because then he could go do it at a casino where the money is serious.

Rule is all payouts will occur at the beginning of the next session. Sessions would be weekly. This is for safety and practicality. House will honor liens should players wish to lend to each other.

Pot would never reach 100k in a $0.50/$1 game with a bad beat qualifier of any full house. I expect it would be hit every few months, tops.

What do you think 75% primary 25% backup or 2/3 to primary 1/3 to backup?

Still the issue of holding on to the money and managing the accounting is a problem. Unless everyone knows everyone trust can be an issue. I'm new, I come to a game where I don't know anybody and I see they are raking for a BBJ which is being managed by someone I don't know. How am I to know that the host isn't skimming from the BBJ money?

Like I implied in my earlier post, BBJ's are more appropriate when you already have a solid base of regular players. For starting off when you are still looking to recruit I wouldn't run any promotion where the payouts carry over to the next sessions. This would also apply if you were looking to start a league with a portion of the buy-in each week going to a season finale meag tourney before you have a tourney group.

Also, in some states its against the law to not award all the prize money taken. We use to keep 5. Bucks a player and at the end of each month, award a 1st/2nd/3rd Player of the Month prizes, but we found out u legally shouldn't do that.

Really think this through hard, starrazz... for that reason, the legal reason, and others. Contributors who leave the group- are they going to be happy?

It's not much money, so it's feasible... but managing the money and expectations, plus the rumors ("He fronted a grand? He must have several K hanging around the house!" or "I bet it's up to $3k right now!") might be a theft temptation.

High hand of the night, or worst BBJ of the night, might be better. Rake bigger, hand out at the end (or half hour before closing, with BBJ hand late carrying over to the next game's list) might make more sense for a home game.

Now, if you're starting up an underground cardroom.... a recruiting enticement might help draw customers.


(and lol at the $100k reply, Bigdawg)

We "rake" one .25 chip for any pot above $5.00. NLH cashgame. Our breakdown is WTA for a BBJ $100 or less. If it is above $100 we break it down 50% L 25%W 25% rest of players in the hand. We are admittedly a fairly tight group of regulars (10-12) with maybe a dozen part timers who show up occasionally. So trust is not really a problem! Our beat level is only KKKJJ beaten by anthing higher, so it happens often enough to not get too big and we have several winners! We are unsosphisticated about most things!

first i don;t like Home Game jackpots. First if it gets sizable it can get problematic. Other people may not trust you with the money ..... even if you are honest it can cause unrest.

But if you do it. I think you should not concern yourself with making it easier for a regular player to win it. Isn't part of the reason you want to do this to encourage new players to come. regular players by definition have a greater chance to win it simply because they are playing more.....

Another thought is maybe you should cap the jackpot. Don't risk it getting out of hand. When it gets to a certain size just put more into the backup. So instead of a $10,000 jackpot maybe you have a $5000 jackpot but a backup of $5000 as well.

The reason is this...... things like large jackpots get talked about. When things get talked about they get talked about to the wrong people .....

I have run a very successful BBJ in my 1/1 NLHE home game. My game is a true home game, no house rake, no serious grinders, etc.
My bbj is simple: I put $1 from any pot $40 or bigger into a jar. any full house loser where all showdown hands use both hole cards qualifies. the loser gets 100% of the BBJ up to $200.
Surprisingly, we normally have more than one full payout in the kitty most of the time. The idea of a cap to the payout really works well. We started without the cap, but then when the bbj was hit, the next bbj was tiny for awhile. with the cap, we have a second bbj ready to go.

I used to play at a home game twice a week here is how it was handled

$1 was taken from every pot over $30 in addition to the rake which if I recall correctly was 10% with a $3 cap.
to qualify for the bbj aces full of jacks had to beaten both hands had to play both hole cards.
payout was 75% to losing hand 25% to winning hand (no table share)

this game had a rotating group of 10-15 regulars with a occasional newbie

there was also a $25 jackpot for first person to get aces cracked the first time each night and $75 for a royal flush

game was $1/2 mostly but if everyone agreed would jump to 2/5

guy who ran the game always provided take out food like pizza or Chinese and beer that was paid for with some of rake

....

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Thank you for the thoughtful reply, though.