Hi guys, I was just wondering if anyone has any tips regarding attracting new players to home games and keeping them coming back. I run a small stakes home game whilst I'm at uni and have done very well in the last two years, however all the fun regular players have left uni and we struggle to get a regular game now, and if we do they are nothing like the games we had last year.

Has anyone got any ideas that might keep people coming back? Or methods of reaching out to new players?

Are there any casinos within reasonable distance to you? Are there any Bar, Restaurant, or Bowling Alley free tourneys locally? Are there any Charity "Casino Nights" or tournaments locally? You might not be in a casino friendly state , and the other venues are not as common as they once were. But, If there are some, these places are good to recruit from. You get personal interaction with folks ahead of time ,and less " surprises" when you let them into your homegame. Good luck.

Be very careful with this. Poker is a natural magnet for lowlifes. Make sure you know who you are letting in your house.

+1. I play casino poker regularly, but would never recruit from casinos for a home game. Brushes up against too much addiction, criminality, etc.

Casinos can be fine, obv use your judgement. The internets/2+2 aren't necessarily any safer/better. At the casino, dealers can't play there so they may be interested in home games.

2+2 does have a section for specific cities, look up yours.

If there isn't much of a poker scene in your town, see if there are any pubs/cafes that do games nights, might be worth a shot.

Lots of folks only go to casinos to play once in a while for economic or distance reasons. These types are what you are looking for. Recreational , occasional players , maybe looking for a small stakes unraked homegame too. And yeah there are always a bunch of slightly unsavory types too, but if you are observant you can weed out most of them quickly.

Im sort of in the same boat as you OP. Our best resource is to keep reaching out to people who we know that play. We have a group text message that goes out to the regulars. We struggle to get 7 players.

We keep the blinds small (.25/.25) but it plays like a 1/2.

Ive tried getting new players by going to other games that run on different days as well... Even asked some people I work with that I know who gamble.

If you go to school, I might just post an ad up somewhere and see if I get any calls.

And I know what you mean when you say the games used to be great and then they were crap... Honestly, poker kinda went "underground" when online poker got shut down... Casinos started thriving for a while but the home players started to fade away. Ive also faded away from the casino poker in the last couple years but its because I was getting bored sitting for 9 hrs and I found the slots to be more stimulating.

Maybe that last line is your problem. Does the game play to wild for most of your player list? Might be worth considering changing your game from NL to Spread Limit.

I'd guess some of your regulars would complain, but they would go along with it if it meant more players.

I've played in games with people who would rather play 1/2 or higher, but maybe don't want to pay rake or whatever. So they play in a smaller game and then make it the bigger game they want by betting preflop. It can be fun for those who want to play bigger, but I'm going to guess that is why some of your players stay away.

I +1 pretty much everything that's been said. I started hosting about 4 years ago, but lately it's a struggle to get a game even 1x/month, in part cuz there's an overlapping game that uses most of the same players. (He's a friend, it's not competition, just that we can't sustain 2x/week, and some weeks can't even get one game.)

I also agree with eneely's suggestion to figure out what stakes people actually want to play at. Find out what people are willing to bring for an evening, and then keep the blinds small enough to accommodate them. In my game, most of the gang will only bring $100, so I have been very forceful (even if I'm not hosting) in keeping the blinds at .25/.50, so people can buy in for 100BB and have 100BB left to top up or rebuy. The other host always wants to play higher stakes, and he doesn't seem to get that the evening will die pretty quickly if we start at NL100. The compromise we've reached is that it's NL50, but people can buy in for anything up to $100, so the couple of us who don't mind playing deep can buy in for the max. Yes, this does slightly skew the math sometimes, but it's a home game with more beer than skill, so that's not exactly a big issue. Keeping most people in the game for 3 hours, however, is a goal.

The .25/.25 is just something that stuck around and carried over. Some internet poker buddies of mine that were big players online started a home game. They kept it small so anyone could buy in with whatever they had, no one cared if you had just one quarter to play. It was A LOT of fun.. That game ended and a couple of us organized a new game a couple years later. We kept it .25/.25 to accommodate everyone and at $20 a buy in it was just a perfect number for the average casual player.

We just went with what worked. rebuys are very common and add-ons as well, we have a thing where if you win a hand with 7-2, everyone gives that player .50. Its fun, Ive suggested that we bump up to .50/50 when the game gets a short, since by then, most of us will have at least $50 in chips.

Im just happy that we have a game and I dont have to drive to the casino and the atmosphere is lax. Its a weekly game too.

Maybe I exaggerated a bit with the 1/2 part. Its not uncommon to see a $10 pot preflop.

A 3x or even 5x preflop doesnt seem to scare anyone and its just good fun to see what happens.

Okay, fair enough. If it ain't broke...

But from your post it sounds like it is broke, at least in that you don't get the number of players you'd like. If you have a hard time getting the players you need, a conversation with a few who stopped playing could be illuminating.

In our game, we switched to pot limit, which helps to a degree. The only problem I have with it is that we're constantly calculating what a pot-sized bet is, which slows things down, even though we've gotten pretty good at it. I've tried to get people to just estimate the pot and made a specific bet, but people just love saying "pot" instead of $10.

Make a sincere effort to find out why they left. It may or may not be something you can fix/change.

I've played with many different groups of people over the years. We've had at least our fair share of annoying players. Some players from the group I play with now, started the game and were 100% opposed to playing with this guy, although nobody would admit that was the reason they played less and less frequently at the old game. It may have been something that I could have fixed, had I known.

I'm considering your comments Eneely and have given our game some thought. The game is stale and no one seems to care. I just put out a message for the players to have a discussion about structures and scheduling etc. we do need some work. I put an post my FB page to find more people. But if we can get a solid game structure I will be open to post a thread here for new people. Our handful of players are too content.

I really love the .25/.25 $20 buyin format. It's perfect for home game drunken degenning. Even people on the smallest budgets can have a good time and not get hurt too bad. Pots still get pretty big tho lol.

Mr bigpeen ............Our weekly is .25/.50 and have been a stable group for 6 or 7 years. 8-10 regs and about the same number of occasionals. We "evolved" from tournaments to cash and then from NLH to a 4 game mix. We added the 7-2, Best hand of the night, a fairly easy BBJ and do a Santa Game and a Friday the 13th game. So we have not stayed where we were and avoided getting stale IMHO. We have a "no bottom" / $50 BI/reload cap so deep pockets have a little advantage , but not huge over budgets. We have a sponsor system for intoducing new players that has worked well for us over the years. So there is a lot you can do if you want keep your game fresher. More serious less varied structure is better left to the Casino as well as the higher stakes. Good Luck

Yes, good luck to everyone trying to sustain a game. It is often difficult. There is almost always a tradeoff between pleasing the good and/or gambling players vs the weaker players which you want to protect to a degree to keep them in the game. You can't please everybody, and you can't retain everybody. You have to find the right balance for the biggest group of people you want to play with.

Easiest solution, IMHO, start a Meetup group. It will cost you about 20 bucks a month but you get great exposure online. People who are searching for poker on Meetup in your geographic area, will be pointed to your group. You post your events' write-up online and your members all get an email and can sign up through Meetup. You're welcome to check out my group, to get an idea. http://meetup.com/LAPoker/

Thanks for all the great advice guys- me and the Mrs gently asked the players why the interest in our games wasn't the same as last year and it was simply due to the biggest whales all leaving uni. This meant most of the guys that played regularly didn't want to play as big because there wasn't enough dead money, which I really should have noticed to be honest.

We got a little bit more interest after we made it clear we were willing to play lower stakes and I had a word with a couple of guys who usually grumble when the stakes get lowered and basically told them to keep their mouth shut! Seems to have worked quite well so far, I've even managed to get a small group to play a mixed game.