I would go with the 1/1 blind structure. I am surprised you found enough people willing to play 1-2 fixed limit for a home game (even if it is a HE and O8 game).

Of these solutions, 1/1 is simple.
As I've said in a dozen or so threads, we just do "1". [Not 0/1. Just "1."] The blind.


We do some confusing stuff in our Single-$1-Blind game NL/PL game, since we also often play some limit in the rotation. We play 2-5 limit (2-4-6-8 pre/flop, 5-10-15-20 turn/river) because it's primarily a red-chip game. If that doesn't boil your brain enough, pre-flop it's a single $1 blind, UTG can limp for $2 or raise to $4. ...did I mention we have a $5/10 kill, and the dealer antes $0.50/person (rounded) in stud limit games?

On a separate note, go to the bank, buy a roll of $0.50 pieces. That's what we used to do when we had $0.50 blinds in our old 1-2 limit games.

We play on Wednesday, and have 6 so far. A couple of the regular NL players...yeah, the younguns...bowed out. But we have a taker who has not played with us in a long while. So you never know. It could be she was looking for what we're spreading.

We're going with 1/1. For the extra .50, no one is complaining. And having two blinds keeps the traditional pre-flop position structure.

I'm surprised you didn't get into why you play single 1 instead of 1/1. But I guess that is because it is primarily NL/PL.

And you're not even curious how 0/1 would play?

The rest of it, I need a different set of players to even start to use that information.

We play single $1 because it's roughly the same action as $1/1 and you can "sell" the game to nits as only $1 in blinds per orbit as opposed to $2 per orbit. I actually think, psychologically speaking, for our game, it ends up playing looser with a single buck on the table than with two -- but YMMV.

I imagine, with us, if we went 0/1, there'd be a lot of SB players throwing in a buck in limped pots, and throwing away their hand in raised pots as if their near-last position pre-flop mattered much versus their awful position post-flop.


The oddities that come from playing a 1-2-5 limit game with red chips is just an anomaly of our game and structure. A curious footnote, at most.

I have to give some love to the idea of 0/1 blinds. That is brilliant. It sucks in the SB when it gets called around, then he gets roasted on the later streets since he is out of position each time. Most players won't realize this is an error, so the good players have an edge in the 0/1 game. Sounds like a great way to bump up the action from the weak players to me.

Finally, some validation!

TrvChBoy likes me. He really likes me.

Seriously, it would be interesting to see who played from the NB (no blind) position and with what.

We started with 1/1, but with only 5 players that meant too many blinds. 2 out of 5 hands. So we switched to a single dollar blind and that seemed about right.

Have you never played limit holdem before?

The cardroom where I play regularly spreads 1-2 limit holdem The game is played with fifty-cent chips, and the blinds are one chip for SB and two chips for BB; Bet size is two chips before and on the flop and four chips on the flop.

If I wanted to host a home game where 1-2 LHE was to be spread, I would play the game with 25-cent chips with a 2-chip/4-chip blind structure, just like 20-40 is spread around the world.

A 1-2 game played with $1 chips would suck big-time. It would suck even more than 10-20 played with $5 chips, (generally the nittiest game in a poker room that spreads LHE), because the pots would look so small. Play it with 25-cent chips and you will have an action game. With dollar chips you'll just have the blinds being passed back and forth.

If I were working for an idiot who insisted on spreading 1-2 LHE and insisted on using only dollar chips in the game, and it were really important for me to keep my job working for this idiot, I would want to have two $1 blinds, so that there is enough of a pot to be worth fighting over, despite the idiotic chip size.

Same as most 4/8 games unless you're playing at foxwoods with their goofy $2 chips (or on the west coast which if I remember from the summer had $2 chips). I've played 4/8 with $1s and then with $2s at FW and its definitely a much more action-filled game with the former.

Would 10-cent chips make even more action?

The law of diminishing returns for chip size psychology seems to stop working at 25-cent chips.

how about .25 ante only with a dollar min bet

No, not never.

Your theory is that people will be fooled by more chips in the pot, even though they have the same value? I don't know. Does this work with only math challenged people?

If there is some psychology to this, it could also go the other way, in that quarter chips would look like chump change, not real money.

But practically speaking, I only have 100 quarter chips. And no .50 chips at all. I have 300 dollar chips.

But we played it again and used two one dollar blinds. So we have that going for us. When are you going to join us?

I've seen it happen before.

If I saw 10 pennies on the ground, I might not bother. But I would definitely pick up a dime. That is the opposite affect I am thinking about.

I'm not eloquent enough to make a counter argument, I just know that moar chips = moar fun when it comes to limit. It's a moot point anyways since you don't really have .50c chips. Has the 1/1 game been a success so far?

It is a nice change of pace, but after a while I get a little bored. I wish we could put more games into the mix, but this time it was strictly HE, because we had a couple of new players who only knew it.

Maybe next time we can add some new games. This one host likes the idea of a NLHE tournament and a low limit cash game. I am all for it, once a month or so.

Maybe a LHE/O8 rotation game? Or LHE/O8/Stud 8 (or Chicago)? I will admit that LHE is slow with friends if they play nitty. My friends usually do this when we're shorthanded and I end up robbing the blind (lolz).

Oh no, these guys play every hand if they can limp. A raise folds 1/4 of the table. You need a 3rd bet to reduce the hands appreciably.

The stakes are too low, really. I think some sort of spread limit would be better.

Meh, spread limit just ends up being a game of betting the max. Do 1/2 with a 2/4 kill. Activate it either when there's over 5BB in the pot (often) or when someone wins the pot twice in a row.

I like this, but these guys like seeing every flop. Some of them thought 1/2 FL was a bigger game than .25/.50 NL. "Because it's a dollar." Without regard to the 2 - 3 buck raise that is bound to happen on most hands. God love em.