To be honest the small pings were like I said, a show of respect and a nod to the old adage of " a chip and a chair."
Yea, more often than not, someone pushes their two or three reds in and get busted and they either buy in again or leave. But they leave feeling respected.
The only real big pings were in huge pots where someone got a bad beat.
The players that played at one home game generally played at many others as well.
I used to do doorman stuff and small things to help out in a home game and if I went to play at someone elses game, I took it as my responsibility to represent the game I worked for in a good light. This means being friendly, having fun, talking with people, TREATING THE DEALER GOOD, and yea pinging players. Plus, these games would run from a freeroll at 5 PM to sometimes 8 or 9 PM the next day.
Again, these were all players who were familiar with each other and if they played together at Bob's on Wed, then they also found themselves at Don's on Friday. So maybe the close knit vibe had something to with it.
But again, it was never, ever seen as a sign of pity and no one ever complained and whined on a beat for a ping. In fact, the only real angry moment I saw at a house game was when a guy bad beat three other players when erryone was all in, and hit and run the next hand. Two of them didnt rebuy, and the third got all red in the face and slammed his fist on the table. We had to wait about an hour for a few more players to show up so it was real short handed early on, and that's a sticky spot to handle.
This is why when playing at card houses and stuff when people do hit and runs I'm baffled and am like "dang man, is someone gonna walk you to your car?" Different ways in coming up thru the ranks I guess.