Hi, new to this forum, but wanted to try a question out (Texas Hold'em tournaments). Does anyone use special house rules that can spice up your home games, or do you consider it to be blasphemy?

If you are using it - do you have any fun favorites to share?

Sometimes we have played with (probably with another name in other groups of course):

2-7 Punisher: If you manage to win a hand with 2-7, in addition the other players must pay you a big blind each.

Bounty Hunter: At the start of a tournament, all players pay an extra fee. This is then distributed (a fixed amount) for each player that is knocked out in a hand, to the player that knocked them out.

Deuces Wild: Extreme variant. Twos are wild (counts as anything) - either hole cards, table cards, or both.

Welcome to the forum.

These things (except bounties) are much more common in cash games than tournaments, but yeah. In tournaments, we sometimes do little prizes for the first to win with certain hands. For example, when stationed in Kosovo doing peacekeeping as part of the international Kosovo Force (KFOR), we called K4 the "Peacekeeper Special" and had a prize for the first person in the tournament to win a hand with it.

In cash games we'll sometimes do a round of "Dealer's Choice" every half hour. Game is no limit holdem for the first half hour. Then whoever has the button when the timer goes off can call a round of another game (Omaha and Crazy Pineapple are the most commonly called, or just sticking with holdem if the person is a nit). Once that round is over, another half hour of holdem. Then when the timer goes off again, the person to the left of the last chooser (does not actually have to have the button) chooses a game for a round. Rinse and repeat.

Seven Deuce game is common in cash.

Thanks for the welcome, and thanks for sharing. I like the idea of having combination of hole cards that means something to the group, I'll have to think about that.

I also like the variant of dealer's choice, haven't tried it that way before.

I haven't played very much outside the few poker groups I am a member of, so I don't have a lot of experience of what is common. But I like to spice things up in our home tournaments sometimes.

My wife and I have 3-table tournaments in our basement every 3-4 weeks during the school year. Our regular season runs from August to April, we have one big tournament in May, and we have a special tournament at the end of the summer. We also run spontaneous cash games and tournaments when we can fit them in. We are in the middle of Season 13 and have hosted 264 tournaments along the way. (I keep some notes.)

Lately our special tournament is a tag-team/partners hold’em tourney. Teams of 2 players play from the same chip stack, but only one teammate plays for a level at a time. (Cash game is held on a side table so no one gets bored while their partner is playing.)

Our 10-night regular season consists of formats which alternate back and forth. Odd numbered nights see one 7-8 hour long hold em tournament. (Dealers choice limit cash game as folks bust the tournament.). On even numbered nights, though, we mix things up.

We run two tournaments: a Quick Tournament (runs for about 90 minutes) generally in a non-hold’em variety, which pays out all players evenly once we are “in the money”. This is followed by a Main Event (about 4-5 hours long) that is a hold’em game but with some additional peculiarities.

Quick Tourneys — we had experimented with playing hi/lo games, but with the aggressive structure and split-pot inexperience we decided to only stick with one-way games: crazy pineapple, Omaha, Longmont (a game of my own creation; search this forum for a post with the rules), 7-card stud.

Main Events: Add-on Extravaganza (the buy in includes 3 rebuy lammers which could be exchanged for chips any time between hands), Ante-only Tournament, Progressive Knockout Tournament (half of the buy in goes to a standard prize pool, the other half to a bounty pool — when someone gets KOed the hitman is paid half their bounty on the spot and the other half of the bounty increases the size of the hitman’s bounty), Cheap Rebuy Night.

We also run one QT/ME night where we recreate that summer’s WSOP ME Final Table. The order of finish for the QT determines which chip stack you start with in the ME (only for the final 9 finishers), and other than a smaller prize pool and shorter levels everything is run as if you were at the WSOP ME Final Table.

Just this year we started experimenting with special mixed game tournaments (like HORSE, except we replace hold’em with Longmont and play it as LOSER).

We’ve tried 7-2 bounties and high hand payouts, but none of that really resonated with our crew. Our Cheap Rebuy tournament is probably the craziest/most-fun night on our calendar. We’ve got 22-25 regular players and enough of a smattering of sometimes-players to keep our basement filled up each time we host. We play in about four other home games so there’s a lot of cross-pollination to keep our game pretty much filled up. It’s an amazing crew (ages from 31 to 82) to put up with all our crazy games, but our end-of-season surveys show that they don’t want us shifting to a more traditional mix of tournament styles, so we keep on chugging.

In our tournament we have two options for those that want to get in on it

1: a bounty that you collect for knocking someone out.
2: High hand jackpot. Each tournament who ever tables the highest hand, get the jackpot.

Both options players have a choice whether they want to get in on it.

That was interesting and entertaining to read, thanks for sharing. Seems like you have a lot going on!

What is the general idea behind this? To speed up the tournament? What about risk for ganging up on smaller stacks when closing in on the money? Perhaps no big difference in comparison with a regular tournament...

I tried to search Longmont, but couldn't find any relevant threads. Could you provide a link or perhaps give a short summary here?

That's interesting, could perhaps push players to try a little extra for that high odds draw.

Glad you found it interesting!

Re: equal pay when ITM during our Quick Tournament: yes, we adjust our payouts to speed things along. We use a smaller buy-in amount for that tourney, so the de facto result is that if you cash in the QT you’re basically free-rolling for the evening (our typical Standard Tournament and Main Event tournaments allow for infinite rebuys through s specified level OR an equivalent add-on at the end of the rebuy period for folks who haven’t rebought — the net is that the second tournament of the night is priced 3x - 5x as much as the QT). The philosophy of the QT’s is to have a higher variance game that spreads around “winners” more than our typical games. Folks don’t come back if they just lose and lose and lose.

Also, you’re right that the way we do even pay outs of all those positions at the end can make the short stacks extra nervous. But once they double up then the pressure immediately shifts to the new short stack. It makes for an extra tense bubble (which can be enjoyable).

Re: Longmont Find it here and also here. When called during cash games we tend to play hi/lo (with no qualifier for the lo).

That fact alone is in my opinion reason enough for the earlier mentioned pay-out structure A good thought for the overall poker experience; I will keep it in mind

Longmont seems to be some combination / variant of Lazy Pineapple and stud poker, and yet not too far from Hold'em - I like it! Could work in our group, which is scared of all other things than Hold'em at the moment

Yes and you have a chance of winning a few dollars without making the top three normal pay outs. If everyone folds when you bet, you can table your hand anyways to claim a high hand.

Very true, and after all, who doesn't want to show a good hand, really?

We have special "Show-Em" chips. Each player may buy one per game for $3. Any time they want to see a player's hand (at the end of the hand) they give that player their Show-Em chip. The player has to show him (and ONLY him) the hand. The player shown the hand can not show or tell any one else what the hand was. If any other player wants to see the hand they have to give him their Show-Em chip as well. The Show-Em chip is immediately redeemed from the Bank for $3 and is retired from play. If at the end of the game you still have your Show-Em chip, the Bank buys it back for $3. During the game players may sell their Show-Em chip to any other active player for what ever the market will bear.

Interesting! And original? Will definitely add that to the list of ideas!

I wish! I found these a few years ago:

https://abcgiftsandawards.com/showem-chips-pinup-girl/


Last game no one wanted any! usually about 1/2 get them.

Thanks for sharing!