Pokerstars Home Games: An Overview

Every Night is Poker Night with PokerStars Home Games

Grinding online poker is a great way to make money, but let's face it--sometimes it's downright boring. You're playing against people you don't know, who don't care about you, and who only want to take your cash. Wouldn't it be great to great to get away from that, even just for a little while, and play for fun and friendship?

Enter PokerStars Home Games. Home Games lets you create what amounts to a private poker club online. Only people you invite can join the club, so you don't have to deal with random grinders ruining the atmosphere.

The best part about Home Games is that it's all done through the PokerStars client. No need to download a hundred fancy programs or to reprogram your computer. Home Games requires just a couple of clicks to set up. Click, click--and you're ready to go.

There's no extra charge to set up Home Games on PokerStars. There's no fancy fee structure, either. It's the exact same game you'd normally be playing; only you get to choose the people with whom you play.

Our guide to Pokerstars Home Games is divided up into four sections

- Managing your club
- Setting up your own Home Game
- Home Game Strategy: The Basics
- Taking notes and making reads
- Playing against Fish
- Crushing Tight, Aggressive Players in your Home Game

In the meantime though, here's the rundown on some of the PokerStars Home Games features.

Home Games -- Choice and Flexibility

The beauty of Home Games is that you can choose basically any game type at any stake. If you're a cash game player, you can set up a cash Home Game. If you're a tournament player, you can set up a tournament Home Game. It's up to you.

If you and your friends feel like playing Holdem on Tuesday and Omaha on Wednesday, that's fine--just click a few buttons and set it up how you want it. You can customize your buy-in amount, blind levels, table size--you name it, and it's customizable.

The idea behind PokerStars Home Games is total flexibility. After all, that's what you'd have in a home game at your house. Home Games makes it easy to set up a fun game, exactly the way you and your friends want it.

Home Games -- Fun and Competition

Half the fun of a poker night is competing with your friends. But keeping track of wins and losses can get confusing, especially if you like to mix up games.

Through PokerStars Home Games, you can set up a custom leaderboard to do the counting for you. The leaderboard ranks players according to tournament finishes. This makes it easy to keep track of who's hot and who's not; so the next time a friend brags about being the best, you can point to his leaderboard standings and prove him otherwise.

Home Games -- Easy and FREE!

You'd think that setting up a private online poker club would be hard. But PokerStars Home Games makes it anything but. It's literally as easy as logging in and clicking a couple of buttons.

There are really only four steps to getting your Home Game rolling:

1. Download the PokerStars software.
2. Set up a PokerStars player account.
3. Click the "Home Games" button to start your club.
4. Invite your friends to play via the automatic invitation system.

There is no catch. There is no hidden agreement that requires you to sell your soul in exchange for a poker club. And best of all, there's no extra cost. The ability to start and participate in Home Games is just an extra benefit of choosing PokerStars.

While you might not always feel like playing with your friends, Home Games makes it easy when you do feel like it. Online poker can be a pretty impersonal grind--Home Games is a great way to take a break and have some fun.