Ring Games

A ring or cash game is where the players buy in for some amount of money, and the blinds remain fixed through the game.  There is not fixed ending to the game, in theory it can continue for as long as losing players are prepared to buy more chips, or as long as the winning players want to play.

Generally, anyone can join or leave the game at any time.  It is sometimes considered 'poor form' for someone to play a few hands, win a lucky pot and then take their winnings and leave, but in fact, there is nothing wrong with that.

However, since home games are played as much as a social event as anything, it is polite if you are going to leave early to say so at the start of the evening.

Since the this game is played at my home, and the kids bedrooms are upstairs above the 'poker room', practically, the game will not go past midnight, but then I often lose track of time and have seen in the dawn on more than one occasion whilst playing.  Never the less, should you hear Barbara at some point gently reminding me of chores to be done in the morning, that is a sure sign the game has only another half an hour to run.

Stack Sizes

Personally, I like to play with a fairly deep stack-to-blind size ratio.  About 100 big blinds is good for me.  Most casinos seem to set the buy in limit for a NL cash game at 50-75 big blinds.  Fifty is the low end of the scale for me - I think it opens up the potential for bullying from a big stack too much.

The chip sets I have can accommodate the following blinds:

Min/Max Buy in	BB/SB/Ante	Chip Value
$10 - $40	25/15/5	1 cent
$25 - $50	50/25/5	1 cent
$75 - $150	1/2/-	$1
$5 - $20	5/10/2	1 cent
$50 - $100	50/100/25	1 cent

Chip Colour	Value
White	1
Blue	2
Red	5
Green	25
Black	100
Purple	500
Yellow	1,000

Ante

I like the idea of a small ante in addition to the blinds on each hand.  The ante is small enough that there is no pressure to play with a bad hand, but adds a little more to the pot to 'move the action' along and generally make the game more fun - since everyone has some small interest in every hand.

If other players don't like to play with an ante, it is no problem to drop it either.

Prop Bets

Many people like to have running side bets on how the flop will come etc.  It's up to the players on the night to decide amongst themselves, but in any event, no one has to participate if they don't want to.

So too with changes to play like the '2-7' bet (if any player wins a hand with 2-7, the other players all agree to pay him 'x' amount), or straddle bets.  Either the whole table agrees to do it or it isn't done.