SNG Home Game

The other day, my brother invited me to his house for a NLHE home game. Basically a one table SNG with some of his friends for pretty low stakes. 2oo pesos buy in. Katuwaan lang.

After playing online exclusively for quite some time, I was surprised at how slooooow everything felt. From the shuffling to the dealing, to the table banter and the pauses for snack and toilet breaks. Of course there was the element of human tells that you don't get online. But I didn't even need to read the faces or the tics or any of the Caro tells. At that level of friendly play, you just play straightforward poker, read the bets and you'd usually come out on top.

But this post is really not about me winning or losing the home game. I just suddenly realized while playing the home game SNG that it could actually be done thru one of the poker sites and make everything faster. I mean, set up a wireless network, everybody bring a laptop (assuming everyone owns a laptop), register an account, create a private game in one of the sites, assign someone with a big enough bankroll to be the treasurer essentially collecting cash and transferring T$ and then it should be good to go. After the game, the winners can transfer back and collect the dough. Some of the logistics can be done prior to the scheduled start time.

This should make the game much faster. And for the same amount of time that you spend playing the live SNG, you can probably go through 2 or 3 online games especially at a turbo setting. So parang the best of both worlds. You get the speed of online play (i'm sure everybody hates shuffling and dealing cards) while at the same time you still got everybody in one roof and maintain the camarederie, not to mention the drinking and the taunting and trash talking.

The only problem I can see is with regards to the single IP address that will be used by everyone in the game. I don't know if the poker room filters will see this as collusion/multiple accounts and might get you banned. But it is a private game and can be explained as such. You're paying the same rake that the site would normally get for one of their games anyway. Also, I'm not sure how long it takes to set up a private game. Do you need to email site support and is it instantaneous ? Maybe some scheduling needs to be involved.

Has anybody ever tried doing this before ? Kindly comment on what happened as it would be interesting to know the details and how it was done. I think there are also sites like Triplejack where you can set up private poker lounges.