The home poker game is a tricky beast. You have to walk a fine line between socializing and competitive gaming. The best players are able to gab all night long, down a six pack and still walk away with a pocketful of 20s they can toss on to the dresser to impress the wife at the end of the night. Here are 7 tips from a semi-professional to help you join that elite league of repeat winners:

1. Don't Play Every Hand/Do Fold More. Probably the number one mistake beginning poker players.
2. Online poker is a genuine pursuit, whether as a pastime, hobby or work. It deserves to be treated as a legitimate field of interest: with respect. Love, if you like. The Poker Junkie editorial team always walks the extra mile to give you the best in online poker. We have been “on the road” in online poker.

If you walk in the door simply looking to hang out with your buddies and drink a few IPAs, that’s great. Totally fine. Just don’t expect to walk home with part of the pot. Poker is combat with cards and chips. Would you walk onto a battlefield half-drunk and casually expect to emerge victorious? Same thing for the green-felt arena. You’ve got to want to win to even have a shot. Make your decision before you enter the host’s house as to what you want to get out of the night.

With ultra-low blinds, and micro-stakes, your average home game has the tendency to trickle on into the wee hours of the night. How many times have you seen a friend do well early on, only to lose concentration around midnight and shove all-in on a weak hand? You have to have the stamina of Ron Jeremy to make it through a home game. Your enemies will be beer, high-carb foods like pizza and chips and a game that moves at a snail’s pace, especially if guys are periodically getting up from the table to check on sports scores. Hang in there. Victory by attrition is how you win a home game.

You don’t necessarily need to wait for Pocket Aces, but early in a home tournament you should try to hold out for the big hands. Can you win the occasional pot on a sexy suited connector like 7-8 of diamonds? Of course. But that’s the exception, not the rule. Most players can’t help themselves and succumb to the temptation of playing a shitty hand just to ‘see what happens’. Before you know it, you’ll have played a half-dozen of those shitty hands and reduced your stack so much, that by the time you get your good hand, you don’t have enough chips to build a big pot. To really dominate a home game you want to hold out for those big pairs early on.

One rule of pokers that most pros know and most amateurs don’t is that the number of players in the game affects which types of hands you should play. As stated above, you’re going to want to fold small connectors when there are 8 or more players at the table. But once you get down to 7, 6 or less, you can start opening up your range of hands. A King/4 Suited is worth a gamble with less players, because even if you miss the flush, your king might still be good. Whereas with more players at the table, that king will probably lose to a king with a bigger kicker.

Clayton Parker/FLICKR

The single biggest mistake people make when playing a home poker game is not raising before entering the pot. Sure, these are you buddies. And there’s a lot of pressure at a home game to ‘play nice’ and simply limp in. Don’t do it. It’s not that you’re being rude to your friends. It’s about self-preservation. If you start off with an A/Q and you simply limp into the pot by calling the blinds, you’re opening yourself up to getting beat by all types of hands that might limp in behind you. The guy with the 4/5 offsuit is probably going to play “just for the hell of it”. Don’t let him. Raise it up, and make him pay to play. As a general rule of thumb, your raises should be 3xs the big blind almost every single time you enter a pot. Even if you don’t understand pot odds, you can understand this: the more people who play the hand with you, the worse your odds of winning. So thin the herd and raise the blinds every time you are the first bettor.

Phil Hellmuth, pictured here, is one of the most successful poker players in tournament poker history. Why? Among other skills, he’s a master of the fold. Phil will lay down hand after hand, sometimes even when he thinks he’s ahead, so as not to jeopardize his tournament life. Better to make a bad fold, then to get knocked out, is his strategy. And it’s paid off.

Consider when he laid down a huge hand before the flop when his opponent pushed all in. Phil folded his big pair only to learn that his opponent had Pocket Aces, also known as bullets. Hellmuth turned to his wife in the audience and uttered this now legendary poker quote: “Honey, honey, I was supposed to go broke on that hand. But they forgot one thing: I can dodge bullets, baby!”

Although you don’t to emulate his temper, you should follow Hellmuth’s lead when it comes to laying down hands.

If you walk in the door simply looking to hang out with your buddies and drink a few.

Most home games allows players to rebuy pretty late in the tournament, so that somebody doesn’t wind up sitting on the couch alone watching a college Basketball game the whole night. Take advantage. Especially if others don’t. If you get down to the final 4 and they let you buy back in, you should. That’s something that would never be allowed late in a professional tournament. A late rebuy absolutely favors the person buying in, even if you start with a severe disadvantage in chips. If you can buy in and be given 10x or more chips than the big blind, you should play (example: It’s 11pm, the blinds are 250/500, and every player is given 5,000 worth of chips when they buy in. That means you are getting 10x the big blind to play. That’s tight, but you should still do it, because the cost of buying back in is cheap compared to the potential winnings).

If you’re the kind of guy that shows up at poker night looking to have some fun and drink some beers, but then find yourself down in the dumps when you go home empty-handed, it may be time to start taking the game a little more seriously. You can still have fun, but focus on winning before you even walk in the door and be prepared to stay late without making stupid mistakes around midnight. Stick to your bigger hands early on, but once players start getting knocked out, open up your range of hands a little more. But most of all? Raise when you enter a pot. If you don’t close the door and prevent crappy hands from entering the pot, you have no one to blame but yourself when they beat you. Put some of these strategies into practice, and you’ll soon experience that joyous feeling of waking your wife up at 1am to show her that thick money roll you just hauled in from your buddies. Like a Neanderthal dragging a plump antelope back to the cave, you have gone out into the world and returned with your prize. You are the man. Now stand there at the edge of the bed like a boss and shower her with singles, fives and tens.

Poker is the ultimate social game. A huge part of the fun for most poker players is getting together with friends to throw some cards around and get into it with some animated table talk.

How To Win Online Poker

With the advancement of modern technology and online poker software, friends don’t have to meet at an actual table anymore. And those that can’t always meet up for their local home game now have several options for taking their weekly game online.

You can now set up easy and free online poker with friends on a poker site in just a few minutes.

Chat features and video conference software like Zoom can enhance the experience with that much-adored trash talk. You can even tailor your game to your specific preferences including poker variation (Hold’em, Omaha etc.), cash games, tournaments, or even a turbo Sit & Go.

There are a couple of really solid online poker sites you can use which let you play for real money or play money, depending on your location. Here’s all the info you need to play multiplayer poker online with friends.

Best Sites to Play Online Poker with Friends

Best Poker App to Play Online with Friends

Neither the PokerStars or 888poker apps have “play with friends” options yet. If you want to take advantage of PokerStars’ excellent Home Games feature to play with only your friends, you all need to download the desktop poker client.

Like the PokerStars app, 888poker doesn’t yet offer the play with friends feature on the poker app. An additional challenge with 888 is that players using a Mac won’t find this feature either. As of 2021, players needed to use a Windows-based system to play online poker with friends.

Play Poker Online with Friends in the US

Whether you’re separated from friends by geography or just looking to string together a quick event while your friends are at home, US players will find a couple of good options to play against friends online.

Here are the best to keep in mind when you’re ready to set a home game up:

Set Up a Home Game on PokerStars

The biggest name in poker offers its highly rated Home Games feature that lets you play poker online with friends remotely. Players in US states with access to PokerStars for regulated real money online poker, which include Pennsylvania,New Jersey and Michigan, can meet up with friends online to play poker in private cash games and tournaments.

Anyone in other states across the USA can use the Home Games feature at PokerStars.net to play for virtual currency. You can also, of course, use play money at the tables but exchange real money among your friends.

Setting up a home poker game with friends online at PokerStars is pretty easy but requires some initial coordination and effort.

All players will need to register an account and download the software client to get started:

Setting up an account via any of our links ensures you a $30 free play bonus or an up to $600 deposit match bonus. After setting up an account, follow these steps:

• Log in and look to the right side of the lobby.
• Click on the image of three dots at the bottom offering more options.
• Once selected, click on “Home Games.” You can then click on the option to create a poker club.
• Give your poker club a name and set the invitation code for players who you plan on inviting. This is a password so your friends can get in the club.
• Once that’s complete, your new poker club is ready to go. Invite your friends with the name of the club and invitation code.

Here’s how it looks as you go through the sign-up process:

PokerStars will send you an email invitation you can forward to other players so they can easily find your club and join. As club manager, you’ll need to approve them to let them in the game.

At PokerStars Home Games, you can add specific colors and images to customize your club as well. When your players are approved and ready for action you can then schedule tournaments and cash games as you like.

In cash games, you can set the stakes for the tables. What’s also great about Home Games is that you can select any number of games beyond online Texas Holdem, from Seven Card Stud to Badugi to Eight-Game Mix.

For tournament players, all of those games are available and players can specify their own settings including:

• Buy-in
• Number of seats per table
• Game type (regular, rebuy, knockout)
• Blind levels
• Game speed

You can also:

• Make announcements on your club site
• Set up leaderboards
• Track event results

How to Set up a Play-Money Game with Real Money on the Side

As noted earlier, players can only buy in and play a private game online with friends for real money in a legal jurisdiction. So players would all need to be located within that jurisdiction – such as all in Pennsylvania, Michigan or New Jersey.

That doesn’t mean there can’t be a little skin in the game elsewhere, though. It’s easy to collect buy-ins for your online poker game with PayPal or an app like Venmo or Zelle. Players simply transfer a few bucks using their online accounts or mobile app.

One player can act as the banker just like in a home game, and then pay out winners at the end of the night. Online payment platforms make this an easy process just like in a live home game.

How to Play Free Online Poker with Friends on PokerStars

PokerStars Home Games is really set up for all types of players and, much like the process for playing a real-money home game, the steps for setting up private games in the play money software are easy to follow. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide:

• Install the desktop client software. (Remember, the app doesn’t offer this feature).
• Register an account with your name, email, and other details
• After downloading, open the software client and log in.
• Click on the three buttons at the bottom offering more options.
• Click on Home Games and the option to create a poker club.
• Give your club a name and set the invitation code.
• Set up a time for your tournament or cash game with details like stakes, number of players per table, etc.
• Once that’s completed, forward an invitation with poker club name and password to friends.
• Players can then join the club at the appointed time and get ready to play cards.

How to Set Up a Private Poker Game at 888poker

888poker currently offers legal real money online poker in New Jersey and Delaware, and friends can also meet up virtually to play for real money. Those outside NJ and DE can also set up an online poker game with just their friends using play money at the virtual tables.

The 888 software is user friendly and it’s easy to create your own poker game with friends. Here’s how to get started:

• Claim your bonus, create an account and download the 888poker software.
• Click on “Extra Games” from the middle top of the pull-down menu.
• Select “Play with Friends” to get started. This is also how players will join your “home game.”
• Click on “Create a New Game” to begin setting up your own game.

No Poker Club Required!

Unlike PokerStars, at 888 you can set up an individual cash game or tournament without creating a club. Players can easily create a game name and password to share with friends. You can then set the

• Start date
• Start time
• Number of seats
• Buy-in

Players will then simply provide that game name and password to join after you’ve emailed them the information. An easy 888 invitation option is provided. Simply email it to yourself and then forward that to friends.

When it’s time to play, those players simply join up using the name and password.

Which is better for poker with friends: PokerStars or 888poker?

For multiplayer poker online with friends, and especially for tournaments and different game variations, PokerStars Home Games is the best option available. Players have numerous options and it’s easy for all players to jump online and play.

That being said, the simplicity and ease which you can just set up a private table and jump in at 888poker is also great. 888poker also currently has a very good free no deposit bonus for opening a new poker account. Here’s a look at some aspects of the available sites mentioned here.

Advantages to Playing Poker Online with Friends

Obviously playing online offers a great way to keep the action going when you’re away from your friends.

Players located in different parts of the world can reconnect and communicate. Here are some other positives:

• Complete control over the game
• Easy dealing, splitting pots, and game management
• Several game variations to choose from
• Tournaments are easy to set up and run
• Players can be located anywhere

Another great advantage is that you can play with any number of players. If you have a lot of friends, a multi-table tournament is possible with the promise of a nice payout for the winner.

Only have a handful of players looking for action? You can play three- or four-handed. It’s even possible to simply play some poker with just one friend to work on your heads-up skills.

What Games Can You Set Up for Online Poker with Friends?

What’s great about playing online with friends is the number of games possible online. It makes for a great way to add some new games to the mix in your home game. You don’t have to worry about the intricacies involved with dealing a new game yourself at the table. Some poker variations to choose from include:

• Texas Hold’em
• Omaha
• Seven Card Stud
• 5-Card Omaha
• 2-7 Lowball (Single or Triple Draw)
• HORSE
• 8-Game Mix
• Badugi

Cash Games vs. Tournaments – Pros and Cons

Setting up an online cash game or tournament among friends is easy. Here’s a look at a few things to keep in mind when getting started.

Tournaments

Pros

• Simple to set up and meet friends online.
• Easy for budgeting and paying out winners.
• Can be set up for any number of players.
• Players know exactly what to budget for an event.

Cons

• May need to be a bit more organized than a cash game.
• When playing with multiple tables, may not allow for as much interaction as a single table.

Cash Games

Pros

• Easy to set up with your own game and stakes.
• Several game options available.
• Players can come and go as they like.

How To Win At Poker With Friends Play

Cons

• Players looking for real money play will have to settle up offline. This is pretty simple however.
• May not always produce a full table. Players could have a short-handed table on occasion, depending on turnout.

Online Poker with Friends at Global Poker

This option may not be quite as simple (and isn’t conducive to tournaments), but players spread across the country can still get together for some cards at Global Poker.

Global Poker is a sweepstakes poker and casino site that allows you to play for virtual currency, called Gold Coins, or a separate currency called Sweeps Coins. Sweeps Coin are accumulated when you buy Gold Coins or win them in Sweeps Coin poker games or tournaments. Sweeps Coins can then be redeemed for real money.

Setting up a real money poker game with friends on Global Poker isn’t quite as easy but it can be done. Just have everyone come to an agreement on the stakes and find an empty table. It may take a bit of coordination, but might be worth it.

Each table is named, which allows players to find where everyone will be at a certain time. Be aware that these tables won’t be exclusive, however, and other players may jump in if there are empty seats.

For example, a few friends may all be up for some SC0.25/SC0.50 No Limit Texas Hold’em. A Sweeps Coin table named “Naples” offers those stakes and no one is playing there at the moment. You and your friends will simply have to jump on the table and get started. There should be several six-handed and nine-handed tables at any one time.

Global Poker doesn’t offer a downloadable app yet but its quick-play browser-based platform makes it easy for players with a phone or tablet to jump on. The functionality is also surprisingly good. On your phone you’ll still find everything that the traditional desktop version offers – including the ability to meet up with friends at a poker table.

Poker with Friends Online FAQ

Are there any other apps for poker with friends online?

Some players make use of free social gaming poker apps to play with friends. There are numerous options that allow players to play for virtual money. Many players use these and settle up with real money via online transfers using PayPal, Venmo, or another option. Real money poker apps are available in legalized US states, although none currently have the built-in Home Games with Friends feature.

Can I play poker with friends on my iPhone/Android?

PokerStars and 888poker don’t offer an option to play with friends on their mobile apps. Players will need to use a traditional desktop computer or laptop.

Players using Global Poker to meet friends at a Gold Coin or Sweeps Coin table can easily use its browser-based poker option to play on a mobile phone or tablet.

Are online poker games with friends safe?

You can feel good about playing online games at PokerStars and 888poker. They are among the safest poker sites you can find online and use intricate and cutting edge security measures to keep player information and any online funds safe.

When playing for a bit of cash on the side, however, that requires all parties willing to pony up. Make sure your friends aren’t scofflaws if they plan on getting in on the action.

Do I need to deposit any money to play online with friends?

Only if all your players who are all located in a legal jurisdiction can play for real money online. Those poker games with players who may be located around the country will have to make use of play money features.

Global Poker players meeting for ring games can use Gold Coins or Sweeps Coins. GC is a virtual currency and SC is an alternate virtual currency on the site that players can redeem for real cash and prizes.

Can I play poker with friends online entirely free?

Players can indeed battle it out for play money with friends on PokerStars, 888poker and Global Poker without depositing any real money.