Home game

A home game is a poker game that is coordinated and put together by someone other than a casino employee at a casino, almost always for friends of the organizer to play in. Logically enough, it is usually hosted at the home of one of the participants. Although some home games hire professional dealers just as casinos do, it is far more common for the players to rotate dealing themselves.

Home games are sometimes held at commercial locations (e.g. hotels, offices), and lately some casinos have begun marketing to home-game enthusiasts, telling them to "bring their home game to the casino" and let the casino host it for them (see The Commerce Casino's web site as an example).

Home games are typically run for much smaller stakes than a casino game, but not always. Home tournaments have also started becoming much more popular since the poker boom of televised tournament poker.

Home games are legal in most jurisdictions, as they are considered private wagering. However, it is generally illegal for the host of a home game to take a rake.

We can use the wiki for a community-maintained list of home games, as well as for links to other directories of home games.

Massachusetts

 * Amherst: semi-regular $0.25-0.50 NL game ($10-$40 buyin) going on Monday nights; see UMass Poker's forum under Cash Games. Also occasional tournaments including upcoming series 28 November - 3 December 2005.

Directories

 * homepokergames.com - probably the most extensive directory on the Web, although it's also a bit of a mess to navigate. Entries never really expire, so it can be excruciating to figure out if the game you seek is still running.
 * TruPlayers.com - Currently open to all North American countries, supports different privacy levels (to avoid strangers at your game) and has extras like photo albums and blogs.
 * citypokergames.com - organized around certain metro areas, with only a rudimentary zip code lookup for those that fall outside those areas.
 * K9Poker.com - Most flexible interface for US users