Who doesn’t love a home game or a night a the casino with a nice mix of good laughs and good action? In this article I will talk about ways to make your online poker experience more social and similar to those epic nights of live poker.
Bring your friends
Talking to your friends during online play can be just as entertaining as in a live poker game. Preferable you get your friends together so you can sit and play in the same room, but that is not possible there are other options available to keep the chat going.
One option can be to find players to chat with at the table. In the partypoker software you can “add a friend” and talk to players off the table as well. If you find it difficult to engage with players at your table, move tables and try again. You never know what friendships you could forge at the partypoker tables!
Play Casual Cash Games
The Casual Cash Games at partypoker are great for adding a more relaxed and sociable environment to your play. As players can only sit at one table when seated at a Casual Cash Game, they are more inclined to be in a similar mindset to you and more likely to engage in conversation.
Check out this article for more reasons why you should be playing Casual Cash Games.
Raise the stakes
The next thing to do is to get create side bets with your friends to make things more interesting! Examples to keep the fun element high would be a bet on who flops the first set or who picks up pocket kings next?
If you are planning a night out with your mates, you can start the night of with some poker and make some side bets similar to other “party games” maybe whoever wins the least has to buy the first round of drinks! Use your imagination, there are endless opportunities for extra fun.
Buy Pieces of Friends / Sell to Friends
With everyone leading busy lives these days, it’s common for you and your friends to not be able to meet up for a poker session, even an online poker one. If this is the case, you may want to spice things up by selling pieces of yourself in a tournament. If you buy into a $100 tournament, you can sell a percentage to your friends, say 20%. Then if you cash you give 20% of your profits to your friends, which gives them a vested interest in the game even when they aren’t playing and can lead to some rowdy rails if you reach the final table!
Challenge Yourselves
If you want to include a more serious element to your grind, agree to a challenge with your friends. Decide to play poker for a specific time or play a certain number of hands and have forfeits for those who lose. Try not to make the goals result oriented as variance can easily drag you down. These friendly battles can add to the social experience much like friends who go to the gym together, often spurring each other on to greater things.
Other ideas
If you have few friends greatly interested in a longer poker session you can combine poker with another social event, such as inviting your friends over for watching a game of football while playing some poker simultaneously. Online poker makes it very easy to play poker anywhere, any time.
Do you have any tips for making poker a more sociable experience? We’d love to hear them.
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