How to Run a Poker Cash Game at Home (Buy-Ins, Rebuys & Settling Up)

It's 10:30. Dave just took the biggest part of the night and he's already got his jacket on. And you're the host, so you open the cash box to pay him and find two 20s, a 10, and a napkin that says Mike rebuy maybe twice. So, this is how to run a poker cash game at home, the buy-in, the rebuys, who holds the money, and how everybody settles up set up so that moment takes 2 minutes instead of an argument. Because if you look this up, almost every home game video is a tournament with a blind clock, a structure sheet, and a payout chart. And one guy under a cash game tutorial said he was looking for $0.25 $0.50 and everything else he found was $25 $50 which is ridiculous for him and his friends. But, that small every week cash game is most home games and it's the one nobody explains. I used to think a cash game was the easy version because there's no clock and you just play. But, a tournament takes everybody's money once at the door and a cash game takes it all night long in rebuys and top-ups and people leaving at different times. And there's one decision in here that decides if your game is still running 3 months from now which will make sense once we get to the end of the night. So, here are the six decisions in the order the night actually happens from the stakes in the group chat to the last payment. And one of them is the reason the count comes out short almost every week and it's not the one people blame. Number one is the stakes and the mistake is picking the blinds first because $0.25 $0.50 sounds tiny. One host wrote that their uncapped $0.25 $0.50 game somehow had seven or eight thousand dollars on the table by the end of the night. So, start from the other end with the most the least comfortable person in your group is fine losing on a bad night. For most friend groups, that's around $50 and that one number decides everything else. Number two is the buy-in and the usual rule is 100 big blinds. So, at $0.25 $0.50 the buy-in is $50 and everybody gets the same 50 every single time. Card rooms let you buy-in for anything between a minimum and a maximum, but at home that turns the final count into a math test. And the stack itself is in our chips video, but the short version is 12 whites, 12 reds, and seven greens which is exactly $50. Number three is the rebuy rule and this is where Mike's napkin came from. One host asked if a player has to be totally out of chips to rebuy or just under a certain amount. In a cash game, you can add chips anytime you're under the buy-in, but only between hands, never in the middle of one. And the other half of the rule is a cap, like three rebuys a night, because as another host put it, with unlimited rebuys, some people play like the buy-in is $10. So, every rebuy gets said out loud, paid, or written down before the chips leave the case, and it comes as two black chips, so you can spot it on the table from across the room. Number four is who holds the money in every game picks one of three ways, usually without noticing. The first is a bank, where everybody pays the host as they buy in, and the host pays everybody back at the end. The second is pay at the end, so buy-ins just get written down, and nobody touches money until the game stops. And the third is peer-to-peer, where nobody holds anything, and the people who lost pay the people who won directly. One host has run a Venmo bank since 2019 with no cash at the table at all, and he says it's been a huge success. But, not everybody has the same app, and I can't use Venmo or Zelle, so paying out a bank night used to sound like, "Do you have Cash App?" No. "Cash?" No. "PayPal?" Yes. So, if your group is mixed, peer-to-peer is the one that stops the host from being the middleman for every single dollar. Number five is leaving early, and it's how our cold open started. One host's top tip under a hosting video was always play cash games, because people who show up late or need to leave early wreck a tournament, and a cash game doesn't care. And that's true, anybody can leave whenever they want, even right after a big pot, and complaining about it is how you lose a player. So, the rule isn't about stopping Dave, it's about his number being right when he goes. His chips get counted at the table before the jacket goes on, and that amount goes on the sheet next to his buy-ins, so the final count still adds up after he's gone. And number six is the count, which is where the short count from earlier finally makes sense. Every chip on the table has to equal $50 times every buy-in and every rebuy. So, six buy-ins and four rebuys should count to 500, and when the chips say 450, a rebuy never got written down. And that's the one people don't blame, because everybody blames the counting. But, it's almost never a miscount. It's number three, a rebuy from 3 hours ago that went on, I'll get you later. So, the short count is decided at 9:00, not at 1:00 in the morning. Then comes who pays who, which is the part people try to do in their heads while everybody's putting on shoes. Say Dave's up 85, Marco's up 45, and Sam's up 20. And on the other side, Mike's down 85, Tony's down 55, and Jess is down 10. So, Mike pays Dave 85, Tony pays Marco 45, and Sam 10. And Jess pays Sam 10, which is four payments, and none of them go to the host. And one new host asked how you even pay people in a game that small, and if he'd need to carry nickels. You don't, because the smallest chip is a quarter, and every payment app handles cents just fine. So, here's the decision that keeps a game alive, and it's settling the same night. Money that's still owed on Tuesday is what quietly ends home games, because nobody wants to be the guy texting a friend about $40. And I know how bad it gets, because during a losing streak I wanted to see the damage, so I went through my Zelle statements, then Cash App, then my wallet, and I still couldn't remember the cash nights. That's why I built HG Poker, the app our group runs every game on. The host taps rebuy, and it's logged with the name. And at the end, the count goes player by player, and if the table is off, it tells you why, like missing chips or a missed rebuy. Once it says balanced, you tap finish and settle, and send the results with who owes who straight to the group chat. And when you set up the game, you pick which of those three money styles your group uses. It takes no bets, holds no money, and moves no money. It just keeps count. And the next day, on the settle tab, the person who paid taps I paid, and the person who got paid taps received, so nobody has to remember anything on Tuesday. Now, two kinds of games don't need all of this. Four friends playing for pennies only need a notebook, and a group that only plays tournaments pays once at the door. So, most of this never comes up. So, back to 10:30 with Dave standing up. This time, Mike's rebuys are on the sheet, Dave's chips get counted before the jacket goes on, and when the game ends, the count says balanced, and the group chat already knows who pays who. And what surprised me most going through all those comments is that nobody asked how to play the cards. Every single question was about the money. So, tell me in the comments, what are your stakes and your buy-in? And if you host, your first game in the app is free.