Sometimes it’s nice to gamble with friends and family members in the comfort of your own home, isn’t it?
While going down to the casino is great and all, it can be expensive, and you have to think about things like transport, dress code, opening times, and all of that. When you gamble at home with your mates, it’s easy and breezy – you can just crack open the beers, order a pizza, and have some fun.
In this piece, we’re going to show you some of the most fun ways to gamble at home.
Play Poker
Let’s start with the obvious one, shall we? Playing poker at home requires nothing more than a deck of cards and some chips, or whatever you want to use as chips. If you don’t have a poker set, you can use coins, monopoly money, board game pieces, or even food as a substitute. However, you really should invest in a cheap poker set for home – they really do come in handy for any social event.
It’s probably best to play Texas Hold’em, but you can also play Omaha or 7 Card Stud at home. Unlike when you play online, you can decide on the stakes – from pennies to thousands, you make the rules. Lots of friendly games aren’t even played for real money.
One tip for home poker games is to enable players to buy back in. The last thing you want is your friends who aren’t too hot at poker to be sitting out for the rest of the night.
If you need some poker tips, we’ve got you covered. We’d also recommend downloading a poker hands chart for the uninitiated. Meanwhile, you can practice on the best poker sites to get a leg up on your buddies.
Play Red or Black
This is a super simple, fun card game which requires no gambling talent or skill. There are a few different ways to play it.
The point behind Red or Black is in its name. You shuffle a deck of cards, lay them face down, and the “player” has to guess whether the next card will be Red or Black. If he or she is correct, she either doubles her money or proceeds through to the next round, depending on how you are playing the game.
Some people add a twist into Red or Black by counting the suits. You have a one in four chance of guessing the suit right, so there has to be a bigger prize involved. For example, if wagering, guessing the suit right can win the player four times their stake (rather than double for guessing the color). If playing tournament-style, this could get the player through two rounds safely.
Play around with this game and have fun. There are lots of things you can do with it. Whatever you do, the key principle is the same – players must guess the characteristics of the down-facing cards. Gambling at home has never been so easy.
Play High Card Cut
Sticking with the easy games, for now, high card cut makes gambling at home so simple that even a child could do it.
You’ve seen a magician ask someone to cut a deck of cards, right? This game is based on the same idea. Every player gets one chance to cut the deck, and whoever cuts to the highest card wins the pot.
You can decide how much to bet here. Each player should throw $1 onto the table, to begin with, and see how that goes. You can then either up the stakes and play like high rollers, or draw back and play for pennies, depending on the mood of the room.
Play Blackjack at Home
Unlike poker, which is inherently a player vs player game, blackjack requires a dealer. How do you get around this? That’s easy – since the dealer has the advantage of the house edge, you should rotate the dealer throughout the game. Up to eight people can play blackjack at once, so just pick someone to act as the dealer first.
Before you begin playing, we recommend you take the time to brush up on blackjack rules. In fact, you can print our blackjack rules article and give it to all of your friends who are playing. It’s not a difficult game – the aim is simply to get the hand closest to 21 without going bust. That’s why it’s one of the best gambling card games to play at home.
Shoot Dice With Friends
If you really want to, you can play craps at home by buying a simple craps table from Amazon or somewhere like it. You don’t need to, though, because there are much simpler dice games to play at home.
A very simple variant would be to play with two dice and decide that whoever rolls the highest or lowest number wins. You can spice this up by making extra rules such that if someone rolls seven, everyone has to double their stake. If this happens once or twice, it can really make for relatively large pots and get everyone’s juices flowing.
Dice games are some of the most fun ways to gamble at home. You can even play these games with your kids for fun, although it probably isn’t a great idea to teach them to gamble. Just sayin’!
Play Three-Card Monte
Now, we’re not advocating that you scam your friends. This card game is a common street hustle, but you can play it legitimately as well – fair and square.
Much like blackjack, you’ll have to appoint a dealer to make this game function. There should be three cards face down, one of which should be a queen. The dealer needs to mix the cards up, and the player needs to pick which card is the queen.
The better the dealer is at mixing cards, the greater their advantage will be. Make sure you give everyone a fair chance and rotate the dealer often. Also, only one player should go up against the dealer at a time, so they don’t get wiped out if everyone guesses correctly.
Wager on Football or Other Sports
Yes, it’s obvious, but the art of the friendly wager seems to have been forgotten in today’s world. With everyone hooked on their mobile phones, betting at online bookmakers has taken over.
However, you can make things much more interesting than a simple wager on who will win. You can set your own in-play bets such as whether or not someone will score a penalty kick, provided you can act fast enough and find a friend to take your bet.
There are also fun betting games such as windows. To play this game, each play is assigned a period of time (say 9 minutes in the first half of a soccer game if there are five players). Everyone throws in $1, or whatever denomination you want to bet, and if a goal is scored during that time window, the player takes the pot. If not, the bets are returned at the end of the window.
There are all sorts of ways to bet at home with friends. Get creative, but make sure it remains fun and don’t bet so much that it would ruin a friendship.
Pitch Quarters
It’s been around since we were kids on the playground, and it’s still one of the most fun ways to gamble with friends.
Pitching quarters is simple: you both toss a quarter at a wall, and whoever gets closest to the wall wins both quarters. This gets even more fun when multiple players are involved.
It’s wise to appoint someone as a referee on every bet. It’s amazing how heated grown adults can get about a few millimeters and a dollar or two in change.
Play eSports Together
eSports is the new kid in town when it comes to online gambling, and it’s a fantastic way to gamble at home with your video-gamer friends. In fact, if you play video games, we’d be surprised if you haven’t already done this at some stage.
Yes, it’s as simple as wagering on the outcome of video games. You can beat the heck out of each other while playing Street Fighter, can try to eliminate the opposing team in a MOBA game, or can have a FIFA tournament, whatever takes your fancy.
Since you’ll be using a gaming console or two to do this, you also have the option of playing against other players as a team. There are a few eSports betting sites which allow you to place real-money wagers against other players. However, it’s more fun, and much easier if you go against each other.
Play Casino Games Online Together
To do this, you’ll need to have an online casino account and ideally a widescreen TV, although a decent computer monitor could do the trick.
The idea is to hook into a real money casino and play against live dealers. Someone will have to fund the account, and you can either split the winnings at the end of it all, or you can have a few main bettors and lots of side bets with players wagering against each other.
For example, the main account holder and a few people who have chipped in could play against the dealer, while some other players may prefer to bet against each other on whether to roulette wheel will stop on red or black.
There are a lot of different ways to do this, but the point is simple – play real money casino games at home with your friends.