A private poker table online can bridge the gap between home games and playing yourself on the internet. Playing poker online is great fun and can be financially rewarding, but sometimes you miss the camaraderie of playing with your friends at a home poker game.

Well now you can use a table at one of the major online poker sites as your own private poker table and only allow players that youve invited yourself. OK its not quite the same as playing poker at home, but at least you can get to your bed afterwards without having to throw everybody out!

Party Poker now has a Private Table facility which you can set up very easily and be playing within ten minutes, heres how you do it.

1. Open your Party Poker client (thats the place where you play that you downloaded onto your computer) and click on the Options pull down-menu at the top, just under the Welcome to the PartyPoker.com Lobby message.

2. Click on the first item in the pull-down menu Create Private Tables. You will get a small pop-up form where you choose the type of game you want to play and the stakes or buy-in. You are also asked to create the password for your table. If you choose Texas Holdem and select the stakes option, for example $1/$2, you are playing a limit table. In this case the small blinds are $0.25 and the big blinds are $0.50. To get a no-limit Texas Holdem you must select one of the fixed price options, for example NL $25.

3. After you have completed the form you will then have 10 minutes to take your seats at the table. Heres the bit you need to watch out for how to find your poker table. To get to your table you need to use the panel on the far left of the client. It is in a directory tree type formation, divided into five sections Real Money, Party Poker Million, Sit & Go, Tournaments and Play Money each with their own subsections. You need to go to the top section Real Money and click on the small box with the + sign in it to expand the listing. From the list underneath select the game you signed up for; Texas Holdem, Omaha or 7 Card Stud and the amount of stakes that you selected in step 2. You will see your table in the list, it's called "YourName's pvt table 1", click on the table and join as you would normally do.

4. You play poker may the best player win!

Heres a couple of tips that you should bear in mind when setting up your private poker table.

You only have 10 minutes to get yourself and all of your friends to the table and start playing so make sure that you set a time for the game when everybody is available. Theres no point rushing around trying to get your friends to sign up in the 10 minutes you have after youve booked the table. Also make sure that they know the password and most importantly, how to find the table! Email them a copy of this article if you want or else provide clear instructions yourself as to how to get there.

If they cant find the table you wont be able to take their money off them!