I am looking to find the easiest way to create a table at lunch for. number of players to sit around the table and play together. Is there any mechanism to create a private table? I honestly am not good enough to just play anyone, and a lot of the fun is sitting around together, eating and talking smack about the current game being played without the mess of cleaning up the cards.
So succinctly: How do you create a table to just play against the friends you want to?
Best thing is to make a new table, fill the other player spaces with bots and don't press "ready" until your friends arrive, then kick the bots and let them on the table - be sure to allow spectators so they can join the table. There's no mechanism for private tables yet.
All the best
Tim
At the moment a private table is not possible. The answers in the giant feedback thread may influence if that will change.
How to do it anyway: Make sure that you mark each other as friends in the game. Then sombody (the host, whose card selection will be used) has to start a table ("New Table", then "Create Table", make sure to adjust the max player count). Then all that player's friends see that player in the Matching tab, where they can join the game (first as spectators, then as players). If somebody else joins in the meantime, the host can kick them off the table, maybe with a short explanation before ("Waiting for friends").
The option with the bots (as explained by blamelewis) would be another way.
If you have more questions, feel free to ask.
You can make a privite table by setting both min and max relative rating to 0. Then kick all non-friends. Friends ignore relative rating, so they can join.