Part of the ongoing fundraising my Relay for Life team did was a Poker tournament that we held today.
When I suggested it at the team meeting, I specifically pointed out that BJ's Oasis, a total shot & beer dive next to the Huff & Puff Cigarette Outlet would be the perfect place to host the game. Biker poker-runs stop there a couple of tims a year, playing poker for charity, so I can't see where they'd turn down a local Relay team wanting to have a poker tournament. Even our VP of Operations grumbled about it being a booze-free game, on account of it being held in a damned Senior Center (and our turnout was hampered in no small part by their slow answer to whether we could even play there).
It was a $10 buy in, no rebuy, and we had the center for four hours. My suggestion was to let players knocked out rebuy, because that way the ACS gets more dough when someone gets a bad beat and decides they don't want to quit yet. But the time limit. Plus, smokers were running outside during breaks to get their nicotine, and they could have lit up while the game went on at a bar like the Oasis. Plus, the alcoholic constituency could have had frosty mugs of beer to cloud their judgment in the betting process.
And if you let them rebuy, the game could go until closing time when they get DUI's leaving the bar.
But it'd been about ten years since I played Hold 'Em with people instead of a computer. I even forgot which way to hand the cut when I was the dealer. Prior to the event, Grasshopper printedout hierarchy cards for poker, in order of strength of hand. For years, I'd thought a flush beat a full house, and you can imagine (if you want to) what that did for my betting...
I succeded in my goal not to be the fist employee to go out. The VP who plays poker for real money and makes money at it got knocked out ahead of me, and he's no doubt the best player who showed. And when I thought I'd convinced Grasshopper I was such a moron I could bluff him out of a hand, he called me, thinking I actually had a flush like he did but with a lower kicker. And I was out.
I also learned, during the game, that some of my coworkers have a 'pitch & bitch' game going with a $20 buy-in. Now I'll just have to trick them into forgetting that they get totally enough of me at work so they'll invite me to come play...
The other thing I wasn't used to was a progressive upping of the blind. At a poker club where games go on night and day, it would be counter-productive (as would the inability to rebuy). Every half hour, the blind and small blind doubled up, so it became harder to fold crappy cards with only the blind out and stretch your chips.
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