Learn Texas Holdem

Question: Thought I would share this idea with your viewers. I host many tournaments and play a lot at casinos and online. Recently my wife started playing and we were trying to come up with a social event that we could both partake in related to hold'em. The problem with the tournaments I hold is that these are usually 4+ table events and I hardly see my wife throughout the night at one of these. As you know there are pool leagues, dart leagues, bowling leagues, etc. Well we came up with a poker league. The way it works is this.

- 5 couples (10 people - 1 table)

- 1 night each week for 5 weeks (each week at a different couples place). We do a pot-luck dinner with the hosting couple serving the main course.

- League fees are $5 per person per week ($25 for the 5 week season). That gives us $250 in the pot at the end.

- The game is NL Hold'em tournament where you get 10,000 in chips for each league night game. Blinds raise every 15 minutes (sometimes we play 2 of these a night and gather another $5 from each player - this just makes the ending pot bigger).

- 1st place gets 10 points and 10th place gets 1 point. Total your points at the end. Max points, if you got first each week, would be 50 and least would be 5

- On week 6 we play a tournament of champions with all 10 players. We are not at this point yet in our first season, so we have not decided if this will be a winner take all (probably) or pay out to 3rd place or even all the way to 10th getting something like $5. Anyway, on week 6 you get 5,000 in chips plus 1,000 chips for each point you have. So the most chips anyone can start this tournament with is 55,000 and the least is 10,000. We are thinking for this one we would start at a 100/200 game with a 50 ante and continue to increase the ante as each blind increases making the ante always 1/2 of the small blind. One the regular league games the ante would not start until around round 4 or 5.

We are having fun with this and it is getting all of us "poker buddies" to do social events with our spouses and the added bonus is that we get to play poker at least once a week. ;-)

For me personally the money means nothing. I love the intellectual challenge of this game, however, I know that without a goal or vested interest people do not take it serious enough. Don't get me wrong, there is still a lot of loose calling going on as most of the spouses are just learning the game. With this structure it gives everyone a goal to work towards without completely killing ones opportunities to win it all at the last game (they just have to work a little harder is all).

Have fun with this,

Tom

Answer:

That's an excellent idea. Thanks for sending this in.