How do you keep your players informed of your home game schedule? (1 Viewer)

SPR

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I use a Facebook group page and a GroupMe thread to post a schedule of games. I’m wondering how everyone else her manages their game schedules. Do you send out an email when you are hosting a game? Or is it every Friday or Saturday night and your players just know when to show up?

I like Facebook and GroupMe because players can RSVP and that lets me know how many are intending on showing up. I give an RSVP bonus because my family schedule can get hectic and cleaning out my garage can take some time. So it helps to know how many to prepare for. Additionally with Covid, I want to make sure we get enough players to make it worth everyone’s while to play. Attendance is way down these days since we just started back up, we get 5-6 regulars now. Pre-Covid it was 12-18+ Players.

So those of you that host home leagues/ games, how do you post your schedules and keep you players informed of changes and upcoming games?
 
The Band app is great.. if you can get all your players to actually use it
 
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+1 on Facebook event, I also text people the day before. I doubt I could get people to download anything else just for poker/craps games, but also curious what works for others
 
I use email to notify of the scheduled games, and signup genius to reserve the spots, as I am limited to 20.
 
Facebook group and text. Mostly text, since most of my friends don't actively check Facebook anymore.
 
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Moved over to evite and it's easy as pie. It sends out texts or emails (people don't need to have the app) and it lets everyone RSVP so you can keep track of a live self-managed list. You can cap how many people can RSVP yes, send reminders, etc.
 
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I am the psycho who built an entire POS terminal to handle the cash. The software I use in that terminal is called Unicenta. Unicenta gives me the ability to not only track player involvement, but will also let me send out a mass e-mail to my entire group of players (the ones smart enough to give me an e-mail address) informing them of dates and times. Included in that e-mail is my phone number, where people are told to text me their name and I put them on the list. Simple and Easy.
 
Before moving to FL, I used to use a Web site at www.VAholdem.com, with a lot of information, along with an email list. Some old pages can be seen at www.xhost.org.

I used evite for special (i.e., non-weekly) events.

Down here, I just play in other people's games or go to the local (ex-) dog track. All the locals want to play micro-stakes wild card games. :mad:
 
Mass text. Which is fine, first burst is the same 1/2 dozen, which would give us 8 at 100% attendance. As they drop off, go down the list.
 
Group text messages. First message goes out to those who played in the last game. If there is availability after that, I go to the generally more reliable players with the next group message to fill in the gaps.
 
Email, calendar appointment sent to those attending.

Edit: I forgot about Evite and that worked, save for the folks that RSVP’d yes and didn’t show. (They were removed from subsequent events.) I used that for tournaments, but I haven’t run one of those in ~14 years.
 
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The Band app is great.. if you can get all your players to actually use it
Ditto this. With my VT game I used Meetup but the Band app is more fully featured. And near as I can tell it's also free. The only advantage Meetup has is search engine advertising, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your stakes and location.

I just started using Band and anticipate having to pester individuals on occasion, but that's a small price to pay in my opinion.
Band also supports some interesting features, such as chat rooms..which might be handy for things like PCF meetups.
 
WhatsApp

It isnt the best, but everyone already has it installed and its more secure than FB etc.
 
Used groupme and Facebook. I would use groupme during the week to gain interest and the create the Facebook even Thursday for a Friday or Saturday game. I encouraged everyone to respond to the invite whether or not they're coming and explained that I just need to know if we'll have enough people and so that people's time isn't wasted driving to my house just to find out there's no game.

If one person is on the fence but sees there's already 5 people planning to come it might sway them to come too. We played almost every week and about 8 months until I had to move.
 
Google Groups email list.

I've used RSVP apps in the past and probably should try it again when we start live games back up, but to date people just reply to the email to RSVP.
 
I'm thinking of setting up a Discord server when games start up again. Plus you can setup different channels for different hosts and pin important messages or links to make them easy to find.
 
Super easy to use and sends alerts for games directly to their phone. But no my players won’t download a damn thing so I have to do a text blast

I'm in the same boat. My players don't want to download any additional apps. Plus some are IPhone/ Android & Blackberry. Some apps just didn't do all 3. Quite a few were not techy enough to use discord during quarantine when we were playing online.

I have to resort to text blasts as well. Every 2nd Sunday for tourney season. Text 2 days out to confirm who's coming. Text 2 hours before to remind the guys cause they're old and forgetful lol.

But I just finally gave in and downloaded FB Messenger last week. Will give the "events" a shot for tourneys and cash games.
 
Texts, but it sucks! From reading this, going to try evite or SignupGenius and send out the link to the same group that came last time, then "go down the list" with the link until it's a 10 person tourney.

GroupMe rules and I've used it in the past. Great that it works with the lamers who are too crusty to install a new app. However it'd be tricky to manage the invite list with this.
 

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