I started watching the WSOP Main Event in the early 2000's. My cousin's buddy introduced the game to him in 2007 while on leave from Iraq. None of us were deeply familiar with hold-em. He encouraged his circle of friends and co-workers to invite people they knew to his house for a game. Initially, we played a weekly winner take all $10 tournament for $20 in chips. Thus, each player received 40 big blinds.
We typically had around around a dozen players on two tables. The game evolved due to the increasing number of re-buys and the duration it took to complete. He doubled the blinds for every two players eliminated, from .25/.50 to $.50/$1, $1/$2, $2/$4, to a cap of $3/$6, which he later changed to $4/$8. (Side note: We thought we were high rollers playing $4/$8.)
You could re-buy-in without penalty until the final table, at which point you had to pay the full $20 for 10BB's.
Eddie was the
scrub donkey in our group. He would keep buying in after the blinds hit $2/$4.
My cousin later modified the pay-out structure to include $50 for second place. First, normally paid around $300. Not too shabby of a pay-out for the winner.
He did this for several months before nixing the tournament format in favor of cash. The tournament was becoming a little too bit chaotic and some of the players who ran deep felt sour or grew tired of going home empty. The popularity of the game exploded. My cousin ran two full tables twice a week for two years. Fixed buy-in/re-buys of $20. There would be around $650 on each of the tables mid way through the night. Not all of the winning players would stay for the final table. They preferred cashing out ahead instead of putting the money they had won at risk against a tougher field. I remember thinking how $900 was a lot of money for a single table.
We had evenings where we were playing .50/.50 four handed with average chip stacks in excess of 400BB's. Sometimes we would get rid of the fracs and play $1/$1.
I can still recall the electric feeling I would get stepping into the room and hearing the hum of voices and the sound of chips in play, scanning the tables for an empty spot. That two year stretch ranks near the top in terms of enjoyment. I had a lot of fun times.
