I had my first late cancel - dude calls me like 1 hour before game time, he lives probably 40/45 minutes away, saying he started a new diet and he's wiped out and can't leave his house. Oh man...are you serious!? I gave him grief but couldn't get him to budge on it. Kiss your next invite goodbye bub! LOL.
For structured events like this, it should be BDTCF - please don't attend if you are bleeding, dying, throwing up, have SARS-CoV-2, or a family emergency (death or unexpected hospital visit)! Otherwise, a 1 hour notice is just the worst evil!
Anyways, I was at 8, that was going to knock me down to 7. But my neighbor, who had ghosted me for a long time on this game which pissed me off to no end, saw all the cars pulling up, and I hit him up via text once more when people started showing, and he was like "let me do the dishes and I'll come play"...he was like 1 minute late to the start, but no worries, so we played 8-handed. The game didn't have the energy of the first one - the first game had 9 players and 1 observer, and no one had hung out for a while together due to SARS-CoV-2. But I think most people still had a good time, I know I did. I ended up in 5th after losing a flip of AK vs 66. I thought I had more fold equity since I had been pretty card dead and nitty the entire game - that call of my all-in with 66 was either genius (pushing a ~4% edge) or donkey, LOL.
For the next game I'm going to try to pull in 3 other friends I know and fill up from there. I think the group of 3 will make it but I don't think they'll be regulars. But so far I've been surprised at those who have made every game (of 2) and those who noped - not fully who I expected. But in July I expect it to be hard to pull together a full game like it was in June, so yeah, we'll see. A lot of people I hit for June were allegedly interested but had other plans so I think I'll be able to hit 9 for July. I'm also switching to a spam approach...going to notify the reg.s a little early, then slam the invite to like 15, maybe 18, maybe 20 people with the caveat - first 9 to respond are in! Others are welcome to be backups and come hang out. It's been too draining trying to individually pull 8 others, or really fill the seats after the initial 8/9 ghost until the last minute then 2/3 "no". Others have recommended this system so I'll certainly give it a shot!