skootz
Sitting Out
Hey everyone, I've lurked here for a few years and it's been a super valuable resource to help me get my poker club up and started, so I figured I'd share a little bit with you about our club and always welcome suggestions! We are going into our 10th season next week over the course of about 4 years and we have grown from just a few guys playing poker with no knowledge to having players travel around to various tournaments, even cashing in some, and I just got back from playing in my first WSOP tournament in Las Vegas (didn't go well, but that's another story).
Long story, short on our club formation - a friend of mine and I used to host a radio show, it got cancelled, and some of our listeners were looking at ways to stay in touch. He suggested having a poker night, but I had never really played before. I had just bought a new house and thought I could entertain decently well, so we made the Primetime Poker Club (PTPC) and now it's been so much fun and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
PTPC Season Format
Length - Roughly 5 months
Games - 15 regular season games, at least 3 specialty games (more on that below)
Buy-in - Usually $30 with one $20 rebuy (but some formats vary)
Starting Stack - 20,000 (but some formats vary)
Number of nightly players - Typically between 10-14, as few as 8, as many as 18
Total number players in history - 45
Our season format is typically this:
Week 1 - Standard NLH (one $30 entry, one $20 rebuy before Level 9)
Week 2 - Deepstack NLH (one $30 entry, one $20 rebuy before the money bubble, start with 30k chips instead)
Week 3 - Standard
Week 4 - Rebuy NLH (one $30 entry, unlimited $20 rebuys before Level 9)
Week 5 - Standard
Week 6 - Knockout NLH (one $30 entry, unlimited $20 rebuys before Level 9, $10 from every entry/rebuy goes to a bounty on your head so every KO pays out regardless of if it's permanent or not)
Week 7 - Standard
Week 8 - Rebuy
Week 9 - Standard
Week 10 - Deepstack
Week 11 - Standard
Week 12 - Secret KO (one $40 entry, one $20 rebuy before money bubble, half of initial entry goes to one randomly chosen bounty that is a secret until the end of the night)
Week 13 - Standard
Week 14 - Rebuy
Week 15 - Standard
We keep to our standard game half of the time, but mix it up a bit too. It's all NLH, most people in the club don't like other formats, even though I personally love Omaha and wish we played it more, along with all kinds of weird formats I've seen here. We also always have a bounty that is chosen at random, but known going into the tournament. Only exceptions are the Secret KO where it's secret until the end and the Knockout games where everyone has a bounty.
Ranking Points for Season Events
1st - 10
2nd - 8
3rd - 7
4th - 6
5th - 5
6th - 4
7th - 3
8th - 2
9th and down - 1 (basically for showing up)
We only count the top 10 games for the season to make up for players who have to miss a week or two. We typically have 20-ish players participate in season games, with around 12-ish of those players playing at least 10 games.
We stay at one table and pay top 3 (50/30/20) if there are 10 or fewer people, and switch to two tables and pay top 4 (50/25/15/10) if there are 11 or more people.
We also have three "Major/Triple Crown" specialty events that are played every season and various "Minor" specialty events that are more based around holidays (like Christmas, Halloween, etc.) and may not always be in a season. These don't award points.
Money in the Bank (Major) - An event on Week 0 before the season where you play a fairly standard game, but the winner gets a "Money in the Bank" token that they can cash in at any point in the season to rebuy, even if they have used theirs for the night or rebuys are cut off. The only rule is you can't rebuy once we are in the money.
+1 Poker Prize Fight (Major) - In the middle of the season, we have a weekend event where every "member" of the club can bring a +1 to also play and they share a buy-in pool (3x total $30 buy-ins between the two of them), and the winner gets free entry into our end of season event, PokerMania.
PokerMania (Major) - This is a slightly higher buy-in, $50 with 2x $25 rebuys. We do it on a Sunday after our season and the top four players from the season get a small advantage. We use something called "blind chips" - every player gets one and it can be played for a big blind (typically saved for later bigger blinds). The top 4 get extra blind chips, starting with 4th getting 1 extra, 3rd getting 2 extra, 2nd gets 3 extra and the season champ gets 4 extra. We found a few loopholes people were using with the blind chips, but we just make a ruling so we know for next time and move on. It hasn't been an issue, but has led to some unique strategies from people.
Only one player has all three of the major event wins.
We also have minor events like these that only happen if the holiday hits during any given season:
Halloween Resurrection - Everyone dresses up and when you are KO'ed, you turn to a "zombie" and come back with a limited chip stack and bounty on your head.
Dirty Santa - Entry is a gift, and players pick gifts in the order they are knocked out and you can steal from players who finished worse than you.
Valentine's Day Couples Tag Team - Players are randomly paired up and play with one stack at the table, and can only talk to each other twice during a level (by using a discussion chip) until the final two pairings, then it's fair game to discuss each hand.
--
Some stats:
- 22 players have won a tournament
- 10 players have won 5+ tournaments
- 28 players have won money in a tournament
- We have played 165 "official" games (not counting some stuff we did during COVID while we waited out the storm) and 15 players have played at least 50 of those games
- We have 23 "members" (to get membership, you have to show up to 5 games in a row and be active in the club)
- While most games are my house, we have played official club games in multiple locations to change things up
We went from a cheap Amazon poker table, flimsy cheap chairs and the cheapest chips I could find on the internet to completely remodeling my poker room, getting a fancy BBO table, most of us getting fancy SecretLab chairs and multiple sets of custom chips from China.
From this...
To this!
I'd be happy to share any more information about the club or share other pictures if anyone wants them! Thanks for all the advice over the years, even if you didn't know you were giving it to me!
Long story, short on our club formation - a friend of mine and I used to host a radio show, it got cancelled, and some of our listeners were looking at ways to stay in touch. He suggested having a poker night, but I had never really played before. I had just bought a new house and thought I could entertain decently well, so we made the Primetime Poker Club (PTPC) and now it's been so much fun and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
PTPC Season Format
Length - Roughly 5 months
Games - 15 regular season games, at least 3 specialty games (more on that below)
Buy-in - Usually $30 with one $20 rebuy (but some formats vary)
Starting Stack - 20,000 (but some formats vary)
Number of nightly players - Typically between 10-14, as few as 8, as many as 18
Total number players in history - 45
Our season format is typically this:
Week 1 - Standard NLH (one $30 entry, one $20 rebuy before Level 9)
Week 2 - Deepstack NLH (one $30 entry, one $20 rebuy before the money bubble, start with 30k chips instead)
Week 3 - Standard
Week 4 - Rebuy NLH (one $30 entry, unlimited $20 rebuys before Level 9)
Week 5 - Standard
Week 6 - Knockout NLH (one $30 entry, unlimited $20 rebuys before Level 9, $10 from every entry/rebuy goes to a bounty on your head so every KO pays out regardless of if it's permanent or not)
Week 7 - Standard
Week 8 - Rebuy
Week 9 - Standard
Week 10 - Deepstack
Week 11 - Standard
Week 12 - Secret KO (one $40 entry, one $20 rebuy before money bubble, half of initial entry goes to one randomly chosen bounty that is a secret until the end of the night)
Week 13 - Standard
Week 14 - Rebuy
Week 15 - Standard
We keep to our standard game half of the time, but mix it up a bit too. It's all NLH, most people in the club don't like other formats, even though I personally love Omaha and wish we played it more, along with all kinds of weird formats I've seen here. We also always have a bounty that is chosen at random, but known going into the tournament. Only exceptions are the Secret KO where it's secret until the end and the Knockout games where everyone has a bounty.
Ranking Points for Season Events
1st - 10
2nd - 8
3rd - 7
4th - 6
5th - 5
6th - 4
7th - 3
8th - 2
9th and down - 1 (basically for showing up)
We only count the top 10 games for the season to make up for players who have to miss a week or two. We typically have 20-ish players participate in season games, with around 12-ish of those players playing at least 10 games.
We stay at one table and pay top 3 (50/30/20) if there are 10 or fewer people, and switch to two tables and pay top 4 (50/25/15/10) if there are 11 or more people.
We also have three "Major/Triple Crown" specialty events that are played every season and various "Minor" specialty events that are more based around holidays (like Christmas, Halloween, etc.) and may not always be in a season. These don't award points.
Money in the Bank (Major) - An event on Week 0 before the season where you play a fairly standard game, but the winner gets a "Money in the Bank" token that they can cash in at any point in the season to rebuy, even if they have used theirs for the night or rebuys are cut off. The only rule is you can't rebuy once we are in the money.
+1 Poker Prize Fight (Major) - In the middle of the season, we have a weekend event where every "member" of the club can bring a +1 to also play and they share a buy-in pool (3x total $30 buy-ins between the two of them), and the winner gets free entry into our end of season event, PokerMania.
PokerMania (Major) - This is a slightly higher buy-in, $50 with 2x $25 rebuys. We do it on a Sunday after our season and the top four players from the season get a small advantage. We use something called "blind chips" - every player gets one and it can be played for a big blind (typically saved for later bigger blinds). The top 4 get extra blind chips, starting with 4th getting 1 extra, 3rd getting 2 extra, 2nd gets 3 extra and the season champ gets 4 extra. We found a few loopholes people were using with the blind chips, but we just make a ruling so we know for next time and move on. It hasn't been an issue, but has led to some unique strategies from people.
Only one player has all three of the major event wins.
We also have minor events like these that only happen if the holiday hits during any given season:
Halloween Resurrection - Everyone dresses up and when you are KO'ed, you turn to a "zombie" and come back with a limited chip stack and bounty on your head.
Dirty Santa - Entry is a gift, and players pick gifts in the order they are knocked out and you can steal from players who finished worse than you.
Valentine's Day Couples Tag Team - Players are randomly paired up and play with one stack at the table, and can only talk to each other twice during a level (by using a discussion chip) until the final two pairings, then it's fair game to discuss each hand.
--
Some stats:
- 22 players have won a tournament
- 10 players have won 5+ tournaments
- 28 players have won money in a tournament
- We have played 165 "official" games (not counting some stuff we did during COVID while we waited out the storm) and 15 players have played at least 50 of those games
- We have 23 "members" (to get membership, you have to show up to 5 games in a row and be active in the club)
- While most games are my house, we have played official club games in multiple locations to change things up
We went from a cheap Amazon poker table, flimsy cheap chairs and the cheapest chips I could find on the internet to completely remodeling my poker room, getting a fancy BBO table, most of us getting fancy SecretLab chairs and multiple sets of custom chips from China.
From this...
To this!
I'd be happy to share any more information about the club or share other pictures if anyone wants them! Thanks for all the advice over the years, even if you didn't know you were giving it to me!
Congrats !
