[pfapfap]

Yay, finally some positive feedback! Tho' to be fair, I went a bit gung ho crazy with the first post. I think most can see that my next "phase" isn't really that big of a deal.

Yes, I bring in players from a variety of sources. These people would not be able to play each other anywhere else.


How I Built My Game:

I grew it somewhat quickly, but didn't try to go meteoric too soon. First I gathered a few friends, only a couple of whom played poker with any sort of skill, for a BBQ and $10 cash game. Kept that up for a couple of weeks and then I tapped my other games. I had been building the network of games for a couple of years (tho' without the intent of starting my own), but I wanted to at least have something "established" at my house before inviting them.

My regular game was at a biker clubhouse, and it just so happened that some newer cash-filled poker enthusiasts showed up the first time I spread the word about my new game, so that was an immediate boost, and in fact they play my game more than at the bikers. A couple of the other regulars also make frequent appearances.

I had an occasional game with two other groups... one, a bunch of UC Berkeley grad students. The other, a game in the back room of a restaurant/bar. I pretty much absorbed both of those games, and they were instrumental in getting this one off the ground.

I also posted to one of those meetup sites, which I won't do again. The few folks I got from it are nice enough, just nothing really in common with me other than poker. I posted to craigslist, which I won't do again for security reasons, and because it attracted some of the best players we have. But those players are all great people and share many of my other interests and hobbies. I did structure my post in a way so that the sort of people I wanted to attract would recognize it, and I filtered people based on how I felt about their responses.

Basically now I just have the people I like invite friends of theirs, tho' I've had to cut that out a lot lately due to lack of space. I got very lucky that I hit a good combination of people right from the start, people who appreciate what I do (as many of them have hosted and stopped because of the headaches) and want to keep it alive.

Okay, so that's building the player database, but how did I attract and keep them? I started with a lot of tournaments, usually every two or three weeks. Food, booze, custom TD software, league tracking, big flashy payouts, etc. People like tournaments, so I viewed them as advertisement for the cash games. It was a safe environment with a fixed price to get comfortable with all these new people. Now that we know each other, the cash games also run quite well, and the tournaments are monthly. And I was also lucky that the friend who owns the catering company donated a full table, chairs, and booze/food to that first tourney. He also occasionally stops by with leftovers during the cash games, and lemme tell ya, people REALLY enjoy those nights. Newer people are usually floored when it happens. But back to the tournaments, I also spent several months tweaking the structure to get the proper mix of playability/time, and to generate a huge prize pool due to unlimited rebuys for two hours (plus addon after that). Boil a frog slowly, they always say.

I also try to make all of my guests feel comfortable and appreciated. I welcome them to the game, I'm cognizant of their tastes and desires, I try to be the right mix of fair and flexible, I listen to their concerns, I walk them out when they bust and let them whine at me, etc. I always have booze, I play good music on a nice system, I have warm lighting. I make the tournaments an "event" and give funny little writeups afterwards. I shmooze. Nice tables, good cards, decent chips. And, most importantly, Rule #1: No A-holes. I've kicked people out and given others vacations, and I'll do it again. The needs of the many.

And... location location location. The room is kickass, and it's separated from the house, so we can go into the wee hours (dawn has happened a couple of times). It also allows for people who lose to sort of fade into the night rather than have that walk to the door, and I suspect that's a factor in their comfort. We're also a few blocks from the BART, close to the highway, and between several major "hubs" of the area. In fact, this place is so great, I fear the game will suffer when we move, so I have to be very careful about picking the next space.

As to the stakes, I've been increasing those slowly so as not to push people away. We started with $10 10c/25c, moved up to $20 25c/50c, then $40 25c/50c, now we have that game and a $100 .5/1. I try not to make those with a smaller budget feel unwelcome or ostracized, as they're some of my favorite people, but I want the stakes to increase as my own skill/bankroll does. I also do occasional other games, such as dealer's choice if enough want to on the third table, and different sorts of off-week S&Gs (PLO, HORSE, etc), but it's been a while since one of those (which is why I want the weekly tourney series).

So yeah, that's enough masturbatory dribble about how much my game r0xx0rz. But hey, you asked, and I'm rather proud of what I've been able to do here. I've always wanted to improve my other games, but I've never been the host. It's a nice sort of validation to have all my ideas actually work. It's a lot of little things, and the whole is greater than the sum. It's a lot of effort (I spend usually 4-6 hours prep time before tourneys), but very much worthwhile.

And holy cripes, lemme tell ya, the networking has been amazing. And I'm not the type of guy who is good at that. Someone even told me the other day that I have more power than I realize, and a reason people like my game is that they respect that I have everybody's best interests in mind while juggling all that needs to be done.