Everyone who e-mails me (and myself) on Thursday before 8pm est., will have their name written on a plastic poker chip. I’ll pick these chips out of a hat and we’ll all be given random table/seat assignment. At 9:40pm est. I will invite everyone on my AIM buddy list “Dopers” into a private chat room. I’ll keep an eye on the list until 9:55 to invite in anyone who signs in to AIM after 9:40. If someone who reserved a seat doesn’t show up by 9:55, I’ll have to randomly make last minute seating adjustments. I’ll then post the table/seating assignments in the chatroom. Whoever is selected as having the old lady avatar will have the responsibility of creating a private table and being the first one to click SIT IN (only after everyone is seated). The player to the left of the old lady (the black guy) will be the second player to click SIT IN. These two will then be playing the b.s. round (without betting!) As soon as the rest of you see that they are dealt cards, click SIT IN also so that everyone is dealt cards on the next hand and the game is on. Remember, when you are looking for the correct table to sit at on the list of private tables, it will be named after the player who was chosen with having the old lady avatar at your table (we might have two or more tables if more than 10 dopers sign up).
Everyone should practice creating a private table. Near the upper left hand corner of the software is a tab labeled “PrivateTables”. Click that and then click “Create Private Table”. A small widow will appear. Make sure “Table Type” is “Texas Hod’em”. Directly under that, make sure “Play Money” is chosen. Change max number of player from 2 to 10. If there are less than 10 dopers assigned to your table, change it to that number. That way you won’t have non-dopers requesting to sit at the table once all the dopers are at the table. The table will be considered full. On the right side of the window scroll through the list titled “limit”. Click on “$10-$20 NL”. Make sure “Private” is highlighted and make sure “Normal” is highlighted. Click “Create” near the bottom. Two more windows will appear. One will be the one with the poker table and the other will be a small square window. If you don’t see it, it might be hiding under one of your open windows. The small square window is where you will accept players trying to gain entry to the table. Make sure “Manual” is highlighted. Under the title “Players” you’ll eventually see players names popping up trying to gain entry. Make sure you don’t accept any non-dopers (or dopers who aren’t supposed to sit at your table).
Here are the avatars starting at the 12 o’clock position and continuing clockwise:
old lady
black guy
blonde
tux
cowboy
red suspenders
red dress
baldie
loose tie
blue athletic jacket
My pokerroom account “xrayvision88” will not let me sign up to be real money enabled. Every time I try I get a message saying something like, “You already have a real money account with a different username” I get this message even when making up fake names, addresses, etc. So my new pokerroom ID is “xray88888”.
Well, at least the AOL IM worked great…I had the table take up about 75-80% on the left side of the screen and I had to shrink down my AIM to fit on the right, so I can see both concurrently. I know some comments were made on the pokerroom IM, but I think it would be better if we all stick to messaging on the AIM to keep it separated from the dealer commentary. Sometimes you can get to bogged down looking for Doper messages on both IMs.
Maybe have two tables set up with 20/40 until there is 4 or 5 players left on each table, then create a third (final) table and have all the remaining players move there and bump that table to 100/200, or some other amount (higher or lower), depending on the number of players that started in the beginning. AIM messaging will be a great help to accomplish this since we depended on it heavily at the beginning to get our act together.
Get on AIM and ask us what game we ended up in.
Other notes:
I did learn that “Ah, SNAP!” is A Good Thing[sub]TM[/sub].
Oh, and it wasn’t beginners luck…it was ALL skeeeeels!
Seems like way too much trouble and a lot of problems will arise. The number one problem being the b.s. round that the two first players to click SIT IN are forced to play. No one is going to want to give up $100 to another player. That’s one-tenth of the starting bankroll. Having it happen only once in the beginning with only $10 isn’t too bad. With people betting pretty big, having the blinds low aren’t a problem. As long as games don’t drone on for hours we’ll be okay. Let’s see how our first official Thursday goes.
Well, maybe the 100/200 is a little high, but doubling (20/40 or 25/50) shouldn’t be too much a hassle. Have the one of the money leaders (of the two tables) create the new game and he sits in with the other moneyleader from the other table to play the BS hand. No skin off those two players. At the end of the game last night, Gabe was folding alot of hands on the cheap. I’m not pissed off about that, but there should be a little more action than that, and he’ll have to start playing some of those hands next time or run out of chips sooner. When I started bumping my initial bets to around 100 preflop…to generate some action, he folded cheaply many times over.
Gabe, I’m not complaining about your play, just that the relatively low blinds between us afforded you the opportunity to just wait for a killer hand with negligable consequences. Anyone else in you position would have done the same. I think you had about 3 or 4K, so you were able to milk it for a while looking for an “ALL-IN” hand. I think bumping up the blinds should an option in multi-table games. I don’t think it would be too hard. Just an observation I made when it came down to the final 2.
As for a one table game, then yeah, I guess it is kind of a hassle to make a new game just to bump the blinds.
The level of the blinds afforded everyone the opportunity to wait for killer hands if they wanted to, not just Gabe. But guess what? The game was still over in an hour and a half. Alot of people thought they had killer hands early in the game and it wasn’t long before players were eliminated.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if there was a workable solution to having the blinds increased. Creating another table and disrupting the flow of the game seems like such a pain in the ass. You guys just wanna start off at 25/50 next time? If you guys want to go with Yeticus Rex’s idea, that’s fine by me. We’ll have a lot of little little details to iron out though.
Lets have a vote. Majority rules. One blind limit the entire game or table change?
X-Ray, I meant that when it’s time to combine tables in a multi-table game and we combine the remaining players, then jump the blinds. I guess I’m already making plans for more players coming and it would be great to accomodate all.
One more thing. $1000 really isn’t alot of money even with 10/20 blinds, especially on-line where the action is fast. It didn’t take more than a few minutes for most of us to be up or down $200.
Hmm, it might not be a bad idea with multiple tables. I guess I should have read your post better. So maybe when there’s three players left at each table, put them all at one table with higher blinds?
How do we tally rank this way when some weeks there might only be one table?
Yes, either take 2-5% of the average amount and make the big blind as close to it as possible.
Report who dropped out on AIM so everybody knows, regardless which table they’re on. We’ll also be linked that way so we will know when to merge tables.
We also have the option of utilizing PR’s Pokah! forum for communications. I created a private group called Straight Dope for our use, and along with that comes private message boards and the ability to send broadcast messages to all other group members. If you’re interested in signing up, go here. xray, you’ll need to sign up again under your new PR name.
Also, if anyone who hasn’t already signed up for a PR account is looking for extra play money to start and, if you decide to deposit, a $25 real money bonus, please email me before you sign up and I can send you a referral.
You know that little problem we have with the two first players having to play the first round? How about the first two players play the first two rounds and that way the chip count evens out? Well, almost evens out. They’ll both be down $1 because of the rake. But this would solve our biggest problem of what happens if we decide to change tables to up the blinds.
The blinds we can choose from are 10/20, 25/50/, 50/100 and 100/200.
Another problem with changing tables:
There’s no way to stop the dealing, so to quit a table the big and small blinds will have to sacrifice their blinds. I’m thinking we should just play the way we played last Thursday again. I doubt we’ll get more than ten players anyway.
If people coordinate then it can be done. When it’s time for the table change, play one more hand and while the hand is in play everyone at the table clicks SIT OUT. As long as everyone at the table does it while the hand is in play then there will be no next hand dealt.
Everyone clicks SIT OUT, including the big and small blind. They lose their blinds. On top of that, like you said, its complicated. Remember on Thursday when when just two people were supposed to click SIT IN to start the game and that didn’t go right? Then someone started betting on that round. We gotta try to keep it as simple as possible.
