My quick check of yahoo didn’t turn up any NL games. Maybe I missed em. Besides, if yahoo doesn’t raise the blinds regularly then it wouldn’t really work well. I don’t really have a preference about the way to keep score. Seems either way would work.
I checked ot Yahoo! and you can set up private tables for free, but as Kyyrewyyoae pointed out, its for limit games only (boring). Since its not a real tournament game, you can play one hand and leave or play all night with the blinds staying the same and a low limit on your bets. The biggest problem is since the money gets carried over from game to game (and how much money a player has in his account is the only way to keep track of how someone’s doing in non-tournament style play), what if someone plays in a non Doper game? Keeping track of how each player is doing in Doper games will be impossible.
I don’t know if Wrenchslinger, CapnPitt and Aesiron are still having technical problems with the software, but if we don’t have nine players by Thursday night, we’ll just have to wait for non-doper play4funpoker members join the table and we’ll still keep rank for Dopers the way I pointed out in post #15.
Grrr.
I can’t fathom that this scenario is so damned hard to find. I feel like juggling the whole non-private table situation is going to be a big problem. And frankly, it takes the fun out of it for me if we start getting non-dopers filling the tables.
I hear ya Omniscient, it is a pain in the ass but I’ve looked everywhere for a place to play for free ( I even put up a $20 reward at Google answers ). If we have nine Dopers Thursday night (and we jump a table at the same time) I’m confident we won’t have any problems with non-Dopers at our table. Did you download the software yet? You can hop on a table and wait forever for anyone else to join. Its not teeming with members like the more popular poker rooms.
Nah, I won’t be d/ling it until later tonite when I get home from work.
Okay, I think I may have figured out a way to do this at Pokerroom.com as hightechburrito suggested. Pokerroom.com does offer private NL ring games for free. The two main problems are:
- Blinds don’t increase
- The millisecond the first two people are seated cards are dealt, so you can’t start off with a full table starting play at the same time
Solution to problem #1: When its time for blinds to be increased (by us keeping track of time or how many hands have been played) we do this: Everyone to the left of the big blind checks. When the option to bet gets to the small blind he increases his bet to the small blind we have chosen in advance (whether he wants to or not). Then the big blind increases his bet to the new big blind (whether he wants to or not). From there, the rest of the round is played normally. The only drawbacks are that we have to manually keep track of when blinds should increase ( not a big deal) and if anyone bets when he’s supposed to check, it kinda screws things up. IMing capabilities are included in the software so we can remind each other not to screw up and after playing for a bit, hopefully we will get used to the structure.
Solution to problem #2: Before each game two players are designated as the ones to be seated first. The cards will be dealt immediately. These two players do not bet on this hand. They will be playing for the blinds only. in the mean time while they drag this hand out a bit, the rest of us get seated. The blinds are $10 - $20, so one of the players will either be up $10 or $20 and the other will be down $10 or $20 after the round. Not really that big a deal since we are starting at $1000 (unlike Yahoo!, you can pick how much money you want to sit down with). In the next scheduled tournament, two different players will be chosen to have the disadvantage of being seated first and so on.
What do you guys think? The two advantages of Playing at Pokerroom.com as opposed to play4funpoker.com is that no non-dopers have a shot at sitting at our table and we don’t have to have an exact number of players. Tables at play4fun.com have to have either 5 or 9 players. We can have a game at Pokerroom.com with anywhere from 2 to 10 players. Of course the two disadvantages are listed avove.
You can sit at the PR table and load up your bankroll without “sitting in.” At least you can using the Java version (download is of course PC only). When you sit at the table, you’re cued to choose your bankroll amount. Once you select it, you have to click a separate button marked SIT IN before cards are dealt. As long as people wait until the table is full before sitting in, there shouldn’t be a problem.
If you decide to go with PR, let me know. Email’s in profile, PR ID is Otto4711.
Oh, another potential drawback though is that play money tables are raked. It’s only $1 per hand though so ultimately it should make no difference.
Yeah Otto, but even if we all click SIT IN at the exact same time, I’m sure the software will only recognize two people first.
My vote is with Pokerroom.com . I think the pros outweigh the cons. I doubt we’ll ever have the exact amount of players to fill 5 and 9 player tables and we’ll be able to play with Dopers only and never have to have anyone not get a seat. If we have 11 dopers that want to play, we’ can just reserve two tables and have 5 at one and 6 at another. We’ll just pick out of a hat who sits where.
A rake for play money? How retarted. Oh well. Like you said, its really not a big deal. It won’t give anyone an advantage or disadvantage, so its cool
Pokerroom sounds like an improvement. Good deal.
Okay, I’m excited, so I’m making an executive decision without waiting for any more votes. Pokerroom.com it is. 
Everyone please download the software and join. Everthing’s free. Don’t forget to make your username the same as your Straightdope user name. If its not available, just add some numbers to the end of it (I’m xrayvision88 and Otto is Otto4711. Let me know by 5:00 est Thursday if you’re in or out.
At 9:45 est. I will create a table and Pokerrom.com will name it xravision88’s HE. Log-in to the software between 9:45 and 9:55. In the upper left hand corner click on “lobby” and then click on “Account/Cashier (Website)”. Refill your play money and you should have $1000. Now you can close out of the website and go back to the software. Click on “Texas Hold’em (Play)” and in the upper right hand corner click on “Ring Games” not “Tournaments”. Scroll through the list of table names and double-click on the one titled “xravision88’s HE”. I’ll then accept you to join the table. You will then see the table. You will see the message “Click on any available seat to join the table” . Pick a seat (in future games we’ll use assigned seating). After you click on an empty seat you will see another message: “How much of your money ($1000.00) do you want to use at the table? (buy-in $100 to $1000)” Type in $1000. Then click a seat. You will then get a message that says “Click on SIT IN to be dealt in”. Do not do this. You will see these two options right below this message: “Auto Post Blind/Ante” and “Wait for Big Blind”, choose “Wait for Big Blind”.
At 10:00 I will click on “SIT IN” . The person to my immediate left should then do the same. The two of us will now be playing the first hand but not placing bets. Now everyone else can click on “SIT IN” and we’ll all be playing normally on the next hand.
I believe Pokerroom.com only lets you refill your account with play money every 24 hrs., so don’t play in any other games on Pokerrom.com or you won’t have a full $1000 for Thursday night’s tournament.
The blinds will start at $10 - $20 and we’ll increase the blinds manually (as I described in an earlier post) after every 10 hands played. You might want to print this post so you can follow the instructions.
I made a mistake on the above post. Instead of clicking on "“Texas Hold’em (Play)” click on “Private Tables”. If you don’t you’ll never find the table titled “xrayvision88’s HE”.
That was painless. I’m ready to go.
Haj
Just wanted to chime in to say that raising the blinds after 10 hands is WAY[sup]*[/sup] to fast. That means everyone only has one hand where they are the small blind, excepting the first player. A few suggestions for this.
-
Raise the blinds based on real time. Say on the first occasion where the button reaches first position after 20 minutes of playing we raise the blinds, follow suit after the next 20 minutes and so on.
-
Raise the blinds based on eliminations. They go up immediately after the fist person is eliminated and up again when the next is eliminated and so on. This is nice in that they are raised somewhat randomly, and it creates a situation where the blinds loosely mimic the size of the stacks (the average stack size obviously increases as players are eliminated).
-
Just wing it. This is what usually happens in my IRL games. We use the second option as our guideline, however if everyone is playing smart and conservatively and no one drops off for a long period of time, say 30 minutes, we raise it anyways. If two players drop off in quick succession we’ll only raise it once instead of twice. Basically its a composite of the two options outlined above.
If you would rather insist on a stricter per/hand strategy thats fine, but I’d definately make it a multiple of the number of players (upping it only after the big blind passes first position each time) and I’d say it should be like 3 times around the table at least. I don’t think we need to shoot for a turbo game here. If we’re upping the blind after the first 9 hands, that just means we started with the blinds too low.
Forgot to include my footnote:
[sup]* - This is every type of coding emphasis the MB provides, if there were more I’d use them too.[/sup]
I don’t think every ten hands is too fast at all. In a real tournament, do you think you’d get off ten hands before 20 minutes has gone by? No way. I don’t like yor suggestions #2 and #3 at all. Lets try it this way first and if we as a group think something could be improved we’ll work on it.
One man’s opinion, I guess.
Couple retorts, first if we do decide on a per/hand method it’s gotta be 9 hands, not ten. It’s unfair to give first position 2 cracks at the lowest blinds and everyone else one.
Second, in my experience playing online poker, 9 or 10 hands takes 10 minutes at most to play. We could easily be doing blinds of $80/$160 by the 30th minute of play, thats pretty high for a $1000 buy in. Since it’s fake money and we’re all playing the same rules, it’s not a big deal and we can do whatever though.
I’m with Omniscient on the blinds. In every HE tournament I’ve ever seen, it’s based on time.
Haj
ready to go. I agree about the blinds; if we raise them every half-hour or 45 min or so it should be just fine.