PokerStars has a “Home Games” section where you can set up a club and invite people to join. It’s all for play money, there’s no cost whatsoever. I already have such a club that I’ve been running for a couple years, but I’d be glad to set one up for us.
I figured we could play weekly, like Wednesdays or Fridays. Once you’ve been playing awhile, the site makes a leaderboard so even though you’re not playing for any “real stakes”, you have the incentive of trying to get to #1, just like if you play a tennis ladder or racquetball league or whatever.
i couldnt do every week, but…
No commitment! Play when you want to. If a couple more people express interest, I’ll create it and share a link.
Any time frame on Wednesdays or Fridays? Or just like an all day, join when you want type of thing?
I think we’d need a set time. 7 or 8 Eastern time would probably make the most sense. That’s a little early for people on the West Coast, but it’s hard to start much later than that for the sake of people in the East.
Potentially if the time suits me (I’m in London UK). If you set something up I will join if I can - though using play money makes for a different game.
Anyway, I’ll watch this thread!
London is tough, unless you are quite the night owl like I am. 
I have seen other poker players resistant to play for play money when my friends and I were recruiting players for our Facebook game. I find this a little strange, since people play plenty of other games very competitively without money on the line.
One thing I should make clear: we won’t be doing play money “cash games” (ring games), which I agree are ridiculous. If you can just go all in, get “felted” (lose all your chips), then click a button to get a new stack with no consequences, it becomes a farce. But by playing a SNG (sit-and-go, a small tournament where the blinds steadily increase and there is ultimately a single winner), you’re not going to consistently win or “cash”* unless you play solid poker and avoid heedlessly throwing chips around on wild gambits that have little chance of succeeding.
*Again, not real money–but this is the terminology for the people who get awarded points for coming in second or third or further down, depending on how many people played the SNG.
I am very much a night owl but let’s see what sort of times you play at…
People do play differently when it’s play money but that’s okay - it’s just as fun.
As long as you agree it’s still fun!
When I said 7 or 8 Eastern, I misspoke: I meant 7 or 8 Central, which is my time zone. 7 Eastern would be 4 on the West Coast, which is too early. So 8 or 9 Eastern makes more sense to me, which would be 1 or 2 a.m. in London. Does that sound feasible to you?
I might drop in a time or two. I used to have PokerStars - I’m sure I still have a login there.
Note - I signed up with WPT Poker on line recently but I didn’t like it because every hand is timed, like 30 seconds per, I think. It’s not enough time to think things through. It’s just all gun-slinging.
PokerStars has sped up their time-to-act recently, which is kind of annoying–but hopefully it’s not as extreme (and there’s always a time bank for when you have a really tough decision).
Seems like we have enough interest to get started. Would I be violating some sort of copyright if I called the club “The Teeming Millions”? (I momentarily got that name wrong and almost wrote “Teeming Masses”–maybe that would be better, to be sure to keep it kosher?)
What about the Memeing Tillions?
Haha, I love this! Sold.
ETA: Is it by design that the board deletes quoted material if it’s from the post directly above yours? Bug or feature?
In very rudimentary testing, it doesn’t seem like the quoting works if you quote the whole post. So I’ve been leaving off the last punctuation mark.
That’s pretty late considering the game would last two or three hours but you all just carry on and I’ll join if and when I can. 
Ahhh. Thanks for the tip! I applied it here.
I understand. We’ll see you when we see you, as my mom says. 
All righty, here are the instructions to join the Memeing Tillions poker club! I basically copy/pasted the ones someone wrote for the other one I belong to, and changed them as needed to fit ours:
- To participate in PokerStars Home Games, you must use a computer.
PokerStars is available for mobile but the mobile versions don’t
support Home Games.
- Visit pokerstars.com and download and install it.
- Run it, and set up your account (you’ll need to pick a username and
a password).
- Visit the cashier (button on top somewhere), click “play money”,
then click “collect” - this increases the amount of play money chips
in your account by 15,000, and you can do this every 4 hours. You can also buy play money chips for as little as $3, but if you collect your free allotment a few times a week you’ll never need to buy chips.
- Find the “Home Games” button on the bar on the right side of the
app (you may need to click “More” first)
- “Join a poker club”, and use club ID 3654860 and invitation code
Ignorance fought (and your SDMB name, so I know before approving your membership that it’s not just some random who found this online). I typed in this invitation code with capital I and lowercase f, so that’s probably how you should type it.
- Agree with the terms and conditions, and wait to be approved.
- Once approved, open the club lobby, click the schedule tab, find
the game in the list, and register and play!
(There aren’t any games listed in the schedule yet, because we need to decide on a day.)
ETA: Pokerstars says they need up to five days to approve the name of the club (I can’t foresee any problems there, while something like “Dopers” might have been seen as objectionable), so in the meantime it will just be designated by its club code.
ETA2: I just realized it is Friday night right now. Do we want to hurry up and start a game, or is it too last minute?
I just joined. thanks for the detailed instructions!
You bet!
What the heck, I’ll schedule one for tonight to start at 10 Eastern. If it’s just you, we can play some HU. If neither you nor anyone else can make it, it will just automatically expire, no harm no foul.