Poker Club at school

[Warder]

I'm attending the University of Pittsburgh in the fall and have had ideas about creating a poker club and getting funding from the university. I've been tossing a bunch of things around for the club like doing book discussions and such and obviously playing a few times a week, keeping a point system for the top 3 placers in each game.Then have a reward for the top 2 point holders, such as a free book purchase.

What do you guys think about this and do any of you have any good ideas for this? I'm just trying to find a group of guys that are serious about playing, and as we all know poker can be a pretty overwhelming task to go through by yourself. Any ideas that you guys can come up with for this would be greatly appreciated.

[SCfuji]

the only way the school will support you is if you make it some sort of charity club where you guys give stuff to local elementary schools, YMCAs, etc. i doubt that they would give you any funding so that you and your friends can gamble.

[bobbyi]

When I was in college, my friends and I founded the Harvard Poker Society. We would meet and have poker discussions similar to those on twoplustwo. In particular, someone would bring in a hand they had played that they had typed up and they would distribute copies of it to everyone (usually sending them out before the meeting so that people could think about the hand in advance) and we would dissect the hand for as long as it took. We would often spend almost an hour on one hand. We would discuss what other choices were available for each decision point and why they might be better or worse. We would talk about what our opponent appeared to have at each point in the hand and what he probably put us on. We would do lots of EV calculations on the whiteboard for various plays. We would ask questions like "what percentage of the time does an opponent need to fold to a raise here for it to be correct?" and then each guess the answer before calculating it so that we could develop our intuitions for that sort of thing. Also, sometimes someone would prepare a short presentation on a topic. For example, I once gave a talk about the differences between stud and holdem. We also had an email discussion list so that people could send out questions like requests for book recommendations.

I found it very helpful. However, this was pre-"boom", so we were able to get a group consisting exclusively of serious decicated poker players. I don't know if nowadays you are going to get lots of WPT-watching clueless kids who will drag down your discussions. We found it helpful to separate the official organization, which was a discssuion group, from our playing as much as possible, but it sounds like you are integrating discussion and play, so that will be somewhat different.

[admiralfluff]

At my school the Applied Math department had a full credit poker course this semester.

[Lurker4]

wow, that's pretty cool. Is this thing still around?

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]
wow, that's pretty cool. Is this thing still around?

[/ QUOTE ]
No, it died when we graduated. We didn't recruit enough underclassmen.

[Warder]

Ok guys... thanks for all the feedback. Here's what I've come up with so far....

First of all I plan to have Weekly Club exclusive single table tournaments where the top 3 places accumulate a point total. Also, for showing up to meetings members will also get points. Then at the end of the month the person with the highest point total will get the next book purchased for them with the University funding money. No prizes will be giving for these tournaments. Also, once we get established I plan on having large open tournaments donating 10-15% to charity, 5-10% going back into the club and the rest being paid out accordingly. As far as the discussion part of the club goes, I think a good idea would be to have each person submit 1 hand history to me during each meeting and then I will type them up and make copies for everybody and then hand them out at the following meeting.... almost treating these as homework. Points will also be awarded for completing the hand history sheet. The larger part of the club will focus on book discussion. And I would like to make odds memorization of common situations mandatory. As far as asking for university funding goes, none will be used as a payout. I plan on putting this money toward Hoodies, shirts, hats, chips, and cards. Also I plan to have a fully functional website up in the fall with blog space for all of the club members.

Tell me what you think about my ideas so far and anything else you can come up with will be a big help. Thanks a lot
Mike

[tminus]

I goto school in Boston and belong to two poker clubs, both of which are open to any local college students. The college sponsors it through the student activities office by purchasing chips, paying other students to deal, and buying the prizes ($100 gift certificates to Bestbuy, etc).

There's no book talk, we just get together and play tournaments. Half of the players know very little about the game and about 15% are pretty good. Its a great environment to practice humility and patience as well as picking up tells.

[EStreet20]

Good idea in practice but I went to school in PA (University of Scranton class of '04) and I'll tell you that there's no way in hell your school would let you have your club tourney according to your plan because after the charity and club funding in order for your tourney to "pay out accordingly" as you said they would have to pay for an expensive gambling license that I doubt they'd go for and in PA laws such as illegal gambling and underage drinking are enforced like murder and stealing are enforced in normal states (no offense to PA residents). However good luck with the idea. It would be a great club.
Take care,
Matt from NJ

[Bellagibro]

Poker club sounds like a lot of drunkin fun.