The Story of Logan and his Poker Game

[Key West]

Jim plays cards. That's what he does; it's who he is. Sure, he's got a day job to pay the bills, and he has some real estate investments to plan for the future. He's no fool, but he is a gambler. He's a risk-taker, but he only plays when he has the edge. He's read and re-read more than 30 books on poker and gambling and has been honing his skills for over five years. His wife, Sarah, is the best woman he could ask for. She supports everything he does, takes care of the house and even works full time to help cover the bills until it's time to start a family. (And after nearly five years of marriage, it's getting to be about that time.)

He's been running a game at his new house for the last year or so, just playing on Saturdays, keeping a regular crew of players coming in and out during various seasons. Billy, Mike, Greg, "Skully," Cole, Gary, Dougy, Jason, Workman, Jeff, Scott, Eric, Steve, Fran, Julie, Christina, "Spoony," Beth, "Nutless," and Paul make up the main group of folks who can always be found in some various combination playing 25c/50c no-limit hold'em in the basement on Saturday nights. They usually have around $500 - $900 in play at any given time, so the stakes are decent. The basement is huge, and can easily hold 4 full hold'em tables. There's a nice entertainment center complete with stereo hooked up, an 8-ft slate pool table and a clean, modern bathroom upstairs. It's a pretty sweet setup.

Barry, Tim and Todd (we'll call them The Three Stooges) also used to play in this game, but Jim had to kick them out. Now see, Jim's a real stickler for rules; he likes everyone to relax and have a good time, but he figures that strict rules prevent fights. There's never any question as to what should happen, and the house's decisions are final. He ran the game for free, even built a table and put in a fridge and a pool table on his own dime. The players were usually pretty good about donating enough to keep it running, but after a while the donations started running dry and Jim's cards turned south at the same time. His bankroll in pain, the free beer and sodas started drying up.

This is where the three stooges came into play. Them and some of the other guys suggested that Jim start taking a rake. He flat-out refused to at first, since he wanted to keep a friendly game and wasn't particularly interested in turning it into a business. But the fellas kept pressing and pressing until he finally relented. But there were conditions. He would only take 25 cents, and only if the pot was big enough AND there was a flop. No flop, no drop. And before he collected one nickel in rake money, he sank over a thousand bucks on a brand new table, full-size refrigerator, new cards, new chips, new chairs, the works.

To make a long story short, after months of having attended and enjoyed the amenities, the three stooges secretly resented the miniscule rake that Jim was taking and began conspiring to form their own game to run Jim "out of business." Jim found out about it and flipped. He read them each the riot act, banned them from the game, and shut the whole thing down for a week. When he started back up, he had eliminated the rake, stopped filling the fridge, and dropped the stakes of the game to half. Despite the pleas of the players to restore the rake, Jim patently refused. The game became a lot more friendly, though, and things seemed to be going well despite the new BYOB policy.

Fast-forward a few months, and Jim's facing some tough decisions. The house he's in now has a $1,600 mortgage payment. The mortgage is 15 years at 5.125% APR and he's not willing to part with that great rate. But it's getting time to start the family, and living expenses have to come down. He finds a house to buy that has a $900/month payment, and he can rent the old house out for $1,300. That puts an extra $300 a month in his pocket, which he badly needs. He's an excellent card player, but the games around town are so heavily raked that it's nearly impossible to make a living doing it. And he makes way more at his day-job than he could playing cards. The thing is, renting out the old house kills the poker game, and he loses the pool table too; there's no room for it in the new place. There's just barely enough room for one poker table, too. If he kills the game, he kills almost all his action. It's just too expensive to play around town regularly.

Being the gambler that he is, however, he doesn't accept this no-win situation. So he gets with Billy, his most trusted regular and good friend, and begins to form a plan. He figures that, if he can get enough people to add into the game, say 50 or so, he can run it for a door fee and offer people a much cheaper alternative to the other games around town. He can pay the mortgage and utilities, and even provide beer, soda and pizza for people, all for $7 a head. (The average underground game charges better than $30 in hidden fees and rakes.) He labors for days creating spreadsheets and running scenarios to make sure it'll work. He pitches the idea to the regulars, who seem to think it's a helluva lot better than losing the game altogether. Sure, they could just move the game to the new place, but then there's no TV, no fridge, no pool, and only 10 can play at a time.

The catch is, this plan only works if the game runs six days a week instead of just one. That's how the math works out. Other games in town are running six days a week and are overflowing with 40+ players at a time. Jim only needs like 16 on average to break even on expenses. Seems like it's a can't-lose scenario. Jim offers all the regulars $5 for each new person they bring. Sure, this'll be a temporary loss, but in the long run those people will keep coming and the money will come back. He even goes so far as to get the old pool table restored and re-felted, buys all new cues and a cover, and pre-emptively stocks the fridge with all sorts of beer and soda and goodies. [censored], he even buys some ice cream bars and puts them in the freezer, just for the heck of it.

The plan launches on April 9th, a Saturday. The regular day. There should be a [censored]-ton of people this day. Around 8 o'clock, only Billy has shown up. As the clock ticks, a few players trickle in, and the grand total for attendance is seven players. Unbelievably, only seven people show up, and not one of them has brought another player. Stunned, Jim quietly sets up and plays the regular game, breaking even for night. (He doesn't want to knock people out of the game, especially not now.) At the end of the night, with a whopping $49 to put towards the $300 he spent on more chairs, food and drink, (not to mention another $2,500 in expenses coming up at the end of the month) he and Billy sit and talk in bewilderment. How in the hell did $7 for all the food and drink and poker and pool you want attract the smallest attendance of the year??

After a lot of deep thought and analysis, they come to the conclusion that the door fee is foreign and may have turned people off. The other thought is that most people like to play tournaments, like what they see on TV. They have no concept of cashing out with what's in front of them; they're used to the all-in or bust play style. Jim and Billy hate tournaments, but they understand they have to do what needs to be done to get people in the door. So they drop the door fee altogether, opting to display a show of trust that people will voluntarily help to keep the game going. They put up a donation box. Billy agrees to rent out the now-vacant home on the condition that the donation money goes to his rent, and any shortage is covered by Jim. Jim sinks another $300 into equipment for a 100% payback daily poker tournament, and counts out the buy-ins so they're ready to go. It's a fair enough deal, and Jim takes the new information out to the regulars.

Another series of favorable responses, and Jim's feeling pretty good about the new deal. Monday comes and goes with an empty basement, but it's no big deal. The guys aren't used to playing but on Saturday, so they figure that a few days into the week people will start showing up. After all, it's free beer and this is a college town. Tuesday comes; no-one shows. Wednesday, two guys show up and they play 4-way and shoot some pool. Thursday, they're empty. Friday, a couple guys show up just like Wednesday. On Saturday, a good group of regulars play, but they only pay $25 in donations total, and STILL no-one brings any new people to play.

Desperate, Jim goes on-line and finds websites housing people who are looking for a poker game. He launches a massive e-mail campaign, outlining the great deal he has set up. Several people reply and Jim calls them up to give directions. He even e-mails them directions. Monday comes and goes with no players. Tuesday; Spoony shows up, drops a $5 donation. Wednesday, empty. Thursday, same guy from Tuesday shows up. Finally, Friday, April 22nd, and Spoony shows up with his girlfriend. At this point, Jim has given up. He's planning to have the Saturday game, then on Sunday move everything out, put the poker table at the new house and put the old house back up for rent. He's pretty pissed off at his [censored] friends who haven't bothered to help him get people into this new game. He's sunk a lot of money into this plan and for nothing, no-one bothered to make an effort to help bring new people in.

But, lo and behold, around 10 o'clock a few more guys show up from a wedding rehearsal. They bring a guy, John, in with them. John is in from L.A., and he likes to shoot pool so they get a game going. Seven or eight of them are playing hold'em, and Jim is going back and forth between the poker game and the pool game. John starts openly marvelling at the cool setup, and Jim starts to lament his worries about the future of the place. Just then, the doorbell rings. It's, holy [censored], a new guy, Davis, who got the e-mail invitation. It turns out his buddies sent him as a scout to check the place out. He sits down to play, and John starts marvelling that more people aren't showing up.

Davis wins a crapload of money in the short couple hours that he's there. He says he really loves the setup and will definitely be able to bring some guys to play. John says that the place has really inspired him and there's no reason it shouldn't be bringing droves of people. He's completely aghast that it's not jam-packed full of people. He theorizes that, maybe people are wary of the no-rake thing and think there must be some kind of catch. He said that he's run function for free before, and they never do as well as the pay events. In fact, the higher the fees, the higher the attendance. Sounds bizarre, but plausible at the same time, and Jim's starting to think maybe there's some merit to it.

So now he's got a glimmer of hope. If any of these guys start coming to the game, they'll all know people who may know other people. The problem is, the end of the month is coming up, and if the house is going to go back on the market, it's got to be now. With Saturday around the corner, they need a big day to have any confidence that this can work. But even without a big day, if just a few more people can see what a great setup he's got going on, then word could get out and attendance could surge. At the same time, he's at a crux where, if he keeps advertising his game, he's going to get blacklisted from the other games in town who won't appreciate the competition, since it's kind of anti-competitive. But maybe another week will do the trick. Is it possible that enough people could come to make the game more popular? What else can be done to stimulate interest in FREE BEER, FOOD, POOL and POKER, for chrissake? He has to decide by Sunday whether or not to stay at the old place and go for broke, or cut his losses and go off to the new place, always wondering if it could have worked.

Does he stay or does he go?

[TomHimself]

u expect someone to read that lol

[Orpheus]

[ QUOTE ]
u expect someone to read that lol

[/ QUOTE ]
Certainly not anyone who can't deal with all the letters in "you", much less the added work of punctuation!

Nice post, Key West. I wish I had some suggestions for the poor guy, but I've never run a 'real' game.

[Key West]

Well, we actually had a big break tonight. We had just enough people to run a tournament, and enough new people showed up that we have some great leads on added players. They loved it, donated generously, and so it's still on for at least another week.

[HitHard69]

Man, that sounds like a sweet set-up. No fee, no rake, free booze? I'd gladly donate each time I was there, and probably more if I won. Doesn't make sense that with the 15 or so regulars you listed this game isn't going strong. What town's this is? If it's near Chicago, I'd love to stop buy and bring some buddies.

[tworooks]

i cant believe i read the whole thing.
i say keep it going. it is definitely a gamble, but he is a gambler. i think he is currently behind in the hand, but the implied odds are great, which makes it +EV to keep it open.

EDIT: im not sure if that made sense. it did when i originally posted it though

[ThinkQuick]

good luck dude, good luck
really does sound like fun...

[Guthrie]

If he's read and re-read 30 poker books and been honing his skills for five years, then why isn't he making serious money online instead of trying to pick up chump change from a bunch of freeloaders by running an illegal home game?

[Eihli]

Maybe he finds having a sociable home game with beer, pool, darts, TV, good food, and good friends, is more fun than grinding 8 tables online.

[ThinkQuick]

More fun??
The guy is gonna lose his house, he needs $$$