Introduction

The guidance on the website is based on 12 years of experience in running a private poker club. Starting a poker club 12 years ago wasn’t easy, because there was no internet poker and no poker in TV.


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Members

This is probably the most important task in starting a poker club. You have to find six to eight dedicated members. If you find less than six members, the game will be boring, and with a normal poker table, it is hard to make space for more than eight players.

Speaking of experience your members also have to be dedicated. The game night will not be the same experience, if there’s new members each time, or if not all members show up.

Foundation

When gathered for the first time, it is time to found the poker club like any other organisation starting up. To do this, you need to give every member a club title, and you have to make a set of club regulations.

Member titles

Giving each member a title is a way of sharing the responsibility when preparing a game night. Otherwise the club president is often stuck with all preparations (trust me). You can choose the member titles you need for your club. Here are some of the titles in my poker club:
- Club president
- Treasurer
- Whisky coordinator
- Cigar expert
- Beer brewer
- Webmaster
- Event maker

Club regulations

This is very important. Creating a set of regulations prevents future arguments and quarrels between the members. For example what do you do, if a member drinks too much whisky and can’t finish the game, and what if a member is quitting the club? If these situations are covered by the regulations, you spare yourself a lot of trouble. Off course you can’t foresee every possible conflict, but if you adjust the regula-tions, when experiencing a conflict, you don’t get this problem again.

At the end of each poker year you need to make a general assembly, where the president gives an an-nual report, where the treasurer tells about the clubs financial situation and so on.

Club regulations examble
§1 Foundation of the club
- Name
- Purpose
§2 Club leadership
- Terms of membership
§3 Game night
- Dress code
- Preferred whisky and cigars
- Preferred poker music
§4 Game rules
- Texas hold’em
- Raising blinds
- How to win
§5 General assembly
- Invitations
- Annual report
- Financial status
- Adjustments of regulations

Equipment

Before you can start playing poker, you need to buy some poker equipment. Basically you only need three things: a decent deck of cards, a box of poker chips, and a poker table. You can play without a poker table, but it just isn’t the same.

Trophy

You need to find a trophy for the winner to take with him home until the next game night. Almost every city has a shop making cup trophies, medals, and other metal work. Buy a trophy and get the club name engraved. If you can’t fin a shop, you can always order a trophy on the internet.

Play for money or honour?

Ten years ago, my poker club played mostly for the money. The result was that some players left the game with a loss of up to $100, and others won the same amount. This created a lot of tension in the group, and some of the members were thinking about quitting the poker club.

Then we made an important decision. We decided that we no longer would play just for money but in-stead for the honour in winning. This doesn’t mean that we no longer play for money. You can’t play poker with funny-money – it just isn’t real poker. But now we pay $20 for chips when starting the game and the winner takes it all – both the money and the glory.

Start the game

Now it is time to start the game. My poker club plays no limit texas hold’em like most poker players worldwide. If you’re not familiar with this game, you can find the rules a thousand places on the internet.

We usually divide a whole box of chips between the eight players. You can give the chips any value, but I always name them white: 1, green: 2, blue: 5, red: 10, and black: 20.

As mentioned before, we pay $20 for chips each member and we play until one person has won all chips. To stop the game from lasting more than 4-5 hours, I double the blinds after playing two hours, then again after another hour, and then for every half hour. When the winner is found, this player gets the trophy, the honour, and all the money.

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