The Idea – Lemonade
A few weeks before setting this up (back in March 2020), I wrote this article: When Life Gives You Lemons which was basically a reflection on our then (Covid) situation and how to try and make the best of it – by making some metaphorical lemonade.
Shortly after that I decided that I wanted to use this crisis to stay in touch with and reconnect with all my friends and ideally with something fun and social, to replace the things we couldn’t do (table tennis and golf in my case).
So I made a list of all my friends, old and new including lots I had lost touch with and proceeded to invite them all to a private online poker game. I wasn’t sure if that was possible (i.e. a private game with just friends involved and no strangers) but having had the idea I looked it up and yes, it is. Perfect.
As I knew this was a social thing for reconnecting etc, I set it up deliberately tailored for beginners, with a free test game, some instruction via a brief intro video & some crib sheets such as tips, faqs and hand orders for the game.
The cost was also deliberately tiny (£1*) to have something to play for whilst making it accessible to all.
So I then proceeded to send out an email ‘Your invite to the coolest social event in the lockdown era…’ to everyone on that list.
Reconnecting With Friends
It really isn’t about poker.
The poker is a *lot* of fun. It’s fun because everyone involved is a friend and it’s really cool to see and interact with friends in a different context. [Then, and now, as the game is still going,] I am now literally catching up with old friends every week on a Saturday evening.
If I had just said ‘let’s all meet up for a mass online chat’ it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well or would have petered out. Instead we are bluffing, teasing each other and catching up at the same time.
What was also great to see was two friends I used to work with who had not been in touch with each other for over 20 years. They were just poking fun at each other like it was yesterday & now they have a regular place they can go to see each other every week.
In the last game I found out about a friends band and hopefully I will go and see them play when all of the lockdown nonsense is over [update – now done]. In fact this was a friend that I hadn’t been in touch with for over 20 years so I wouldn’t have even been in touch with him let alone gong to see him rocking out like a legend on stage somewhere. Great band name too.
Reconnecting Anyway
The real bonus here is that even when people don’t want to join, for whatever reason, then I have reconnected with them anyway. I have had some great catch-ups with some long lost friends through inviting them to this thing. As well as that, making it my mission to get in touch with ALL my friends, I have tracked down friends whose contact details I thought I’d lost for good and am back in touch with people I thought I’d lost.
Obviously it is easier to keep in touch if people join as it then becomes a regular contact (with others too as in most cases we either have mutual acquaintances or I will invite people to invite their friends along if they want to), but as the point was to reconnect with people I’ll take any conversation and in these scary times am always glad to hear back from any friends and get their news.
Final Thought
So it really isn’t about the poker, it’s about reconnecting and I am reconnecting with an awful lot of people at the moment as are lots of my friends too. The idea of using an online game turned out to be a good one because the game becomes a focal point around which everything else revolves – the game is like the campfire.
Joining the game is also eaasier than ever, just click the *** Join Here *** menu item on this site. There is no download necessary (we now use a browser based platform), you can even try it for free (more details on the join now page), it’s still set up for beginners and we even have a poker tutor which you can use to learn how to play and practice as much as you like before joining.
* – **Update**: it’s always been £1 to buy-in to the poker game – for 6 years – but it has recently changed a little (12/06/2025). Let me explain why. We now have the option to play for free within the same game where others can pay optionally. So I’ve kept the text above as-is to preserve the history of the evolution of the game. Prior to this setup, I wanted to keep a £1 buy-in as a very small amount, to welcome beginners and still have something to play for. This stayed the same for 6 seasons (6 years) but the game has evolved and we now have a game where new joiners, beginners and anyone just wanting to try it out can join the game for free and play alongside paying players. The £1 buy in was supplemented with 3 further options, each costing a further £1 – 2 ‘Rebuys’ and 1 ‘Add-on’ meaning that players could play for £1 (if not using any of the extra options) or could pay up to a max of £4 for any one tournament. In the new version of the game with the option to play for free, it’s not possible to pay for these options separately so it’s a flat fee of £3 and everybody gets 2 Rebuys which they can use if they wish – or of course the option to play absolutely free.