AFC Online Poker is now entering it’s 6th Season!
Yes, that’s right, we have been running longer than Breaking Bad and we are now in Game of Thrones territory.
The game and call is just as much fun as ever and that is thanks to a mix of wonderful regular players who turn up almost every week, another bunch of semi-regular players and then a third bunch of occassional players. All are needed to keep the club going and all very much appreciated.
In our first 5 seasons we have had 18 different winners so it’s fair to say everyone has a decent chance of winning with the games being deliberately structured to suit all levels of ability as far as possible.
How do we do this? Well the buy in is kept low – it’s always been kept at £1. We play a tournament style game as opposed to a cash game which means not only that we can accommodate more players but it also eliminates the fear of throwing more and more money into a game and losing track. Once you buy in (aside from 2 rebuys and an add-on which are optional), you don’t put at risk any more money. We play pot limit as opposed to No Limit which means that more aggressive or stronger players have less capacity to bully weaker players (they can only really do this once getting into a hand, not so much from the start of a hand) and there are a couple of rebuys in the game to allow people a second or third chance if they were unlucky or had a ‘bad beat’ which can happen.
The structure and set up of this game has been proven and endured now, our video calls moving from Zoom to Jitsi has also proven to be a success and the video calls work well with the game – most people choose to catch up on the video call, some choose not to and some don’t get the chance to be on the call but can still play the poker game – the flexibility is there in the video call options as well as in the game itself.
The game is also available every Saturday at the same time (8pm UK time/GMT) which helps as we all know it’s there. You can join every week, one week, some weeks… and also register and unregister from a game as many times as you like. The game has Late Registration for 40 minutes for people who arrive late but often people who know they are going to be late reister early to reserve their seat (come on, it’s £1!), meaning they can join as late as they want – even if they join after the late registration period has closed, then that’s OK because they already paid for their seat and so will have been in the game but ‘Sitting Out’ until they arrive and take part.
We’ve also had a few ‘in-person’ games which generally happen around the summer months and in West London which is where most people live / the most convenient meet up location for most (more of these to come).
Thanks to all who have taken part in this online club so far, it’s been great and long may it continue!!