Our Weekly Poker Game is deliberately set up for beginners.
It costs just £1 to give it a go.
Many of our regular players had never played before they joined, but for £1 gave it a go and learned by doing (Texas Hold-em poker is a very easy game to learn & the easiest way to learn is to simply give it a try & learn and improve as you go along).
Our Games
Our games run weekly, every Saturday evening from around 8pm. Once you have signed up to the club, you can join any of these games as and when you choose, there is no need to play on a weekly basis, some people play regularly, some play every now and then.
Pot Limit
We use a Pot Limit format to give some excitement beyond fixed limit poker but take away some of the edge that No Limit poker would give to the better, more aggressive players. In practice this makes for a much more social game where more players can play more hands. There is also of course the fact that the games only cost £1 to play to remember, we are not exactly breaking the bank with this game! That said, once in the game and particularly because it is tournament format, the fact that it only costs £1 to play can easily be forgotten and it still feels like we are playing for something (hence why we don’t play for play money).
Multi Table Tournament Format
The game is played in a multi-table tournament format. This essentially means two things:
- that even though the limits and buy-in are very low, we can still potentially have an amount of money worth playing for for the winners (usually the top 3 places) as, along with the addition of re-buys and the add-on (see below), having the possibility of many players means that whilst for any individual player it is a very cheap (and of course a very enjoyable) game to play, it also ends up being something relatively worth playing for. We actually believe the game is a lot of fun and that is the main reason to play but worth saying that the prize money is a very good return compared to the buy-in.
- being a multi-table tournament we can accommodate any number of players, so whilst it is a very sociable home game where everyone knows each other and connects and chats via a Zoom call whilst playing we also have the interesting possibility of playing with different players every week. The way this works out in practice is we generally have a core set of regular players who generally play, see each other and keep in touch every week, semi-regular players who play when they can and less regular players who play more sporadically. The beauty of the setup of this game is it doesn’t matter which category you fall into, the game is always there and will accommodate any number of players.
Tournament Format (rather than Cash Games)
We play a tournament format.
This means every player starts with the same number of chips (3000) and the same chance of winning.
Not only that but it takes away part of the game that a lot of people fear when you mention poker to them, that they are going to get fleeced! The advantage of having a set buy-in and using the tournament format is that this is all it is going to cost you to play and you get a lot of game play – and essentially a great and fun evening – for that (small) buy in. You get an evenings entertainment with friends for just £1 (with the possibility of winning but even if you don’t you will have a great time).
In a Cash Game you enter the game with a certain amount of Cash and that amount fluctuates as you play. To keep on playing when playing badly you have to keep on stumping up more cash and even if you do win, you could be only making a very marginal profit. For beginners Cash games can be pretty scary because they have no limit to the downside (how much it costs to play) and the upside (winning and making a profit) is often fleeting as it’s entirely possible to be winning and making a huge profit and then blow it all and end up losing. In a tournament the downside (the £1 it costs to play) is limited, aside from choosing to re-buy, you can’t ‘lose’ more money than that.
Rebuys
I mentioned Re-buys earlier.
Why have re-buys?
Well, it is a friendly, sociable game but it is also a very situational game with a surprising amount of skill involved (which I would argue separates Texas Hold-Em poker from many other types of poker and indeed card games) but also of course an element of luck. This means it is entirely possible to have a ‘bad beat’. This is where you played your hand pretty well but either another player got very lucky (usually staying in a pot they should have left a long time ago and getting lucky on the river) or you get very unlucky – either way you get take out of the game, losing all of your chips when you really should have won or at least played your hand pretty well. That’s a bad beat and is just sheer bad luck.
Even though it’s a friendly game, and we don’t take the game too seriously anyway, bad beats like that can still feel a little unpleasant because they feel unfair.
So that’s why we have re-buys.
Re-buys are optional ‘second’ (and third) chances. You don’t have to take a re-buy but you can – meaning you can literally re-buy into the game again.
It would be nice to say the game only costs £1 (it does, that’s true) and have the last statement above saying you can’t lose more than that without qualifying it with ‘except rebuys’ but rebuys are a good thing to have because it covers us in terms of letting all the players have a good night and 2 more chances if they get unlucky (because we have 2 more rebuys). These though are completely optional, you don’t have to use them, they are just there as a bit of a safety net to those that want them.
Add-on
In addition to the re-buys we have an Add-on. This is a one-off ‘boost’ of your chip count (+4000 chips) which you can take at the end of the rebuy period. Again, completely optional. We have this because as the game goes on the limits increase (which serves to push the game into a winning situation by slowly eliminating players with less chips). The Add-on is also like a kind of second chance for players who make it to the final table but only with a low chip count. It is a way for people to get more out of the game and again, like the buy in and the 2 rebuys costs £1.
Limiting Costs to Play
So we have the possibility to try the game any week (as it runs every Saturday) and have a fun night for just £1.
We also have some 2nd chances in the form of Rebuys and an Add-on – hopefully you can see from above that these are to make the game fairer, give everyone the best chance of having a good game and a pleasant experience (removing a lot of the risk of being removed from the game due to sheer bad luck) these are £1 each, so if you ended up taking all of these options, the maximum the game could cost you is around £4 (less than the price of a cup of coffee at London prices ;-)).
Chances of Winning for a Beginner
You would think that anyone who hasn’t played before has no chance of winning.
Not true!
In our game, partly because of deliberate limitations placed on the game (low buy-in which means people can be less fearful of losing money, rebuys, using pot limit instead of no-limit and not least the fact that none of us take the game too seriously), brand new players who are complete beginners actually have every chance of winning the game.
It has happened a number of times.
One of our now regular players won their 2nd game (which was only their 2nd game of poker ever!).
What’s going on here?
Of course the better players do tend to win more in the long run but beginners do have a chance in our game which is deliberately set up to accommodate beginners for a number of reasons. I won’t go into those reasons why here but if you’re worried about being a beginner and think that means you stand no chance, don’t think that, worst case you will learn a lot and have fun by playing but also, yes, you can win, others have.
Training
I did originally set up separate ‘test games’ for people to try out poker for free. I have also offered to pay people’s buy-ins for their first game so they get the same thing – to try it for free (which was easier to do in the earlier days when I had to handle all the money, obviously still possible now though as the money is handled via each players Pokerstars account, I would effectively just be ‘refunding them their buy-in, they’d still have to put money into their account and pay themselves to get in the game).
There are also plenty of hints and tips on this website to learn how to play and plenty of helpful videos online you can research for yourself. I am also always available to help people get started, give hints and tips, training and will also look out for and help any new players in our game.
In the end though, the way the game is set up (deliberately to accommodate all levels of play, specifically including making it as easy as possible for beginners to get involved) it is easier and better just to give it a go – you will learn to play by actually playing, get the hang of it very quickly and have more fun doing so.
Game Reports
These are just a bit of fun, but if you want to get a rough impression of how some of our games go down on the night, I try to put together a brief game report following every game. They are usually a combination of what was discussed, who played and any memorable moments in the news, in the call or in the game. You can see these here: Game Reports.