Texas Holdem fundraiser for LSF

[JonM]

Gambling night good . . .

No-Limit Texas Holdem Tournament better.

Apparently a charity in New Hampshire can get a permit to run 10 tournaments during a year, after which they must provide a VERY detailed report of what was done, see this article for some slight detail

I went to an event in Massachusetts run by Caponespokertables.com on Saturday.? They rent out poker tables and provide chips as well as help train dealers.? I believe he has a few friends who can help out dealing (in MA the person providing equipment is not allowed to provide paid dealers, don't know how it goes in NH)? It would be helpful to have volunteers who know how to shuffle and deal cards if you plan to have a large number of people at the event.?

I am not sure if he has a different set of chips for New Hampshire, because the ones he used in Massachusetts had monetary values on them.? In New Hampshire you likely could have numbers, but no dollar sign and call them "units" as the poker room in the race track I went to in Florida did.? I dropped him an email asking about this and if he does events for New Hampshire in case you're interested.

Picking the right organizer can be a big help, Saturday there were around 36 people there, which is a smaller turnout than one might like.? At least 25 of them were people who just went to where that organizer set up shop, they had no interest in the charity.? It was a $125 buy-in, and the guy running it said there would be more people if the buy-in were $100.

Based on my own experience in running a poker tournament in Massachusetts, pre-buys are essential.? Not running it on the same night as a Red Sox Yankees game is also essential.? Mostly, who you pick to help run and advertise it is a big factor as well (we did not choose well the first time).? If you get enough people at $100, or if you really want to attract more perhaps a bit less, you can make a nice chunk of change for the LSF.? One way to get pre-buys is to offer a discount for pre-registration over what you pay at the door.? Another way to attract people is satellite tournaments for a couple of hours before the main event.? On Saturday they started at 5:30 with $30 buyin tournaments, 10 people and the top two winning entry into the main $125 tournament at 7:30.? The extra $50 goes to the charity.?

While some of these organizers charge you a percentage of your gross take, Capones charges you for table rental.? If you have a good turnout this is a boon to you, if your turnout sucks, not so good.? Another lesson learned, don't order food until after the tournament starts (tournaments generally feed the players after 1 hour of play).

Giving out a few ounces of gold to the winner along with cash might be a neat thing, though most poker players would probably rather have the cash.? Something to consider, but I'd lean towards cash.

The winter time is a good period to hold these things, and with 10 a year if the LSF can find a good locatation, run a good game, and get a good following you could end up giving out a lot of scholarships next year.

[jgmaynard]

I think that would be a great idea (plus, I LOVE poker!).
The $100 tournaments around here usually get 60-100 people, and it could be run as a percentage game (ie. the grand prize could be a % of the take.)
Just a thought!

JM

[polyanarch]

I don't gamble -I have a perfectly good toilet at home that I can flush money down.

But I'm the last person to JUDGE anyone else. 

The house usually does quite well when it hosts events like this.  It might be a fun way to raise money.

[JonM]

Generally with charity tournaments the house takes a portion of the buy-in, usually 50% and the rest goes toward the payouts.  The house will have expenses, such as hall rental, advertising, food, and the equipment rental to deal with, but still if you get enough people you can make a decent amount of money.

If New Hampshire allows cash payouts (the AG in MA says that you can't), having it in Nashua or Salem and advertising cash payouts may draw quite a few Massachusetts players.  Doing something like offering $50 to the chip leader at each break might also be useful, since out of 100 people generally only 8 will collect money.  With more people you can have more payouts, but it's still a small percentage of the total players.  During game prizes might attract more people.

[Lloyd Danforth]

I don't gamble -I have a perfectly good toilet at home that I can flush money down.

But I'm the last person to JUDGE anyone else.?

The house usually does quite well when it hosts events like this.? It might be a fun way to raise money.

Poker is not gambling, it is a skill.  I'll be there!

[polyanarch]

It is a skill I am not familiar with.  I think I'll watch!

[JonM]

If this happens, there would be a need for dealers.  The people providing equipment will teach volunteers what to do.  If you think you might want to volunteer to deal, watch some of the poker on ESPN or the Travel channel, or FSN or . . . well, anything but Bravo to get an idea of how the game is structured as far as antes and blinds go.

[jgmaynard]

I played two games tonight, lost both of them! Ugh!

JM

[Russell Kanning]

"I am not sure if he has a different set of chips for New Hampshire, because the ones he used in Massachusetts had monetary values on them.  In New Hampshire you likely could have numbers, but no dollar sign and call them "units" as the poker room in the race track I went to in Florida did. "

Maybe we could be original and denominate the #s in gold or silver.

JonM .... could you organize one in SoNH for the LSF?

Maybe it could be a little more low-keyed and have smaller overhead, so the buy-in could be low.

[JonM]

I could help do one, but if the laws are like they are in MA an officer of the organization would likely need to be in charge.  The overhead from the guy who ran the one in Everett is fixed, but at 100 people it's probably around normal, so you couldn't do a low buy-in.  He provides professional poker tables similar to the design you see in poker rooms.  I believe he sells them for $450 each.  He did say he can run events in NH.

You could buy you own chips and go without an organizer, but then you need to do all your own advertising.  The organizer brings their own following, so that's a few less people you need to get to sign up.  The other issue with using off the shelf chips is someone sneaking in their own.  Bad enough with the vast array of 11.5 gram chips with the same pattern out there, but the organizer we used had a few chips in his set that wasn't even part of it, they came from a cheap plastic set sold at Kohls and BB&B and such.  Sigh.

Having chips made is possible, but not cheap (in quantity).  You can get the 11.5 gram metal insert chips for like 25 cents or less a chip, printed for 5 cents a side perhaps a bit less.  You can get totally custom chips for 75 cents or so each with printing on the edge.  Of course, the cooler your chips look, the more likely someone is to walk off with a few . . .  Casinos don't care, the cost per chip is less than the face value.  Not the same for tournaments though.

For 100 players if you do a normal sort of chip distribution for 3000 chips, you need 400 $25 chips, 400 $100 chips, 300 $500 chips, and 100 $1000 chips.  Because of low limits at the start, you need a lot of those $25 chips, so for 200 people . . . it adds up quick.  You also need higher value chips for when the blinds go up, so a batch of $5000 chips, and plenty of $500 and $1000 chips to replace the value of the $25 and $100 chips you eventually take out of play.  1500 custom chips represents a bit of an investment.  You could perhaps lower that by having more custom chips made up in a different design to sell, but the ones you sell would have to be completely different looking on the top and on the side (when they're stacked) so someone couldn't bring them in. 

During the World Series of Poker this year, during one of the early events they discovered some of the souvenir $100 chips sold for 49 cents at the gift shop had been introduced into play.

Hence, it's probably better to partner with someone, at least in the beginning.  With only 10 events allowed per year, that limits the return you could get for doing it all your self.  Now were the LSF to eventually form chapters in different towns, and those chapters were able to get their own permits to each run 10 events, then it might be doable for one chapter to provide the equipment to the other ones.  In that situation you could do much lower buy-ins, but of course the prize money would be lower as well, and it's the potential of the big payout that draws a lot of people to these.

[Eli]

You know, if you had five or six charities, you could run one tournament a week...

[Russell Kanning]

I could help do one, but if the laws are like they are in MA an officer of the organization would likely need to be in charge.

If one of them likes the idea, then that is solved.
When I brought up $ or what the chips could say, I didn't mean inventing chips. I thought you said that you saw a tournament with just #s.

[Russell Kanning]

Title idea
"Texas Hold 'em ...... for the children."

maybe we should invent our own lottery

[JonM]

I think the point of the NH law is that you can't cash in the chips for actual value.  How they interpret that is the question, not having $ on it helps, but if they don't want to make a stink, then it probably doesn't matter either way.

Those darn states have a monopoly on lotteries . . . before that it was called running numbers, wasn't it?  Somehow all those people vanished when the state started a lottery.

Hey Mike, you gonna weigh in on this?

[Lloyd Danforth]

Numbers are still out there and offer better odds than lotto.