As y'all know, I recently departed Bahrain (1 yr 8 mo there) and returned home to WA state. This necessarily ended the .50/1 HORSE game I ran. While shortly mentioned previously, I kinda felt this deserved its own thread.

History:

Summer 2010, I "inherited" an ongoing game. Dealer's Choice, nonsensical structure (I guess it was a kind of spread-limit, for lack of better term), Bicycle cards, sporadic frequency. Host was soon departing Bahrain.

Fall 2010, we moved game to different location. My buddy provided his apartment, but I ran the game. I made it straight-up Limit Hold'Em, with a casino-like structure (minus the rake, of course). Got a couple Kem decks, a decent chipset.

After a couple months, made it a Hold'em / 7-card stud rotation (1 hour each). Got 1000 Nexgen white chips to facilitate the limit format. Game stayed this way for about 8 months. Never had a huge number of players, but always enough to keep a game game going for several hours.

Summer 2011. I move into a new apartment, and buddy departs Bahrain. Game moves to Casa Hoss. Holdem/Stud rotation persists. I get a speedcloth cover and underlying foam for my dining room table.

Fall 2011. Slowly start expanding the rotation. First added in Omaha 8. Couple weeks later, threw in Stud 8, to make a H.O.S.E. roatation. My intention was to just keep it at that. But after a couple more weeks, became apparent that some players were still not fundamentally grasping low hands that well. So in early December (might've been late Nov, don't remember), added Razz. Omg, wish I had done that before O8 or Stud8. First, it really helped with focusing folks on what makes a low hand. Second...lol, it's a fun game.

Fri 27 Jan 2012. Last HORSE game. 11 players total (10 at one time). One of the most successful sessions of the whole run.

Throughout this period, the player base consisted of active-duty U.S. Navy folks (and a few Navy family members and prior-Navy government civilian employees). All serving in the Middle East in some capacity supporting the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

Comments (in no particular order...just random thoughts as I type):

1. I wish I'd mixed up the rotation MONTHS earlier. I'd been worried about folks resisting new games...my fears were largely groundless.

2. I never saw this game as a "money-making" opportunity. I simply wanted to continue playing cards while I was in the Mideast. As such, I freely shared advice (when solicited) and earnestly sought to help the newbies get better (away from the table).

3. Several players had never played poker before coming to Bahrain. Upon their departure...I feel they can hold their own in any casino low-stakes Holdem game. Maybe not consistent 1bb/hr winners, but they know what they're doing and aren't going to get bowled over. Not to mention, they're more familiar with Razz, Stud, and Stud8 than the vast majority of American poker players. I'm pretty proud of that.

4. I built a sustainable, sophisticated, and enjoyable game which lasted for over a year and a half. Over 50% of the players had either never played poker before, or their only previous experience had been with silly Dealer's Choice games we played as kids (Follow the Queen, Baseball, etc etc). This was their first experience with "real" poker.

And they loved it. This game turned non-players into players, and turned bad players into better ones. It opened horizons and increased poker sophistication for everyone (myself included).

Here's the kicker. I say that "I" ran the game, that "I" made this such a success for these folks. But I certainly couldn't have done that without YOU. I got so many ideas, picked up such better ways to do things, from YOU, in this forum. Whether I commented or not, I read a lot of things here which made me think "huh, yeah, that makes sense, that's a better way to do it.".

Bahrain is not a bad place to be. It's rear-echelon. It's a pretty modern city with (almost) all the amenities anyone enjoys in the States. But...it's HQ for the US Navy in the Middle East. So good conditions aside, the Navy folks there work damn hard, and the hours are pretty long. A Friday night poker game is a brief, welcome diversion amongst the hectic (but worthy) grind.

You guys helped make it better.

Way Ahead. I don't know if there's much home poker in my near-to-mid future. Washington has abundant, easily accessible public poker...there's just not much incentive here for a regular home game. I'm returning to my cardroom haunts myself. I'd like to think there may be a niche for a mid-week HORSE homegame amidst the sea of casino Hold'em here. But that's at least several months away, if at all. I enjoy cards in pretty much any milieu, and frankly I'm looking forward to playing again at stakes to which I'd become accustomed. But I doubt I'll enjoy any poker game more than I did the Bahrain .50c/$1 game.

So, at the end of this TL;DR post, I just want to say "Thanks". Through your examples, thoughts, and comments here in HP...you helped a few hardworking Navy guys overseas enjoy their cardgames a little bit more.

Some of them may in the future may even sit across the green felt from you somewhere, whereas they might not have done so otherwise. Should that come to pass...I hope they give you reason to regret their "Bahrain education". :-)

Good read. Thanks for sharing.

Best of luck in your future poker prospects.

Cool story. Did anyone carry the game on?

Good read, and I'm glad HP was able to help support your game.

But don't give up on home games just yet. Home Poker is like Jell-O; there's always room for it! If you want to get regular low-stakes HORSE going again, running a game yourself is probably your best/only option.

I think there's lot of room for home poker in WA. I played in a group that got together after work 4-5 times a week, and had friends who had other games they went to. Even though there's an abundance of poker rooms, lots of people don't like the somewhat tight restrictions on games. (that's been lifted somewhat of late, but it's still there).


Also, some people don't like heading down Aurora late at night... or early in the day....

Nice post Hoss. It's great to see the impact this forum has on other games.

It's time you start up the WA game so it's ready for the 2015 HP Meet Up!

Oh sure, I didn't mean to say I'm never going to have a game again. But it'll take some time. I'm leaving the Navy, so my circle of friends/colleagues is going to change drastically over coming months. Hopefully by this time next year I'll have enough interested people to maybe get it going again.

I know quite a few of the local cardroom regs...but not sure how many of them I'd want coming to my house every week. Am rather hoping to put a game together of new work acquaintances, some of my wife's friends & their husbands, etc.

Tr8cer, nope, the game just ended. There's other games in the neighborhood that I played in, those will keep going of course, but the HORSE is done.

The MARCENT game will never die - but I'm not going back to it. They are there to get drunk and the cards are just a facilitator. Would be way easy money, but I would rather play with ppl that want to play, not those who get mad bc you want to play.

My game is dead for now. Couldnt get over 5 handed for the past few weeks, and now we don't have a juffair home for it. Changing homes too many times to quickly helped kill it.

There is a contractor game that I just learned about last week that I started playing in. Great action - you would have loved it. Too bad we didn't know it's been going for the past couple years.

CC started making her game play w your format so it's living on. I'm trying to talk my wife into going to that game some time since it is a more laid back crowd and low stakes game. Don't think I'll go to it alone.

Wow, really? That surprises me...I knew she liked my game, but I didn't think she liked it enough to change her own game to limit HORSE. Maybe she realized it was a more appropriate structure for her typical crowd (rather than having them play PLO8, lol?).