I'm going with a bunch of friends (poker players and spouses mainly) to Vegas his weekend for what you'd expect around this time of year-lots of tournament poker.

Guessing that we get sick of tournies I sent out this email:
Subject: you are hereby challenged to the Gambling Olympics

$200 buyin + $20 bounty put in escrow

You have $200 to wager on a series of games. Minimum buy-in per game is $20 (or $30 if we can't find $5 tables), max $100 per game

Video Poker
Blackjack
Slots
Roulette
Poker
and
Roshambo

Your money is your score. We play each game as a group in the order above (except for Roshambo, you'll see why in a second)

We are playing for the $20 bounty everyone kicks in. If one person ends with $1000 and one ends with $800 - the second place person keeps their $800, and the winner gets all of the $20 bounties. I am highly doubting anyone will finish with $1k, but let's hope someone does.

Roshambo rules

Everyone has to play everyone in at least one roshambo $5 best 2 out of 3 contest

Roshambo can happen at any time - it's a good time killer why you guys are waiting for me to stop crushing Deuces Wild

Other rules

We limit play in Video Poker, Slots, Blackjack and Roulette to 1/2 hour. Poker is limited to 1 hr

When and where deleted

I think this might need a little tweaking, but you get the idea. I want to keep it low stakes. If anyone wants to wager higher - there can always be side action

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Didn't the pokercast crew do a similar thing at some point in the last couple of years ago? Any suggestions to how to tweak above formula?

I want to include spouses who might not gamble for much and to keep it social. I anticipate side action and will encourage lots of prop action along the way. Thinking that one last stand at IP is the way to make it happen under one roof

Sounds like fun!

I imagine there's some potential for going for a Hail Mary pass at the poker table in the final game for people who aren't currently in first place.

For instance, if I'm trailing by $90 and I have $100 in chips in front of me, I may have a +EV shove (or call) just by virtue of the added money in the escrow. I'm not sure how many people are participating, but say ten people are ($200 prize pool), I could profitably get it in with a hand that's up to a 75% dog in that situation.

Of course, if you don't want the Hail Mary pass to be available, I suppose you could mandate that players only play limit. But the Hail Mary pass sure seems like it has interesting potential to upset the competition at the very last second!

P.S. Here's the original thread for the Casino Olympics (I haven't read it, but uncovered it with a Google search): http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/97...pament-812085/

Also, at the final poker table, the player with a comfortable lead may strategically decided to reduce variance by playing full stacked at a lower stake (e.g., taking his/her $100 max buy-in and playing 100NL), while the player who's trailing may choose to increase variance by buying in short at a higher stake (e.g., taking his/her $100 max buy-in and playing only 20bb deep at 500NL).

Well, anyway, however you guys end up strategizing it, this sounds like a lot of fun! Best of luck with your event!

.

god damned rigged wheel

Always an excuse to go into my photoshops folder:

The event went off well!

There were 7 entrants, which was a good amount.

We started at Mirage after eating at BLT Burger, because we found one of these machines in the Sportsbook

Digital dog racing!

We ended up doing a trial run the night before and both nights were pretty much determined by slot play because someone had a ridiculous jackpot in relation to the overall stakes.

Luckily it was my wife that hit the $400 jackpot during the "bigger"event. When she got out ahead by that much, it allowed me to justify putting $42 on a single number in roulette, my remaining budget for this event. Considering we were at the $5 table in the IP, I got a couple of looks when I put that bet down. Since I don't gamble big, it definitely got my heart pumping.

We ended up playing a cheap $60 poker tournament at the Flamingo to finish the night off, since the IP poker room had 3 of the 3/6 mixed games going on Sunday night. I really felt like giving up the rest of my buyin to Gambling Olympics, but since I was the organizer, I couldn't do it. The tournament was actually a good way to handle poker and changed the overall outcome of the event. In the future I would maybe take poker out altogether to keep the time requirements down.

Roshambo added some more socializing to the event and allowed more head-to-head **** talking.

I think they took out the Big Wheel from the IP floor with all of the construction going on. That was sad.

Overall it made pit gambling way more fun and it was a great way to mix up all of the time at the poker tables