Holiday Game Ideas
12-24-2016
, 07:29 PM
Santa Claus cash game was held Friday nite. 11 players in all. I had 6 prize envelopes. Our game is a 4 rotation game of NLH, PLO, an odd NLH variant we call Amarillo, and a very odd combo game we call NLH Triple Draw. Our stakes are low .25-.50 so I put a $10 chip in each envelope. Strangely all prizes were won within about 30+ hands. One lady (Tina) won 3 times!! 
This has been well received by our crew. Merry Christmas everybody!!
This has been well received by our crew. Merry Christmas everybody!!
12-25-2016
, 06:57 PM
12-10-2017
, 09:23 AM
12-10-2017
, 02:06 PM
Our Christmas party game was last night. There were 39 gifts ranging from $1 to $10 each for the 15 players to chase. It took five hours to deplete the gift pile.
Most popular gift? Likely it was the $1 rolls of Necco wafers or the $9 micro drone.
People are funny about winning stuff. Willing to risk 20x the value of a draw from Santa's Sack of Goodies trying to take down the pot on a bluff with K 5
. On balance it was as good to win something from Santa as it was to break even in the session
With so many gifts in the bag, everyone won at least once. One lucky lady claimed nine prizes for herself!
Everyone had a great time, just as expected. People have come to expect / anticipate this game. It is a great way to say thank you to everyone. I encourage every host to consider doing some type of holiday game.
And a good time was had by all -=- DrStrange
Most popular gift? Likely it was the $1 rolls of Necco wafers or the $9 micro drone.
People are funny about winning stuff. Willing to risk 20x the value of a draw from Santa's Sack of Goodies trying to take down the pot on a bluff with K
5. On balance it was as good to win something from Santa as it was to break even in the sessionWith so many gifts in the bag, everyone won at least once. One lucky lady claimed nine prizes for herself!
Everyone had a great time, just as expected. People have come to expect / anticipate this game. It is a great way to say thank you to everyone. I encourage every host to consider doing some type of holiday game.
And a good time was had by all -=- DrStrange
12-15-2017
, 11:44 PM
Quote:
Last night I hosted our holiday cash game. Stakes were as always .25/.50, BI $50-100. For seven people, we sure managed to engage in a fair bit of lunacy and drink a lot of alcohol. Those two things might be related. 
It started when I passed out $1 scratch cards. Four of us hit for a combined whopping $6. I dropped mine in the middle of the table for a first hand splash pot, everyone else who hit followed, and we were off. My 4x UTG raise with a red KJ was called in 5 spots, somehow I didn't see this coming. Flop is J83 all spades, I raise the SB's donk lead, bunch of folds, the donker calls. A 4th spade hits the turn to slow things down, but he bets big otr while I stumble into 2p. Tank on the first hand! Counting the scratchers there's prob 80BB in the middle, but this guy loves to bluff. He says I can pay $3 to see one card, I hand it over and he flips over a 3. I fold, he shows the set. After 30 min we've still only played 5 hands, we've had one bust out (A5 vs 43s on a 543 board, they gii otf) plus host topping up. Every pot was majorly contested and the tanking was legitimate.
After an hour we put the wrapped gifts for the $10 gift exchange on the table and drew cards to see who would pick first. There was a diabetic coma-inducing amount of chocolate, homemade cookies, and alcohol to choose from.
I was going to take a night off from drinking, but someone brought a bottle of Rioja to share with the host, so I simply had no choice. Sadly she was our first casualty (well second if you count my sobriety): she hasn't played much lately, was unlucky to be aggressive in the wrong spots (3bet/shoving over a c/r with A5 above...fwiw she actually had 37% there), and left down $150. The rest of us rolled on until just after 11pm. We had 2 pots late that we all-in preflop for about $50 and $240. The LAGgiest of us was in both, and he offered to to run it twice each time, just to alleviate any late-night cooler pain. He had KK both times (vs AQ then AT), won the first runout each time, lost the second one each time. Tis the season for giving.
The Santa draws were a big hit. I decided to draw on all Kings and all 8s, cuz I am one of those PC multiculti types and there's no reason why we can't have a black Santa. (Though the origin of the Black Santa story from the Netherlands ain't pretty.) This turned out to work almost perfectly, as as we used all 25 draws by the end, unlike last year where we didn't get through half. No one hit on the $2 scratch cards, but with our group, the "I saw Santa" draw (see one unshown hand once the play is over) has value, since we play with each other all the time, and we all hate to fold and never know.
Two of us were the last troopers standing, so off to the pub we went, where he used some of the homemade cookies to bribe our server into an 'after last call' last call. Two drinks later I stumbled home, popped a sleeping pill (cuz that's what middle-aged people do), and woke up this morning to find my apartment looking like a war zone. Bottle caps, wrapping paper, spliied beer, someone in the middle of it all cooked a pizza in the oven, we had it all. It was so bad I've been receiving sympathy cards from Syria.
I look forward to the day when science gets the teleportation thing sorted out, so that we can have a Home Game forum home game. Until then, stay warm, run good, and tell your freinds and family you love them.
sw
It started when I passed out $1 scratch cards. Four of us hit for a combined whopping $6. I dropped mine in the middle of the table for a first hand splash pot, everyone else who hit followed, and we were off. My 4x UTG raise with a red KJ was called in 5 spots, somehow I didn't see this coming. Flop is J83 all spades, I raise the SB's donk lead, bunch of folds, the donker calls. A 4th spade hits the turn to slow things down, but he bets big otr while I stumble into 2p. Tank on the first hand! Counting the scratchers there's prob 80BB in the middle, but this guy loves to bluff. He says I can pay $3 to see one card, I hand it over and he flips over a 3. I fold, he shows the set. After 30 min we've still only played 5 hands, we've had one bust out (A5 vs 43s on a 543 board, they gii otf) plus host topping up. Every pot was majorly contested and the tanking was legitimate.
After an hour we put the wrapped gifts for the $10 gift exchange on the table and drew cards to see who would pick first. There was a diabetic coma-inducing amount of chocolate, homemade cookies, and alcohol to choose from.
I was going to take a night off from drinking, but someone brought a bottle of Rioja to share with the host, so I simply had no choice. Sadly she was our first casualty (well second if you count my sobriety): she hasn't played much lately, was unlucky to be aggressive in the wrong spots (3bet/shoving over a c/r with A5 above...fwiw she actually had 37% there), and left down $150. The rest of us rolled on until just after 11pm. We had 2 pots late that we all-in preflop for about $50 and $240. The LAGgiest of us was in both, and he offered to to run it twice each time, just to alleviate any late-night cooler pain. He had KK both times (vs AQ then AT), won the first runout each time, lost the second one each time. Tis the season for giving.
The Santa draws were a big hit. I decided to draw on all Kings and all 8s, cuz I am one of those PC multiculti types and there's no reason why we can't have a black Santa. (Though the origin of the Black Santa story from the Netherlands ain't pretty.) This turned out to work almost perfectly, as as we used all 25 draws by the end, unlike last year where we didn't get through half. No one hit on the $2 scratch cards, but with our group, the "I saw Santa" draw (see one unshown hand once the play is over) has value, since we play with each other all the time, and we all hate to fold and never know.
Two of us were the last troopers standing, so off to the pub we went, where he used some of the homemade cookies to bribe our server into an 'after last call' last call. Two drinks later I stumbled home, popped a sleeping pill (cuz that's what middle-aged people do), and woke up this morning to find my apartment looking like a war zone. Bottle caps, wrapping paper, spliied beer, someone in the middle of it all cooked a pizza in the oven, we had it all. It was so bad I've been receiving sympathy cards from Syria.
I look forward to the day when science gets the teleportation thing sorted out, so that we can have a Home Game forum home game. Until then, stay warm, run good, and tell your freinds and family you love them.
sw
11-30-2023
, 02:55 AM
12-08-2023
, 05:45 PM
Quote:
I'm usually out of town during the Christmas season traveling to see the wife's family in NY and usually don't get in a game. However, it looks like I might have to time to host one before we head out this year and was thinking of adding some fun twist onto our usual game to make it more interesting.
My thoughts thus far:
1) Everyone bring some "white elephant" type gift (not a crappy one, but one in the $20 range that people at the game would like) then on the top of every hour we do a flip, winner gets to pick a gift. If a person wins a second time they can "steal" a gift from another player. Only one prize per person, or obv. I would win them all.
2) Have everyone either 4 x $5 or 2 x $10 gift card to a variety of places. Whenever someone wins a hand with a
or King (santa?) in it they get to pick a gift card.
3) Collect $20 from everyone at the beginning of the night and turn those into 4 x $5 chips that are combined and held separately from player stacks. Every time a or King flops the next hand has a $5 "splash" pot taken from this separate stack.
Anybody ever done something like this for a cash game? Other ideas or suggestions that I could add to the list.
My thoughts thus far:
1) Everyone bring some "white elephant" type gift (not a crappy one, but one in the $20 range that people at the game would like) then on the top of every hour we do a flip, winner gets to pick a gift. If a person wins a second time they can "steal" a gift from another player. Only one prize per person, or obv. I would win them all.
2) Have everyone either 4 x $5 or 2 x $10 gift card to a variety of places. Whenever someone wins a hand with a
or King (santa?) in it they get to pick a gift card.3) Collect $20 from everyone at the beginning of the night and turn those into 4 x $5 chips that are combined and held separately from player stacks. Every time a
or King flops the next hand has a $5 "splash" pot taken from this separate stack. Anybody ever done something like this for a cash game? Other ideas or suggestions that I could add to the list.