There were also surreal conversations floating in from the next room; I heard “bunnies”, “russian roulette”, and something about carrots and cabbage. Thanks to everyone who brought games, and a great big thanks to Rebekah and Joe for hosting!
]]>Second: I’m still looking for hosts for the rest of the year. Leave a comment with this post or email me if you’re interested. I believe the only months that are taken are July and December.
]]>Thanks for everyone who showed up, and especially those who brought games!
Finally, for bragging rights, the poker tournament ended with the following four in the money:
That’s it, see you next time, and remember, I’m looking for 2009 hosts!
]]>What does hosting entail? Basically, providing space, food and libations for games players. As you know, the hosts receive $5 for food from each player. Usually this is not enough to cover hosting, but hey, you receive a warm, happy feeling and the thanks of all the players. If you don’t have enough tables or chairs, they can usually be found for you.
What you provide for food is up to you. Subway sandwiches and pizza work, if you’re not into cooking for people. On the other hand, if you do like cooking, you’ll find us a very appreciative audience.
Here are the dates:
Respond in comments or in email. First come first served for a given month.
]]>First, for non-poker players, be welcome! We’ll see what we can do to provide board, card, and other games for interested players. There will certainly be Scrabble, a PlayStation 3 upstairs for video soccer players, and extra decks of cards.
Second, regarding the possible heads-up tournament: I’m planning SFGN to be a bit more spontaneous than SFP has been for the last couple years. As such, I’m going to leave whether or not this will be a heads-up or normal tournament until that night. If there are sufficient people for a heads-up tournament and that’s what the poker players want, that’s what we’ll do. If there aren’t enough, or the poker players there don’t want to do a heads-up tournament, we won’t.
See below for more information on heads-up poker tournaments.
For those of you not familiar with heads-up tournaments, here’s how it works. Instead of a having one or more big tables, and running until there’s only one person left, heads-up tournaments are played at a large number of two-person tables. The two players play against each other until one person has all the chips, and the win/loss is noted down. Once all the tables have finished, new pairs are created with fresh starting chips, and the new pairs play each other. This will be repeated four or five times, at which point the winners are awarded their money.
For those who want more details: For each round, players will begin with our normal $10 in chips. The blinds will move faster than in a regular tournament, and raised every 15 minutes. Pairings and the final rankings will be determined using a Swiss system tournament algorithm. All I know about this system is that (a) it’s pretty good, (b) it’s used in chess tournaments, and (c) I can find programs that understand how it works so I don’t have to.
The advantages of heads-up tournaments are: you play quite a lot, and you get to practice going one-on-one with another person. Normal tournaments do involve quite a lot of one-on-one play (throughout the tournament, as well as when there are only two people left), but often involve a lot of dead time in which you’re not doing much.
The disadvantage of heads-up tournaments are: you play quite a lot, and it’s not as easy to leave early if you’re out of the running for the money. This means a full night of pretty constant poker.
]]>First up! SFP has changed: it’s now Second Friday Games Night, or SFGN. After December’s successful trial run of running both poker and other games side by side, as well as interest by non-poker players, in 2009 we will be offering this every month. So, if you weren’t so hot on the poker, but would like to show up for other games, good news! Now you don’t even have to pretend to player poker …
Finally: For those of you who live out of electronic calendars, I’ve uploaded a calendar file that includes all the dates and times for SFGN events. You can find it to the right, under “Meta.” Throughout the year, I’ll update the calendar with locations as they become available.
]]>