The near-constant flood of "poker shows":http://travel.discovery.com/fansites/worldpoker/tour.html on The Travel Channel has finally broken me down, and I started lobbying this weekend for a friendly weekly game with the "climbing":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/climbing/ peeps. Lots of emails flying around today about which day of the week would be best (so far Monday and Wednesday are the main candidates), as well as some side discussions about what the format should be. On one hand, there's something to be said for a low threshold "limit raise":http://www.bestjackpots.com/info/poker_rules.jsp game. More people will play in each pot, since a quarter or $.50 to see a flop is no big deal. You'll also lose money more slowly, so it would be hard to whittle away more than $20 over the course of 3 hours or so. On the other hand, nothing compares to the strategy and gut-wrenching feeling of playing "no-limit":http://www.ultimatebet.com/rules-strategy/nolimit.html hold'em. You can't really bully the short stack with a $.50 call, but if you push $20 into the pot unless he's sitting on "American Airlines":http://www.thepokerforum.com/handnames.htm he'll probably back out pretty quick. The flip side of that is everyone going all-in right away to try and double up, which makes for not a very fun night. So, coming out of the side discussion that Joshua and I were having, I have a few ideas for poker nights:

* Two different games. Maybe we all get together around 8, and play $.50/$1 limit raise games for a few hours, until maybe 10. That way everyone's had their fill, and gotten to play a bunch of hands for good or ill. Then at 10, anyone who's got the stomach for no-limit can get dealt in on no-limit or pot-limit games. This could get ugly quickly, which leads me to my next option. * Tournament play. Everyone has a set buy-in, maybe $20, and then gets a supply of "fake money" "chips":http://store.yahoo.com/jdrazor/set5300dic11.html... maybe totalling $1000 or something. Everyone just plays until they are eliminated, and then based on what place you come in, you take home a certain percentage. Depending on the amount of players we could probably just use "this WSOP(World Series Of Poker) table":http://www.pokerpages.com/pokerinfo/wsop/2004payoutstructure.htm. That's how most tournaments are run anyway. The downside to this is that maybe 1/3 of the players are guaranteed to go home with nothing, whereas with the limit raise games I've played so far, even if you're doing poorly you tend to have at least $5 left at the end of 2-3 hours. * Saw an interesting article about "spread limit":http://www.pokersearch.com/Articles/EDHill/advantag.shtm games, which gives you some flexibility on your bets each round, but still capping the totals to the pots don't get too out of hand. That way you can make calling a little more uncomfortable for people if you either a) have a good hand, or b) are trying to "buy the pot":http://www.winneronline.com/poker/glossary.htm.

In any case, I don't know if it can all get organized this week, but I'm guessing by next week we'll have our first game, and I'm pretty excited about it. Should be lots of fun.