Throwing a Great Poker Party Part I - The Invitations

By Joanne on October 30, 2007 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that the weather is becoming colder here in our neck of the woods, we feel much less guilty about spending time indoors. So instead of doing yardwork or home renovations on the weekend, it's a perfect time to throw a poker party!

Originally this article was going to be about how to throw a tournament-style poker party, but as I wrote it I realized there were much better resources for the actual mechanics of setting up a poker tournament. A favorite of mine is Home Poker Tourney - it's a great resource that includes poker chip reviews, a card buyer's guide, blinds schedules, and tons more. I know I personally used that site a couple of years ago when buying our first large chip set.

What we'd like to do here is offer ideas on making your poker party one of a kind, offering poker night recipes and products to spruce up your shindig from the puppytoes.net store. Afterwards, maybe everyone will be asking when you'll be throwing the next party!

Since there's a lot of information to cover, we'll be doing this in parts - Part I covers inviting your guests.

The Boring Stuff First
If you will indeed be playing poker for money, know your local laws. If it's not legal in your neck of the woods, don't play for cash. Nothing spoils a party quicker than men in blue uniforms with badges showing up at your front door.

The "Guest List"
Provided you got the "Boring Stuff" out of the way, to actually have a poker party, you'll obviously need ~~chip donors~~ guests. If you've got one poker table, you can probably comfortably accommodate up to 10 people. So the next question is - how do you actually invite them? Well, you can give them a call and tell them about it, or even use email, but how about sending an actual poker night invitation? At the puppytoes.net store, we just released our newest invitation design, "Distressed" Poker Night Invitations. This particular design has a swirled-marbled background with some "dirtied up" pocket kings and with a "You're Invited" banner. The inside simply has spaces to include the Date/Time, Place, and RSVP information. We opted to leave out the Buy-In amount from these invitations, but once you figure out your blinds schedule and buy-ins, you can easily add an index card or small piece of paper with all the relevant tournament information right in the invitation.

If dirtied up Cowboys aren't your style, we've got several other invitation styles from which to choose. Make sure to check out all of our poker night invitations! Also, keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks as we release even more new invitation designs.

This article will be continued soon with Part II - Fish & Chips: Food For Hungry Poker Players.