Poker Party Fundraiser
Thursday, January 31, 2013
By: Erin Havens

Every year we have 6 Texas Hold-Em poker parties that raise about $400/party for the 3-Day. Our most successful party not only raised a lot of money for the cause, but resulted in a WEDDING!

Texas Hold-Em for The Susan G. Komen 3-Day

• Invite as many people as you know, assuming a bunch can't/won't play
• Encourage all participants to treat the event as a big pot luck - beg that folks bring at least enough for themselves to eat and drink but that they can always bring extra
• Charge a reasonable amount, like $100/plaer
• Donate a portion of that buy-in to the 3-Day, like $25
• Remind everyone before you shuffle up and deal the first hand each game why we are doing this - sending a message about breast cancer, encourage participation in finding a cure, and/or to just donate your money to a needy walker
• We have everyone draw numbers so they sit in a random order in pre-numbered seats - Wouldn't want anyone sandbagging by sitting with a bunch of rookies. :)
• Everyone starts off with the same amount of chips in a variety of dominations, we use .25, .50, $1, $10, and $25
• Start out slow with smaller denominations so novices and nervous players get comfortable and are empowered to play, we start at .25/.50 blinds
• Raise the blinds every so often so you speed the tournament along, we play for 40-45 minutes, then take a 10-15 minute re-fueling break, then double the blinds after every break - so the next round would start at .50/$1, and then go to $2/$4, and so on...
• Rotate the dealer so everyone plays and deals
• Play until there is only one person left, they win
• Assign a "referee in case there is a dispute - though we have never had the need to use one - oddly
• Never put more than 10 players at a table
• Consolidate tables and play progresses - in other words - if you have 16 players, two tables of 8 to start. If one table gets to 4, we would reshuffle the seating arrangement so there would then be two tables of 6. As soon as you had a total of 10 players left, or at the point one table got back to 4, we consolidate to one table - The FINAL TABLE is always much anticipated
• We "give" the donation money (cumulative total of the $25 per person in our case) to the person that goes out first (last place) that works for a company that allows matching contributions - and encourage them as it is also a tax write-off
• We direct that match to the needy team member with specific directions on how to get the matching started
• We pay the real money to the top 3-5 spots depending on how many people play - i.e. if 10 people play we would split $750 probably $400 for first, $250 for second, and $100 for third - if we had 28 people play we would probably split it $850 for first, $600 for second $400 for third, $175 for fourth, and $75 for fifth
• We do this for the first 5-6 months of the year, January through June
• We stop in June because it is sometimes a challenge to get the matching gifts into the system before the 3-Day walk
• We host a "tournament of champions" event in July or August that is by invite only, the winners from the tournaments plus 4 invited top qualifiers. $100 buy-in and 100% goes to the winner. We buy custom designed/made theme shirts as a token of our appreciation for playing/donating all year - our way of saying thank you for donating, and wrecking our house 6x a year
• Repeat next year or until the wife gets mad at all the gambling talk, spilled drinks, leftover food, late nights, and occasional swearing