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In a recent article I spoke about a satellite pokern tournament I played in. We set this up so that one person from our poker group would get to play in a main event for $1,000 in a local casino. This isn’t as easy as it sounds though. A satellite in a casino or online is pretty straight forward. If you win, you get some sort of voucher or automatically signed up for the next event. In a home game satellite, it’s harder to make sure that the plan gets executed correctly.

In order to do this, we drew up a contract. There would be nothing worse than playing a winner take all event designed for someone to go to a certain game and they just pocket the cash. To make things more interesting, we also designed a structure in which each of the satellite entrants would get a small percentage of the satellite winner’s action should they make money in the big game. We settled on allowing the satellite winner to keep 55% of his/her winnings in the main event after taxes and tip, and having 45% distributed evenly among the remaining players. To make things worthwhile for the satellite winner, we also drew some parameters to this concept.

The buy in was $1000, so we thought it would be fair for the winner to keep all cash winnings under $3,000 for. He might be playing for 2 days and certainly deserves some decent money for his hard work. We also decided to cap the payouts at $1,000 per individual. So, basically, if the person cashed out for $20k or $100k, he would only have to give up a maximum of $10,000 to the “financial backers”. It would be pretty hard to imagine someone giving more than that up, and also a very large responsibility.

So, with this contract, one person would get a shot to play in a very big buy-in poker tournament, but everyone who lost the satellite would still have the opportunity to make some money as well. Even though they lost, there’s still get a second chance of sorts. I won the satellite, as well as drew up the contract, so I foresee things going according to plan.

It’s that time of year when the Halloween parties never seem to stop. Mix it up with Halloween activities to break the ice and make the party more fun and interesting. Crafts aren’t just for kids though! You can bring any of these easy tips and ideas to an adult party or even change thing around to make it work for any holiday- birthdays, etc. The games are versatile and even great for family night or to entertain during summer vacation, just adapt the theme to the season or to the holiday and then coordinate the supplies, paints, glitter, etc.

To burn a card is to take it from the top of the deck and remove it from play. This has become a common ritual in Texas Holdem and a familiar move to anyone who has watched any televised match. But why do it? It is actually a preventive measure to keep cheaters at bay. Burning offers two types of protection. If you end up in a poker game where the cards are marked, the cheater has plenty of time to see the backing of the top card during the round of betting. Eliminating that card means eliminating that advantage, though of course he can still conceivably see the pocket cards around him, which is one good reason to keep a hand over your cards if you suspect something fishy, or at the least to keep your weaker card atop your stronger. The second advantage of burning a card is to eliminate what is known as Second Dealing. This occurs when a shady dealer knows what the top card is and has the talent to covertly deal the second card from the top whenever he wishes. He can then push the top card to whomever he might be working with in the game. Burning effectively extinguishes this type of manipulation.