A couple months ago, I mentioned the idea of playing a
Chaos tournament as described (invented?) by
@moose in the linked thread. They loved the idea, and on Tuesday night we played our first. Since our group has a lot of Hold'em only players, I've initially removed ante games (e.g. stud) and some of the more confusing games (e.g. Drawmaha). I plan to re-add them over time, but I want these guys to get used to Pineapple, Omaha, and fixed-limit first.
Here's a shot of a hand using Rule 37 (Deal burn cards face up, board cards face down. Players make the best hand using the three burn cards, instead of the five board cards).
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In this next shot, you may notice a Google Home sitting on the table. One of our players also maintains our league web site, and he implemented an app on the site and a corresponding Google Action that selects a random rule for each hand. It will also select random numbers for rules that require dice rolls. It was faster and easier than dice and printed rule sheets, and it really kept the game moving.
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The evening started off right when I folded preflop, the small blind won the first hand, and then on his deal he pulled rule 38 (exchange chips with the smallest stack). Several of us were tied and I won the flip, so I was up T200 without having played a hand yet. I did really well early and built up a sizable stack, but fast blind increases and a long run of card death caught up to me.
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I think we'll be tweaking the rules a bit. There were a couple that didn't work well for us, like 68 (Until the pot is won, put 1 SB in every time you say a word with the letter 'e'). A couple of us tried at first, but then everybody just decided to be silent until the hand was over, and it killed the social vibe of the game for a couple minutes. Also, we weren't sure if the jackpot was supposed to start empty or not, so we seeded it with a starting stack (T7000). That was WAY too much.
Overall, though, it was
great, and the group is really looking forward to playing again next month. As we get it dialed in and eventually add a few more games, I think it'll continue to be fun, and I'm also hopeful that the new game one-offs will open some of the Hold'em only crowd to trying new games.