I mentioned this on the AFL Beat, but it bears repeating:

DFO Poker Club

We at DFO are constantly looking for ways to improve the commentist experience. The thing that built this site was the sense of comraderie that existed on the open threads at our former home. We wanted to keep that sense of community going.

Realistically, we all live in different cities and countries, so it’s very difficult for us to get together in real life. The Las Vegas DFO Convention last December was a smashing success (shut up tWBS, I know I didn’t go, but I had a valid reason!), but that may only happen once a year if we are lucky.

The Southern California DFO contingent has been pretty good about getting together for beers. The last time we toasted to our good friend WhyEaglesWhy who flew in from Australia on his getting-engaged-World Tour and showed us the gigantic rock he bought for his bride-to-be. If you are in the LA area next weekend, we will be having the second annual DFO Pub Crawl in lovely Atwater Village on Saturday, March 4. RTD will be putting together a post later this week with details but from what I heard we start out at The Morrison at 2 PM and head east from there.

Ok, so what am I getting at? When we got together last, SonofSpam suggested a poker game and we all thought it was a good idea. Since the rest of you couldn’t possibly all fit at his house, I did some research to see if we could do something online. Turns out you can!

PokerStars has a feature that allows players to set up Poker Clubs and play with friends. So, I set one up and tested it this weekend with the help of a few DFOers. So far so good, so we are ready to announce it to the world! Joining is very easy. Here is what you do:

If you don’t already have it, download the free software from www.pokerstars.com (the download was virus-free)

Create an account (if you live in the US, it will warn you that you can only play for fake money)

Please make sure that your Username is as close to your DFO name as possible

Open the main poker lobby, then click on the Three Dots (…) with the word
More” on the far right and then the Home Games tab

Click the ‘Join a Poker Club’ button

Enter the Club ID number: 2103481

Enter the Invitation Code: National Disgrace

That’s it! Once I’ve approved your membership request, we’ll be ready to start playing Home Games online together. I’ve created several tables (for the lowest minimums the site offers) so that people can just casually get together at any time and start playing. At the moment, we are looking to play on Friday and Saturday nights, but anyone can go in at any time and start playing whenever you feel like it. Just leave a comment on whatever post is up at the time and see if anyone wants to play.

The goal is at some point to have a DFO-wide Commentist Poker Tournament with a grand prize to the winner. The key will be to coordinate a date that works for the majority of DFOers.

PokerStars gives you 30,000 in play chips to start. Since the minimum buy-in (set by PokerStars, not me and I can’t change it) is 20,000, that doesn’t give us a lot of wiggle room. There is always, however, a solution. PokerStars allows you to get 12,500 free chips every four hours. All you have to do is log on, grab your free chips, and log off. You can build up a nice bankroll that way.

There is a PokerStars app that allows you to play on the site with your mobile phone. However, I have tested it and I discovered that Home Games are not supported. The free chip offer IS supported, so you can log on while at work on your phone, grab your free chips, and then have a nice bankroll for that evening.

PokerStars “generously” gives you the opportunity to buy play chips with real money (and I suppose that is a big way that they are able to make money in the US), so you always have that option, but the point here is to have fun and I don’t want anyone to have to spend actual money to have fun online. That’s just against everything the Internet stands for!

We currently have 17 members in the DFO Poker Club. The maximum allowed by PokerStars is 50. I highly encourage everyone that likes to have fun, make dick jokes while playing poker on one screen and enjoying Moose gifs on another, and hang out with imaginary friends to join in. Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

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Quick note:  I will not be able to add new members until I get home which is roughly 6 PM Pacific.  If you put in your request, please be patient.  I’ll get to you tonight.  Thanks!