Recently, for my home game I decided to run a series of poker games. The Penguin Poker League, if you will.

This wasn’t necessarily an easy task. First I had to decide on a point system. I wanted to make it fair for people who didn’t necessarily play every week, but at the same time make it easy to understand. Also, I wanted to provide slight weight for the weekly winner. In the end, I decided on a simple system of (# of players - 1) + (+1 for the winner). This takes into account how hard it is to win in a larger field and give a bump to someone for winning.

The only thing about this system that I don’t like is that it doesn’t take into account the number of times a person plays. Maybe next series… right now though I felt that the need for keeping the system simple was over whelming as I have a lot of inexperienced players who play my weekly home game.

The next challenge after deciding how to score it was how long it should run. I wanted to make it a prize worth fighting for and hopefully time it with the fall Bayou Poker Classic at Harrah’s. I decided in the end to run it 23 weeks and take out $20 each game. The last game, the 23rd game, will be a large buy-in event for double points. That way, it possible that it could be anyone’s game and hopefully have more people in the running, making the whole thing a nail biter up until the bitter end… and with a healthy prize of $500 (or the entry fee of a WSOP circuit even satellite).

Of course, to keep players interested in the series throughout the whole 23 weeks, I wanted to keep very exact and weekly statistics of all that was happening. I looked at numerous online solutions to make these stats available. Some good and some horrible. The one I decided to go with in the end is diypokertour.com.

First off, it’s free. A big factor in my decision making process, cause I’m not making any money off running a poker league… I don’t take a rake. Second, it’s easy to work with. Not only can I figure out my own point system. I’m able to easily go login and update statistics. I can easily add players, add games, even send emails to all the players involved. DIY Poker keeps track of the regular number of wins, cash won, number of games played… but also the weighted average finish (perhaps I use that as a scoring system next series). Third, their support is great. I had a few questions and they were very quick to respond.

Some of things that I’d love to see (which they were very receptive to hearing), the ability to add your own logo to the leaderboard. The ability to add the leaderboard to your own website (like this one). But overall, I have to say I’m very happy with dyipoker.com in regards to league management.

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