Scott,
Our Poker Run went pretty well. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and no one was arrested! ask "Site (Mike Clark)" about that one.
Our format was somewhat determined by the Columbus Architectural Tour. I used their map that has 70+ locations marked and then wrote clues to point you to the right location. We had 10 stops including the hotel and the Visitor's Center - where everyone received a map and their 1st card. We staggered the start by 2 minutes per car. Not every stop had a person there, 6 did, including the last stop which was the park where lunch was. I made 3 different versions of directions (so people wouldn't just follow each other), but actually told them that each map was different, I know I'm sly. I think only 2 people found all the locations correctly, but all ended up at the Lunch location in a reasonable time frame. We had some good hands, 1 group had 2 pair and 2 groups had 3 of a kind, 3s and the other had jacks. I purchased 8 different decks of cards, the differences were somewhat subtle to totally different. I would lean toward totally different decks next time. This eliminates the possibility of someone showing up with a couple decks of Bicylcle™ cards and making their own hand.

Things that will help you make the WCC Poker Run a success, I'm sure there are more than just this:

• Get a GOOD map
• Make the clues challenging, but not impossible (all answers for my clues were on the map)
• Allow plenty of time (We could have almost doubled our estimated time)
• Make sure all of your Check-points have Cell Phones and the other volunteers #s
• Give EVERYONE YOUR cell #
• Come up with a tie breaker
• Test the full route
• Give different sets of clues (but use the same clues)

I'm sure there is more. Ask away if you have any ?s

I can provide as many different decks of cards as you need.

There had been some discussion about custom printed poker chips on an earlier thread. I was never quite clear on their purpose. Is this something we still want to do? Give me some details and I can check into it.

You must have been reading my mind, I was thinking about decks of cards from different casinos with their logos on them. I have not been out to vegas for a few years now. If you could pick up about 6 or 8 decks that would be great. I am going to make the maps from Microsoft MapPoint 2004 with different routes to the same location. Some will seem longer than others but the times will all be pretty close. Any and all suggestion, please post them here. As for voluteers, I thought about that too, most of the people are going to want to drive in this so it wont be easy. Sonce I am hosting it, I guess I wont be in it so that is one, and there was another person from another thread said he would also. I can also put whoever I bring with me (Lisa?) out at a post somewhere close by and maybe her friend. I will figure it out. Oh and John, the chips were more of a momento type thing as a suggestion, I didnt bring it up but did think it was a cool idea.

From Seans first Poker Run thread:

"The poker chip itself shows that each player made it to the checkpoint, cards are easy to fake/cheat and adds a keepsake/memento for the event. "

Sean, could you post one of your maps here or send it to me in an email? You should have it, if not, let me know and I will make sure you get it.

I checked out a couple of places today and here are the options on custom poker chips. I told them we would need about 1000. These prices are for quantities of 500 and up. We would not get the next price break unless we ordered 10K.

Cheap Plastic - available only with 3 initials or one of their stock logos - 40 cents each.

Clay / Resin composite - Not bad quality. Chips would be 45 cents each.
Available with gold foil hot stamped custom art.

Pro Casino Weight - Top quality clay chips. 79 cents each.
Available with full color custom art.

For both of the custom art options there is a $150 set up charge. We could have the same thing on both sides and only pay one custom art charge. If we wanted 914 Club / WCC on one side and the sponsors logo on the reverse the charge would be $300.

The detail on the gold foil stamped chips is rather limited.
The printing quality is excellent on the better chips.
Both are available in more color combination than you can imagine.
Getting a sponsor to pay for these seems like a natural.
Is 1000 a good quantity? Do we need more? Less?

Bottom Line

1000 pieces of shit that would get thrown away would cost $400.
They would only do 3 letters not numbers (914 is not possible).

1000 OK quality composite chips with 1 color art would be $600 if we wanted the same thing on both sides or $750 if we had different art on each side.

1000 top quality professional chips with full color detailed art would be $940 if we had the same design on both sides or $1090 if we had the sponsors logo on one side and our 914 art on the other.

I forgot to tell you that the estimated production time for the gold foil hot stamped chips is 2 weeks and it will take 4 weeks for the full color photo quality ones.

BTW - how many decks of cards will we need? Do you want 'em all different or do you want 2 each? Two each would mean you would have 104 matching cards at each check point. I guess the real question is how many check points will you have on the Poker Run? Gotta have at least 5. Seven might be a good number to aim for.

The chips would be cool, but finding a sponsor to pay 1k for chips might not be that easy. As for the cards, I would think we would not want any duplicates at all. Unless the dupes were at the check points for one of the routes. Each route would have a different set of cards. Or if they were all different, then they would have one card from each type of deck, ie, no two cards the same in one hand. That would really mix them up and a possibily of duplicate hands from different routes. I will put together a few routes to the same location and see what I come up with. Give me a few days to work this out.

we had a different deck at each stop, we had 2 stops without cards as well.
The different decks help you to know which checkpoint was missed and curbs cheating.

The only reason we would need to have duplicate decks is if there would be more than 52 cars that go to any one checkpoint. In that case having 2 matching decks at those locations would work to prevent things from getting confused.

You work it out and let me know what you need.

1000 chips was a high estimate. If we have 70 cars in the poker run and there are 7 check points, that would require only 490 chips. We could get 500 of the top quality chips with the same full color art on both sides for $545.

That does sound a little more reasonable. I am going to work on the maps tonight and see what I can come up with for multiple routes to the same location.

Hey Scott (and everyone else) check this out. Someone did most of the work!!\Mulholland Raceway

Howard, I see on another thread that Callicott Motor Sports has donated money to sponsor the Poker Run. Does this mean we will need to get Poker Chips made? What exactly are they sponsoring?