Poker Run Party Ideas

A poker run is a fun way to earn money for a charitable cause. While there are many variations, typically a poker run involves participants collecting playing cards from specified locations. At the end of the run, the participant with the best poker hand wins the prize. Poker runs typically involve motorcyclists, but. Find quick & easy Poker Game Night 2020 recipes & menu ideas, search thousands of recipes & discover cooking tips from the ultimate food resource for home cooks, Epicurious.

Are you planning on holding a Poker Run? Well, hold onto your handlebars, because Odds On Promotions has come up with some great ideas to help ensure that you run the ultimate Poker Run party at your next event that will have participants itching to come back the following year for more!

• It gets to be a lot of fun and everyone likes to play poker. You could add a joker for better odds or let them pay $3.00 more for 1 more card. We do this about 6 weekends a year and raise about $1500.00 for our state project for that year.
• May 22, 2017 - Explore Ldybg93's board 'Poker Run', followed by 142 people on Pinterest. See more ideas about poker run, poker, poker party.

1.) Hold a Lucky Joker Poker Gameboard Promotion
Are you wanting to draw big attention to your event by giving a few lucky finalists the chance to win up to a $1,000,000? Lucky Joker Poker, a poker-themed Pick ‘Til You Win game, does just that! The game board holds 40 envelopes, each of which is filled with one of three prize symbols. Contestants choose envelopes one at a time, until they collect five matching prize symbols, winning the corresponding prize. If your lucky contestant finds the five Royal Flush symbols first, Odds On will be there to pick up the tab!

Be sure to advertise the promotion at your event by making an online flyer that you can post somewhere visibly on your website and direct all potential attendees there. Qualify your partipicants by holding a simple raffle or poker-themed prequalifer. Another great idea would to have the top 3 finishers of the actual Poker Run come back to try their hand at Lucky Joker Poker.

Decorate the site of the promotion in joker or poker-themed props and/or decorations. Be sure to create a banner (or have Odds On create one for you) for the occasion to catch the attention of your attendees. Include not only the name, date and/or time of your event, but also announce the prize to be won at the promotion! ‘Dress’ the site of the promotion by having volunteers wear joker costumes and have others hand out fun joker hats as complimentary gifts for those who participate in the promotion!

Holding a Lucky Joker Poker promotion in conjunction with your Poker Run will help increase the number of attendees at your event. After all, there’s nothing quite like seeing a big grand prize advertised… OR having to worry about the risk of pay-out!

2.) Insure a Dice Roll
Here’s a great promotion that combines the thrills of high-stakes poker with the fast-paced action of a dice roll! Contestants simply roll their way to fabulous prizes using Odds On’s customizable over-sized dice. When someone rolls the grand-prize winning combination of symbols (i.e. 10-J-K-Q-A, R-O-Y-A-L, or F-L-U-S-H), they’ll win your jackpot (up to $1,000,000) and Odds On will send you a check! Talk about easy money!

Looking for a unique qualifier? Instead of holding a traditional Poker Run, have a Dice Run! Rather than collecting cards during your Poker Run, players will roll dice at each stop. The objective is to have the highest cumulative score, which is determined by the total sum of the dice rolls. Bring the top 1-3 “high rollers” back to attempt the Dice Roll!

Don’t forget to award consolation prizes (fuzzy dice, anyone?) to everyone who doesn’t manage to roll the winning combination of letters, numbers and/or symbols!

Insuring a Dice Roll will be sure to attract foot traffic at your event, so you’ll definitely want to take the time to dress up your promotion! If you still plan on incorporating poker into your event, have your contestants roll the dice onto a poker table (ideal for 1″ dice). Serving hors d’oeuvres at your event? Why not make some square-shaped marshmallow treats with chocolate chips which symbolize dice? The possibilities are endless!

3.) Insure a Lucky Hand Poker Run
A Poker Run whether by land, sea, or just at a special event is a proven fundraiser or simply just, fun! Register contestants and issue a list of five sponsor locations to visit. At each location, contestants randomly draw a playing card. After visiting all locations, they proceed to the final stop and enter their five cards into Odds On’s Verification Computer. If their “lucky” hand matches the preselected winning hand, Odds On will pay for the prize! Better yet, the computer will also tally the highest hands for easy administration of self-sponsored prizes.

Looking to add in a little something extra to the traditional Poker Run? While insuring a Lucky Hand Poker Run is undoubtedly a good approach to piquing your participants’ interest, you might want to consider having your participants participate in multiple, small insured promotions at each sponsor location they stop at. Whether it be a small envelopes promotion, a zoom ball promotion or even a “lucky motorcycle” promotion, have the individual who is currently in the lead at the time try their luck at any one of our great contests! On a budget? Simply hold one of them at the final sponsor location stop!

Questions? Ideas? Pricing inquiries? Give us a call at 888-827-2249… or as always, feel free to shoot us an email.

Decades ago, motorcycle rally organizers were looking for something to make their events more compelling for participants. The novelty of simply getting together a large group for a long ride had worn off. Organizers needed a bigger and better hook.

Motorcycle Poker Run Ideas

But what if, they surmised, the long ride had several stops and at each stop participants picked up a playing card before riding to the next one—all with the goal of coming away with best five-card stud poker hand in the group? And what if the holder of that hand—or the top three holders of the top three hands—came away with some kind of prize?

Would that add to enhance the fun of the rally? The answer was a definitive yes and the popularity of motorcycle rallies with poker-run format skyrocketed. So it was only natural they would find their way into the go-fast powerboating world, and that was exactly what happened in the early 1990s when Canadian Bill Taylor founded Poker Runs America and launched a series of events. By the end of the decade, Stu Jones, another Canadian who had immigrated to the United States, founded the Florida Powerboat Club, which launched its own series of poker runs.

Though Poker Runs America still exists and produces events, their popularity and attraction have faded. The Florida Powerboat Club is still thriving, though—as you’d guess from the name of the outfit—all of its poker runs are in the Sunshine State. But the larger poker-run growth segment of the last 20 years by far has come from local, volunteer organizers who produce events to raise money for worthy causes. From the three-year-old 1,000 Islands Charity Poker Run in Upstate New York to the Boyne Thunder Poker Run, which will celebrate its 17th anniversary, one-off events are the hottest tickets in the poker-run world.

Poker-run newbies come with plenty of questions, as they should. What follows are the five most common queries from poker run novices—and the most simple and basic answers.

Poker Runs: Frequently Asked Questions

Is my boat big enough for a poker run?

Poker Run Party Ideas Party

A quick review of a website covering the high-performance powerboating world (such a speedonthewater.com, as a good example), would lead you to believe that if your boat isn’t at least 30 feet long it has no business in a poker run. And while there are a lot of the boats much bigger than that at most poker runs, smaller vessels are more than welcome at most events.

That said, shorter runs in protected water are a better fit for smaller-boat owners. The Florida Powerboat Club’s Key West Poker Run, for example, covers 200 miles, a portion of which is in the open Atlantic Ocean. For a 20-foot sportboat, that likely would be much too tall of an order. But the relatively short Old Hickory Poker Run, which is moving from Nashville to Chattanooga this year, on the Tennessee River would be ideal.

Poker Run Fundraiser Ideas

Is my boat fast enough for a poker run?

No matter what kind of powerboat you own, the answer is yes because poker runs are not races and were never intended to be. The more you get into the events, the more you’ll hear organizers emphasize this. Historically speaking, bad things happen when people start racing in poker runs. If you want to race, buy an offshore raceboat built for the job and join a circuit with the requisite safety assets for racing. Poker runs are social events on open public waterways. They are not races.

How much does it cost to enter a poker run?

Poker-run entry fees vary greatly from event to event depending on location, amenities and more. But expect to pay anything from $100 to $800 to enter. If you participate in a destination poker run where the fleet travels to a location and stays there overnight (or multiple nights) lodging and dock fees will be separate from your entry fee.

Is drinking allowed during a poker run?

All reputable poker run organizers strictly prohibit captains from consuming alcoholic beverages while the run is underway. That means captains are not allow to drink at lunch or fuel stops—“just one beer” is one too many, and if the offending party is caught in the act he or she will be booted from the event, and likely all future events, by the organizer.

As for passengers, they are generally allowed to consume alcoholic beverages outside of their vessels, meaning at the lunch stop. But as a captain, you absolutely have the right to tell your passengers not to drink—and it’s a solid strategy in the event something goes wrong during the day—during the event. As the person at the helm and responsible for the safety of everyone on board, the last thing you need is an inebriated passenger when it comes time to dock, much less respond to an on-water incident if needed.

Something else worth noting? Reputable poker-run organizers will require you to show your title and your current insurance policy when you register for their events. And while that can seem like “a hassle,” you should far and fast away from any organizer who does not ask for these documents, as that organizer likely is running an insured event.

Just one more thing: Wearing personal flotation deviceswhile underway is mandatory for all captains and passengers at all properly insured poker runs. If a poker run you’re considering has no such requirement, find another event to support.

Finding a Poker Run Near Me

At present, there is no master list of domestic poker runs. Here again, a search on an online portal such as speedonthewater.com or offshoreonly.com would prove useful. But here’s a quick list of 10 of the most popular poker runs in the United States:

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Editor's Note: All photos by Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.