How To Host The Perfect Poker Night

My boyfriend and I hosted a poker night at the end of July. I love to plan things but had never really done a gathering for this many people before. I was worried about making sure there was enough food and that everyone had a good time. Overall I think the night was a success.

Here is how to host your own poker night:

Step 1: Gather Poker Playing Supplies


Make sure you have the basic supplies for a poker game (cards, poker chips, a table to play on). My boyfriend already had cards and chips and his friend brought over a really nice table for them to play on.

Step 2: Invite People and Figure Out How Many Guests There Will Be

It's important to know how many people are coming so you can plan the amount of food and how many party favors you need to make/ buy.

Step 3: Make A Menu

Once you know how many people you need to feed you can start working on your menu. You'll need to decide if you're going to just have snacks or if you want to put out enough food for everyone to qualify as a dinner. I went the dinner route so that no one would have to worry about eating before or after. In either case you'll want to come up with dishes that are easy to eat and wont leave much of a mess on your fingers. You don't want to get food all over the cards during the game. Things that cane be serves on toothpicks are perfect.


Just for fun you can name all of your dishes after something that relates to poker like I did.

Here's my menu:

The Appetizers

• Four of a Kind Fruit: A fruit tray with pineapple, apples, grapes, strawberries and a yogurt dip.
• Las Vegas Veggies: A vegetable tray that included broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, olives, cucumber, bell peppers, celery, and french onion dip.
• All In Olives: Just simple stuffed olives.
• Poker Face Platter: A meat and cheese tray that had turkey, ham, cheddar cheese, colby-jack cheese, swiss cheese, vegetalbe crackers, wheat crackers, and slices of bread. We actually had two of these.

The Entrees:

• Casino Royal Calzones: Small calzones made from crescent rolls, cheese and meat. Some had meat and some didn't.
• Underdogs: These are just pigs in a blanket. They're made from hot dogs and crescent rolls.
• Suit sandwiches: There were two kinds of sandwiches although I only got pictures of the ones on wheat. The ones on wheat bread had varying things including cheese, lettuce, hummus, and various lunch meats. There were also tiny peanut butter and jelly sandwiches served on white bread. I used cookie cutters to cut all of the sandwiches in to different shapes. All of the ones on wheat were circles but the ones on white were cut into things like dinosaurs and flowers.

Desserts:

• Jackpot Pie:  A very simple and delicious pie made with Kool Aid. You can find the recipe here.
• Poker Chip Cookies: I didn't get a picture of these either but they were simple chocolate chip cookies. After the guys had been playing for awhile I went and baked the cookies so they could have them warm right out of the oven.

Things That Weren't Included On The Menu:

• Pickles
• Potato Chips
• Bowls Of Candy
• Juice
• Soda
• Limeade

A Note: It's wise to ask people if they have any food sensitivities, allergies, or special diets. For instance at our poker night there was a vegetarian, someone who was lactose intolerance, me with all of my various migraine related food sensitivities, and also my friend Nick who refuses to eat vegetables (which sucks for him because Trevis and I almost always take him to a salad buffet place when we hang out lol). Keeping that in mind I made sure that I had food everyone could eat.

  
Step 4: Gather Other Supplies

Now that you know how many people are coming and what kind of food you'll be making you can get together other supplies like serving trays, plates, napkins, silverware, cups, and toothpicks.

Step 5: Decorate

I put up a few decorations just to make the atmosphere feel more poker-y. I found some giant playing cards to hang up in the room they were playing in and got a cute tape boarder to go around the table that held the food. 

 

Step 6: Make/ Buy Party Favors

I really wanted to give everyone something they could take home so I bought some plain wooden boxes to put goodies for everyone in. I painted them black on the outside blue on the inside. Then I took some awesome paper I found and glued it on to the inside of the boxes. Finally I made a skull/ spade stencil that I used to paint the design on to the boxes. I filled each box with a pack of cards, a poker chip keychain, a bandanna with skulls on it, a tiny pirate flag, pixie stix, and pop rocks.

By the way I still have one of each kind of box. If anyone is interest in buying one leave a comment or email me :)

My friend Emily also came and was not playing so I made her her own little goodie bag of sorts. I found a cute purple tin and filled it with various candies and lip glosses and things.

Step 7: Have Something For Those Not Playing To Do

Of course if everyone you invite is playing you don't need to do this. I didn't want to play so I invited my friend Emily over to hang out. We played monopoly and watched movies one room over and had tons of fun.

That's it! I hope this was helpful :)