This might sound weird, but of all the cool things I got to see and do in 2024, my favorite was making sure a member of The Org had a place to eat.
It happened deep into the 2024 World Series Main Event. One of our members was sweating how to actually get a decent meal to sustain him through a long night of play during the short dinner break. I started chatting with his wife in the PokerOrg Legends Lounge, and within a few minutes we'd hatched a plan for her to go to the steakhouse and get food while those of us in the lounge reserved a table for the player to eat in relative peace. It was simple, easy, and surprisingly one of the highlights of 2024 for me.
In short, taking care of a member of The Org and getting a chance to just talk for a few minutes about poker and life was exactly what we envisioned when we saw The Org becoming a thing at PokerOrg.
And now we're ready to do that on a much larger scale in 2025.
The PokerOrg Lounge2024: One hell of a beginning
As 2024 winds down, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on what has been an incredible year for PokerOrg and our growing community, The Org. First and foremost, thank you. Each of you who has joined, contributed, or simply lurked in the corners of our articles, Ask the Org discussions, and live events has helped make this year one we'll remember fondly.
One of the highlights of 2024 was undoubtedly our summer at the World Series of Poker. We transformed a corner of the Horseshoe into the PokerOrg Clubhouse, and it turned out to be something better than we expected. During the Main Event, we welcomed players with coffee, snacks, charging stations, and a much-needed break from the grind. Vitally, we had private bathrooms for our members during breaks.
Behind the Scenes at the PokerOrg loungeIt wasn’t just a place to recharge your phone; it was a place to meet folks you might not have had a chance to talk to otherwise. Over the course of our time there, we hung out with Chris Moneymaker, Elky, Jason Somerville, Joey Ingram, Tom Dwan, Isai Scheinberg, Jamie Gold, Ryan Riess, Jennifer Shahade, Alex O'Brien, and so many others who generously shared their time and insights.
Membership with benefits
Through the year (and especially inside the PokerOrg lounge) we got a chance to meet lots of our members that we'd never met face-to-face, including this couple who declared, "This can be our engagement photo!"
Congratulations to the newest member of The OrgEverybody loves pictures, and our photographers took care of our members of The Org in 2024. If we were covering a live event this year, our members only had to ask for a picture of themselves playing it, and we we're on it.
Over at PokerOrg.Shop, we had a place for you to pick up our swag that you might have missed during our live event giveaways, and we also had a spot where our members could download hi-res photos of themselves in action.
Even if you missed a chance to ask for a photo during an event you played, you can still go back and see if you ended up in our collection of photos.
A lot of our members played in the WSOP Main Event Last Longer competition, and the sweat for the winner was about a lot more than the $600 dinner we had on offer.
On one of the last few days of play, our member Adam Rude woke up feeling terrible, ended up in the hospital, and somehow came back to the WSOP (with his hospital bracelet still on his wrist) to continue his Main Event run and win the last longer.
We'd originally planned to host him and his wife for a big, expensive celebration dinner, but Adam needed some rest, so we eventually treated him and his wife to a nice dinner in Nashville.
One of the neat things we gave out inside the lounge: a comic book looking back on some of the most iconic hands ever played in poker. We weren't surprised to see a sorta famous guy walking around with one during the WSOP.
Ask the Org: Just the beginning
About six weeks ago, we quietly introduced Ask the Org. If you've not yet visited us there, you're missing out. We have a lot of content on any given day, and Ask the Org is the place where you can talk about it and just about anything else you want.
We're thinking of Ask the Org as part-Reddit, part-Twitter/X, part 2+2, and 100% The Org. While we're still in the beta stage of the community's development, it's open to all of our members.
No matter whether it's a discussion of the worst in poker films, the best in poker play, or whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie (duh, it is), we're talking about just about everything over there...as long as you're cool. The most important thing about Ask the Org is that it's not meant for trolls, bots, or fighting with faceless mean people. It's meant to be the kind of discussion you have around a poker table, even when you aren't around a poker table.
It's free to all of our members, and if you sign up before the end of the year and give us one answer to one question, we'll award you with both an OG member badge and a 2024 badge to mark you as one of our founding members in Ask the Org.
Don't miss The Org in 2025
While this is a nostalgic part of the year, we spend more of our time looking forward than we do back.
Without giving too much away, 2025 is shaping up to be the year for The Org. We’re doubling down on our mission to bring players together, both online and at live events.
If you’re already a member of The Org, you’ve had an all-access look at our early days. to If you’re not yet, do it now. There is a register button right at the top of the page. And you can do it in seconds with your Google account.
Signing up is free and comes with The Org newsletter we put out every Tuesday. That's where I will give you advance notice on what we're planning and occasionally a chance for free stuff. And everybody loves free stuff.
Thanks for making 2024 PokerOrg's biggest year yet. We appreciate you more than you know.
From all of us at PokerOrg, have a fantastic holiday season and New Year.
