Casino Night

Ah, Casino Night! Possibly one of the hottest themes on the function circuit at the moment. Think Season 2 finale of The Office, only less awkward and more fun.

Believe it or not, a Casino Night is gaining traction in all areas; as a charity fundraiser event, as the scene for a wild private casino party – we're even seeing a rise in Casino Nights as corporate poker event functions. Which isn't as weird as you might think – it all comes down to how the casino party is planned, and the gambling games you want to have on offer.

Charity Casino

For example, let's think about a Casino Night fundraiser. Here you'd expect people to pay for their chips, and to be gracious and lose a lot so that whatever charity or worthy cause you were raising money for would benefit.

In this example you'd want plenty of games of chance at your fun casino. Keno, Roulette, even Craps are great games to play on for an evening like this, because these are games that traditionally make people bleed chips. Ever been wiped out at a casino playing Roulette? Now you know why it happened.

But this also makes these the perfect games for a Charity Casino Night. Whenever you visit a land-based casino, the action is always hottest around these tables because even though it's tough to win anything at them – they're fun to play. And if you're going to be asking people to dig into their wallets for you, the least you can do is make it entertaining for them to do so.

Corporate Casino

Now let's think about the popular corporate casino night example for a second. Why are increasing numbers of companies turning to this kind of event for office parties and team building evenings? It can't be for the money – in this kind of environment most people would elect to play for “fun chips”. So what's the strategy here?

Well, let's say you wanted to show your employees a whale of a time, but you also (evil boss that you are) wanted to pick up some information about them; how they think, how they react under pressure. Now, imagine throwing a Casino Night where the main event was a Texas Hold'em tournament?

There are few table games or events more demanding of a player than a Texas Hold'em Poker Night, and even fewer that are more revealing about their character. To succeed at this game, you have to be patient, calculating, able to read others, able to assess situations using only the tiniest threads of information available. But most importantly, you have to be able to know when the time is right to take a calculated risk.

You can learn all of this about people by observing them play. There are far worse ways of making a decision about whether or not to promote someone than assessing their heads-up strategy. Plus, you can have a huge amount of fun in the process of a corporate poker night.

How We Can Help: So what exactly is involved in planning a Casino Night, then?

Is it just a get together of a bunch of friends where you happen to play the same sort of games that are available in a land-based casino? Can you just take a few packs of cards and casino chips and hope for the best? Well, not if you want to impress, you don't.

No, to do it right and to run an amazing casino night, you need to bring in the professionals. You need someone who is going to manage your casino night theme party evening, take charge and show the crowd how it’s done. Depending on what your needs are, there are a growing number of casino event companies that can help you with this. Some can actually help you plan and deploy the entire casino evening and clean it up afterwards.

For starters, you're going to need some game tables, cards and chips all which you can easily hire from various casino night suppliers. The next stage is that you are going to need some professional card dealers or croupiers for the night (see our Dealer Search Page). Yes, we know you're thinking, how hard could it possibly be to shuffle a deck of cards, but this isn't the only reason you're hiring them! Here is a sample casino night format to give you an idea of all the things you must consider when hosting a casino night.

A true professional dealer guides the game in a smooth, professional manner. It's a job that's part showman, part ringmaster, part guide. They know all of the rules of the games you'll be offering, and they'll be there to ensure that every table under their control runs smoothly and that the players there have a great time.

And ok, fine, yes, they'll also do cool card shuffling tricks!!