We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bill Heuer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bill below.

Bill, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

iHostPoker Casino Parties is a business that grew from the love for the game of poker.

Back in 2oo3, a neighbor came over and asked me to teach him how to play Texas hold ’em. I had been playing for years and my mom had been a poker dealer since 1975. I actually went to school to learn how to deal poker professionally as a back up plan in case I needed to go back to my hometown (Las Vegas) and deal cards at any point in my life. Fortunately, I use that skill to start my company and I know that this skill would be the keystone of my business.

The little poker game that we started turned into a big game that took place twice a week. It went on for a few years before eventually someone asked if I would bring my tables, cards, and chips over to their house across town at host a poker tournament for them. I did not too long after that someone else wanted me to do the same. iHostPoker was born.

Houston has a great poker scene and probably the largest one of any city. After playing regularly with the same group, I was looking for new places to play and new people to play with. During my search for other games, I came across subpar equipment and people who didn’t really know what they were doing when it came to hosting a poker game. It became frustrating and I saw an opportunity to bring quality equipment and poker knowledge to the market to improve the game of poker for everyone in the area.

The company name was simple by design. I’m a big fan of Apple products and I had a iPod like many of us did at the time. Since all I did was host poker tournaments, I thought the name iHostPoker was pretty cool when you run it all together as one word. It really stuck when one of my friends got into a disagreement at the poker table about a ruling I had made. He told the guy, “It’s not you host poker, it’s iHostPoker.” As when I realized I could grow my business by offering more than just Poker, so I added “Casino Parties” to the company name, and here we are today.

iHostPoker Casino Parties has been in business for 20 years. We host well over 800 events a year, mainly in the Houston and surrounding areas but we have been known to go to other states like New York, Illinois, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

Bill, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada you could say that I was born to do this. My mom was a professional poker dealer for 30+ years. I went to school in Las Vegas to learn to deal poker with the mind-set that if nothing else worked out for me I could always go back home and deal if I had to.

I moved to Houston in 2001 and bought my first home. One of my neighbors knew I had the knowledge to teach him how to play poker due to my background. After a few lessons we started a fun home game for nickels, dimes, and quarters. When I realized I was winning more often than not I started looking for bigger games in Houston and stumbled across a poker tournament in the Katy area. My friends and I took the top spots in that tournament and from then on I needed to find a bigger and more frequent game. Unable to find exactly what I was looking for I decided to build my own tables and started hosting my own private poker tournaments out of my home.

After 2 years of hosting a weekly game for my friends, one of the guys that we played regularly with asked how much I would charge to bring all of my poker tables and chips over to his home in Richmond so he could play with all of his friends. I gave him a quote and he accepted. It was at that event I knew I had something special because one of his friends at that tournament asked if we could do this at his house the following week. iHostPoker was born.

The name “iHostPoker” came from a conversation with a good friend of mine. Since poker was what I knew best we thought it would be best to focus on hosting poker tournaments in people’s home for fun. We came up with a very simple name, iHostPoker.

My first large event (24 poker tables) in 2014 put us on the map. I was hired by the YES Prep schools to host a poker tournament to raise money for the schools. We have successfully hosting this event for the past 19 years and grown the event to 66 poker tables. Over the past 3 years of hosting this event with YES Prep we have raised over $2,000,000 every year.

Now with the amount of tournaments I was hosting things were going well, but clients wanted more than poker. So I gave them what they wanted and starting ordering professional blackjack, craps, and roulette tables. These days I tell my clients that if you have seen it in a casino, I can get it for your event.

We are in our 20th year of business and still growing as a company. My team hosted just over 700 parties in 2022 and are on target to host over 830 events in 2023. We currently own 160 custom made casino tables and have a roster of over 200 professional dealers, bartenders, and show girls ready to host parties or fund raisers 7 days a week. Not only do we do this for fun, but we do it for real aboard our annual poker cruise.

I am excited to announce that we will be launching our new website in 2024. This new and improved website is going to be packed with useful information and resources for all of our potential customers to host an amazing event.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I don’t know of anyone who didn’t half to make some big changes during 2020. The pandemic had us all living in unfamiliar times. The casino party business was affected just as bad as most businesses if not worse. Can you imagine trying to throw a party while the government is encouraging people not to get into groups larger than three people? Our numbers took a tumble to the tune of about 75% of our business just stopped all of a sudden.

Instead of throw in the towel, I decided to use the down time to explore parts of the United States that I’ve always wanted to visit. I ended up taking several road trips around the country to go sight seeing. I went to so many amazing places, and the rest and relaxation was just what I needed to inspire me to prepare for big come back to make up for lost time.

When I finally made my way back to the office, I decided to expand our services to offer more items that would raise the “wow factor” for our clients. We also updated the website, started a regular monthly newsletter, and took a more personal approach to how we connect with our customers. Hiring a full-time sales team may have seemed counterproductive when times were slow, but I expected that the rebound from the pandemic would be a huge opportunity for us to capture a ton of new business as well as past clients rebooking future business. We just had to be ready for the rebound whenever it took place rather than trying to play catch-up.

In a nutshell, I bet that business would come back in a big way so I invested in the company to prepare to take advantage of all of that business, whenever it was ready to return.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

When I was in high school, I knew that one day I would own my own business. I had no idea what kind of business it would be but I knew that owning a business was the right move for me. Throughout my 20’s I was saving what I could so when the day came for me to get involved in some sort of business, I would have capital. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to save as much as I wished I had, but luckily a severance package from the retail company that I was working with, gave me just enough money to start building tables and to get the ball rolling.

Once I was confident that I had a viable and successful business, I immediately went to the local Chase bank that I had a relationship with to apply for a line of credit. That line of credit has been instrumental in the growth of my business and the ability to stay two steps ahead of our competition at all times. There’s nothing worse than having a great idea that will make your business grow and not having the money to implement that idea.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ihostpoker.com
• Instagram: ihostpokercasinoparties
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iHostPokerCasinoParties
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ihostpoker-casino-parties-spring