Meet-ups are something that most people are familiar with. People felt the desire to interact in new ways 20 years ago, which sparked the trend. Meet-up groups could be formed for a variety of reasons, including political action, reading clubs, and professional networking. They continue to do so for far more reasons than we could ever describe here.

It’s not unexpected that the power of the meet-up has been utilized for poker. It just so happened that doing it in a way that developed a unique community of players took a long time.

Andrew Neeme came up with the concept of hosting a meet-up, specifically a meet-up game, or “MUG.” He teamed up with fellow poker vlogger Brad Owen to connect with those who were watching their vlogs in the poker world. It was a means to create a new community of people who shared similar poker interests, as well as bring people together at and away from the tables. It had been about six years since then.

Neeme and Owen are still hosting MUGs today. However, they’ve grown to include hundreds of people in certain cases. Owen just teamed with the World Poker Tour to add MUG power to its ranks. Owen is the newest WPT Ambassador, and this week at Choctaw, he held his first WPT-sponsored MUG.

It was a huge success, but it took years of hard effort and careful care to maintain its purity and individuality. That will continue to be the case thanks to Owen and the WPT.