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Hosting Poker Tournament
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10-05-2013 12:14am#1
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Ok make a cup of tea and sit down, this may take a while. Let's start from the ground up. The_pits is right, your big blind has to be double the small blind for starters, that goes for any game type.
First up, what's your buy in/reg fee? How is 17 people registered going to break even for you? This is an important starting point, as people playing a €10 rebuy means a much looser game than a €120 freezeout, and that can dictate the pace/quality of the entire game, which we'll get to later.
Let's assume the buy in is anywhere between €20+5 - €50+5. €5 is a good reg fee for these levels, as €2-3 isn't enough to make any money, and €10 is way too high a take, as punters will be spending more money to enter a game of less value. A 10% rake is usually standard for games of €50+ but as it's just a small friendly pub game I doubt you'll be setting the buy in that high.
Next up, what type of game are you planning? Straight freezeout, double chance, Double stack, rebuy, one rebuy/addon or multiple rebuys? Your starting stack/blind structure will depend on these things.
Like the guys above, I'd recommend starting blinds of 25/50, makes things much easier to manage in the long run.
25/50
50/100
75/150 (Maybe)
150/300
Break (maybe)
200/400
250/500 (maybe)
300/600
Break
400/800
500/1k (possible antes starting here @100)
600/1200
Break
800/1600
1k/2k
1200/2400
Break
1500/3k
2k/4k
3k/6k
5k/10k
8k/16k
10k/20k
That structure will take about 5-6 hours. Bear in mind that pub poker tournaments never start on time, so If you want the game to start at half eight, tell people the game starts at half seven.
WRT blind levels, personally I hate 15 minute levels, Blinds go up way too quick, turns the game into a crapshoot too early and no one enjoys the game. 20 minutes is better. A lot of games I've played had 15 minute levels for the first hour/4 levels, then 20 minute levels thereafter.
To make things easier for organising a game and calculations and stuff, instead of measuring stacks in chips, measure them in multiples of the big blind. This is very important for maintaining a good game structure later in the game.
For a straight freezeout, you want to give people a starting stack of about 200bb/10k. 200bb is the around the middle of deepstack territory. Gives people plenty of chips to play with, yet not so many that you'll still have forty people left in the game at midnight.
double chance or one rebuy/add on - starting stack of 5k/100bb, option of additional 5k.
multiple rebuys - 50bb/2.5k. Good players will accumulate chips, mediocre ones will get eaten up by the blinds and forced to rebuy, rubbish players will lose their chips quickly enough and rebuy. (Note - only hold a rebuy tourney for buy ins from about €10-20)
This is where we go a bit in-depth for the game structure side of things. Brace yourselves! As a tournament organiser your main focus is a good game structure so you get repeat customers. One thing to recognise is that after the game starts, you don't have much control over how fast the game will progress. We're going to do a little maths to monitor the quality of two hypothetical games with the exact same game structure, but different outcomes.
The game will be a €20+5 freezeout, T10k stack, 40 players.
40 players x T10,000 = T400,000 in play.
Now, our first game is full of tight nitty players. No one is making any moves, no one is being flamboyant with their chips. In the first hour of play, only 2 players have been eliminated.
T400k divided by 38 players means an average stack of 10525. "Not bad!", you say, but in the first hour of 15 minute levels, the big blind has now leapt to 300, meaning the average stack is now only 35 big blinds. This is a massive drop in one hour of Poker. The game will turn into a crapshoot very quickly at this rate.
Hour 2, three more players gone, 400k\35 players = 19bb average stack. Moving very quickly into shove/fold mode after only 2 hours.
Our second game is full of loose agressive players, with chips flying all over the place. In the first hour here, 8 players have been eliminated.
T400k/32 players = T12.5k average stack. With a 300bb after hour 1, that's 41.5bb average. Much better, much more play!
Both of these examples are very rough guesstimates of a game turnout. They're the extreme ends of the tight & loose scales, but it's a good example of how games can change depending on the players, with no input at all from the tournament director. It'll take a few games with you monitoring and watching the play, but after a while you can tweak the structure a little to suit the game more.
If the game is too tight, you can remove a level or two (e.g going from 200-400 straight to 300/600, ignoring 250/500), you can also implement antes later in the game. With blinds at 500/1k, a 100 ante is recommended. An ante of 10% of a big blind with a full ring of 9/10 players means there's effectively an extra big blind in the pot before anyone sees a card. This makes the pot much more appealing, and also gives the nits a kick to get a move on, as T100 per hand will slowly eat into your stack.
If the game is too loose with people getting eliminated all over the shop, you can slow the game down by increasing the clock to 30min levels, or adding in an extra level, like 600/1200 or 1400/2800.
If you want the game to end at half one you want the final table to start about half twelve. That means you want 30-32 people eliminated between half eight to half twelve. 32 people in four hours Is doable with decent stack/clock management.
Again, don't expect the game to be perfect first time round, it'll take a few attempts to tweak it so it's just right. You'll also learn the correct times to colour up and put in breaks etc. To start, put in a break every hour/90 minutes.
Lastly, you said the pub already has chips. Are they custom? do they have stickers? If they're just bog standard indistinctive chips, what's stopping me from bringing in a few 5k chips from my own case at home? Check out chipcustomizer.com
Their Ebay page
Custom chips are a must have, the labels I got from here are easy to use, €23 for the basic starter kit. Hundreds and thousands of templates and colours to use, so customize them for the pub/your own company name if you get more into it and expand! Heavy on the printer ink though, so you might want to stock up
I think that's it, if there's anything else I remember I'll add it in. Best of luck!
BTW, where's the pub? If it's anywhere near me I'll pop down, haven't had a good pub game in a long time 0
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