Home Tourney Structure?

[Fitz]

The hold 'em craze has infected a few of my buddies, so they want to hold a home tourney. They have come to me for guideance in how to structure things, but I'm not much of a tournament player, so I'm asking for a little help here. What is being discussed is $20 buy in for T500 with rebuys for the first 5 laps around the table. I've encouraged them to use time increments like 20 minutes at each level, but they want to make it table laps. There are probably going to be 16 to 20 players. Any advice greatly appreciated.

thanks,

Fitz

[broomcorn]

have you tried telling them that every tourney uses a time interval instead of "laps"??
more than one table means that each table has to keep track of their "laps" and whichever table(s) finish their lap first, they have to wait for the slower tables? that does not sound like a fun tournament.

[CrazyEyez]

Laps aren't ALL bad. We've used them in the past because in the early stages of the tournaments, hands seem to take forever. Especially if there are newbies. Also, people are always getting up for drinks and smokes which kind of messes with the time table. A few times we went laps at first, then switched to time for the final table. Not exactly "kosher" I guess, but it worked.

[elwoodblues]

I wouldn't do laps...at worst do a certain # of hands so that when it comes down to just a few people left the blinds don't get out of control. If it is a multi-table tournament, time is the only way to go.

[LetsRock]

Time is better than laps. If you're planning short intervals, it works well to have the first couple levels be something like "X time or at least one orbit" so that everyone gets at least one chance to see a couple of blinds for cheap. As has been already pointed out, a multi-table tourney using orbits instead of time will be a problam.

I might sugest you do a freeze-out (no re-buys) instead of a re-buy for your first couple of tourneys, especially if the "cashier" will be playing. Imagine the pain in the a$$ of having to disrupt the cashier's game every couple of hands to handle rebuys. It will be much simpler - trust me.

What ever you do have a complete set of written rules that everyone has a copy of before the tourney. Cover as many things as you can possibly think of - this helps to handle disputes, and it's pretty likely you'll have a couple with all the newbies that are likely to be involved. It's better to go overboard than be incomplete with this concept.

Stuff to include (not a complete list):
-Have a dealing standard - are you burning or not?
-What happens on a misdeal? (someone's card is exposed during the deal, an extra card is exposed from the deck during the flop, turn river, a burn card is exposed etc)
- Is the winner determined by last player standing, or by player with most chips when you get down to 4 players? (Or however money spots)
-When down to heads up, who gets the small blind? (Standard tourney rules give the button the small blind, so he doesn't have position on every beting round)

I'd suggest you hunt down a standard tourney rules site and use their rules. But whatever you do have some rules even if you have to make them up.

[broomcorn]

other rules to consider:
1. minimum bet must be at least value of the big blind.
2. minimum raise must be at least equal to original bet.
3. if someone raises all in for X amount more, what percentage of a bet must it be to open betting again. in other words, if someone bets 300, and a guy goes all in for 350, does this allow for another raise? i think i've heard it must be at least half the original bet? up to you.
4. decide how you will run off smaller chips as levels increase.

[cferejohn]

Problem with laps is what do you do when players start being eliminated? Now the laps get smaller and smaller. Rather than laps I would go with x number of hands/level if you didn't want to do timing (you should be able to work up some kind of counter - beads on a stick or something like that).

[JPNet]

Check out www.homepokertourney.com. (http://www.homepokertourney.com.) Excellent info on setting up home tournaments, along with rules.