home tournament structure advice needed

[Scooterdoo]

I was asked to put together a NL tournament for a group that I'm involved in and would appreciate some suggestions for a structure. Here are some of the parameters:

- Approximately 40 players
- We will probably start with 100 tournament chips each
- We would like everyone to have the opportunity to play for at least an hour
- We would like the tournament to last 3-4 hours at most

I think we'll start with 4 tables of 10 each. I also think we'll do a rebuy period for the first hour to give people a chance to buy back in. I was thinking you can rebuy as many times as you want during the first hour to get your chips back to 100. At the end of the first hour everyone has a chance to buy 100 more chips.

What is a good blind structure that will allow plenty of play during the first hour (keep if low of course) and then build to the point where the game ends in 3-4 hours. It seems a bit complicated by the fact that we won't know going in how many chips are in play because of the rebuys.

How do we handle resuffling tables during the tournament when people get knocked out. Obviously we don't want table sizes to be too different, but we also don't want to play musical chairs every few minutes.

When we do change tables what's the best way to do this, and how do we determine who has the button, blinds, etc.

At one point do we start playing each hand together when we're down to 2 tables?

Is there anything I'm forgetting?

Thanks for the advice!

[JPNet]

Check out www.homepokertourney.com (http://www.homepokertourney.com) it should answer many of your questions.

[Scooterdoo]

Thanks, this is a really good site. While the site does address blind stuctures to solve time-limit issues, I'm not clear on how to calculate the ending blind structure for our situation since we will have rebuys and add-ons.

Specifically the site suggest that one of two ways -- first, you try to structure your last big blind to equal the starting chips at about the time you want the tournament to end. I think this rule doesn't appear to work since it doesn't take into consideration the amount of players and total chips in play.

The second option, which seems to make more sense, is to look at the total chips in play and figure that when the big blind gets to 1/10th - 1/20th of the total chips you will be close to the end. This seems about right, however, how to you figure how many chips will be in play if we have unlimited rebuys during the first hour and one add-on? Is there a rule of thumb for computing how many rebuys and add-ons to expect?

We'll be starting with about 40 players.