Tournament format?

[bhp374]

I am hosting a multi-table tourney in the coming weeks and would welcome some thoughts on pace of play/blinds, etc. I should have 30 people or so and want to do a rebuy format. I'd like the tournament to last 2.5 hours or so. Any suggestions on length of rebuy period, starting blinds, increase intervals, antes, etc. to wrap the game up in this timeframe?

[Rick Diesel]

Are you planning on playing in the tournament? If the answer is yes, then having rebuys is a bad, bad idea. It is just too time consuming to try to worry about the play of your hand, along with running the tournament, along with getting rebuys to the people that need them.

Also a tournament with 30 people that only lasts 2.5 hours is going to be a complete crapshoot. In order to eliminate players, either the stacks are going to have to start very short relative to the blinds, or the blinds are going to have to increase at an astronomical rate. My suggestion here would be to either let the tournament run for 4-5 hours, or decrease the number of players to say 18 or less.

But if you still want to continue as planned, here is the format that I use for my multis, with usually 40 players and lasting 5-6 hours:

$50+$10 for food/rent/beer
T5,000 to start
blinds go up every 20 minutes
no antes (they just confuse the unintelligent and are not worth the hassle)
no rebuys

blinds start at 10/20
15/30
25/50
5 minute break
50/100
75/150
100/200
5 minute break
200/400
300/600
500/1,000
5 minute break
1,000/2,000
2,000/4,000
3,000/6,000
5 minute break
5,000/10,000
and double every 20 minutes from now on

I would guess that this same format may work for you if you increased the blinds every 10 minutes instead of every 20 minutes, but you would not get much play doing this.

Good luck,
Rick Diesel

[ZootMurph]

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Home Poker Tourney (http://www.homepokertourney.com/)