Help me improve my home game

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

My friends and I play once a week. It's a SNG style game with a 10-20$ buy-in. I want to have some proper guidelines to use, because EVERY single week there's an argument about blinds, prize payout, etc.

Ok, so we're usually 6-10 people. The blinds start from 10/20 and move up every 20-30 mins. How many chips should we start with? What should the prize structure be?

I'm just sick of arguing with these guys every week. I mean, there's one that always wants "only first place prize", another wants the blinds to go up every 10 mins, etc. Help me out fellow 2+2ers.

[Ratman138]

Sounds like my home game. my suggestion is to always use the same pay structure unless the number of players change. Personally i think under 10 players pays 2, 10-19 players pays 3. the blinds should be 20 minutes apart in my opinion. print out the prizes and blind schedule and have it tacked up for all to see before arriving.

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

What should be the starting chip count? I usually give out around 2500 in chips.

[Socrates]

1000 chips

10/20
15/30
25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200/25
150/300/25
200/400/50
250/500/50
300/600/100
etc...

4-5 hours, enough blinds to let people play payout 50/30/20

[jdoe]

ever thought of playing a cash game.

blinds $.1 and $.2 min buy-in=$5 max=size of top stack.

if you want to quit and go home.........fine
if you want to rebuy................fine

How lame is it to have you KK get cracked by AX on the third hand in and have to go home or worse wait an hour for a hand.

just my .02

[Hedge Henderson]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm just sick of arguing with these guys every week. I mean, there's one that always wants "only first place prize", another wants the blinds to go up every 10 mins, etc. Help me out fellow 2+2ers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Who's hosting the game? If you're hosting, set the game up however you want. That's your right.

In the game I host, I've never heard anyone complain that the blinds weren't going up fast enough.

I fully admit that I bias my game slightly in favor of those who are above average for the group. However, I also try to make sure that those who are well below average have a good time before they're busted.

The only people who don't like how I run things are the mediocre "all-or-nothing" high variance type of regulars, and I ignore their criticism with good humor. If I followed their wishes, I (and a couple other players) would win more money, but we'd have a real shortage of new players who felt comfortable in returning.

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

Oh how I'd love to play cash games, or maybe 50$ tourneys, but alas, my friends are cheapos.

"The only people who don't like how I run things are the mediocre "all-or-nothing" high variance type of regulars"

Bingo. Unfortunately, most of my friends fall under this category.

I especially hate them sucking out on me, winning the tourney and then saying things like "I'm gonna play smarter like this from now on", or "I always end up in the money"... arrrgh!

Also, I suggested starting out with 1000 in chips since the start, but God knows why, they think somehow the game suffers with this "few" amount of chips.

Thanks guys, I like the structure Socrates suggested, perhaps without the antes though, cause they'd probably mutiny and run away with the chips and cards... grrr...

[NutCrackerr]

Here's the structure we use. We usually have 8-12 players and it lasts for 3-4 hours.

$5.00 buy-in, 1500 starting chips, unlimited ($5)rebuys for the first hour if player has under 500 chips, an additional($5) add-on is available to everyone at the end of the first hour. The re-buys and add-on really help to pad the pot. Makes for a lot of wild play in the first hour as well.

Blinds start at 25/50 and increase every 30 minutes.
50/100
100/200
200/400
500/1000
double every 30 minutes after that

Under 10 players we pay top 2 70/30
10-15 players pay top 3 60/25/15
15+ players pay top 4 50/25/15/10

[RicktheRuler]

whoa! 2500 chips blinds start at `10-20 and go up every thirty minutes--this must take forever right?

Homepokertourney.com has everything you need.

[Slow Play Ray]

A quick note - antes are completely pointless with anything less than ~50 players - all they do is make things confusing. If you set your structure up right, blinds alone will do the trick and make things a lot less complicated.