The wrong question to ask: What Blind Structure Should I Use?

[ky70]

Great post and I agree 100% with the theme of your post.

FWIW, homepokertourney.com suggests the tourney will end when the big blind is between 6 - 10% of total chips in play. My personal experience says 6% is best estimate for my game and I use a range of 5 - 8%.

Here is my personal blind schedule with predicted end times/rounds:
Starting chips = T5000
Round Minutes Small Big
1...........20......$25.....$50
2...........20.......50......100
3...........20.......100.....200
Break......7.........Remove 25s
4...........20.......200.....400
5...........20.......300.....600
6...........20.......600.....1,200
Break......5.........Remove 100s
7...........15.......1,000...2,000
8...........15.......2,000...4,000
9...........15.......2,500...5,000
Break......5.........Remove 500s
10..........15.......4,000...8,000
11..........15.......5,000...10,000
12..........15.......6,000...12,000

6-7 players: game will generally end during round 7 (between 2:12 - 2:27)
8 - 13 players: game will generally end during round 8 (between 2:27 - 2:42)
14 - 17 players: game will generally end during round 9 (between 2:42 - 2:57)
18 - 27 players: game will generally end during round 10 (between 3:02 - 3:17)
28 - 33 players: game will generally end during round 11 (between 3:17 - 3:32)
34 - 40 players: game will generally end during round 12 (between 3:32 - 3:47)

At my home game, we usually play two tables. We start at 10-20 with 1500 chips+rebuys and we double the blinds all the time. It usually takes 3-4 hours to complete the tourney.

[Scotty O]

You dont state the time interval you play...

So for a 20 person game at T1500 to start you should be done by BB=1500. If you double you blind every level the by level 7 it should be almost over. At 4 hours long you blinds must double every 30 mins. This about right?

Scotty O

[tonypaladino]

This is good advice. I beleive "the tournament director" software has a feature where it can set blind levels based on the number of players and expected tourney time. You can google for the software, it's free.

The Tournament Director is great software for running a tourney. But it's blind structure is not very useful. It gives off denomoinations to bet that aren't related to number of chips people really have.

For example, I just asked for a blind structure for a 10 person tourney that lasts 4 hours with 20 minute levels and without rebuys. Here's what it suggested:

15/30
30/60
45/90
60/120
75/150
90/180
105/210
150/300
195/390
240/480
285/570
330/660

[Scotty O]

What was the starting chip count for everyone? Curious to see if it fits withing the my equation above.

ScottyO.net

1500 is the starting count.

I don't know if Tournament Director follows your formula. But the bet amounts are just odd. The SB goes from 240 to 285 to 330. Who really wants to put in 2 blacks, 3 greens, and 2 reds just for the SB? Why not just go from 250 to 300 to 350. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like lots of red chips and I'm actually going from the Home Poker Tourney recommendation (1000 starting chips; blinds start at 10/20) to a variant of Tex's Tears (1500 chips; blinds start at 25/25) just so I can eliminate the red chips.