Is there a correct way to raise blinds?

[bptuneman]

I have been playing poker for 6 years online, at foxwoods, and everybar i can. However the way my favorite bar plays has been a heated debate for a year now and i need some educated opinions.
They say "it does not matter in a no limit tourn how the blinds are raised as long as the starting chips are the same"
So they play with say 35 chips to start, and raise as follows every 15 minutes: 1/2-2/4-3/6-4/8-5/10-6/12-7/14-8/16-9/18-10/20-11/22-12/24-13/26-you get the picture.
(and you wonder why the 1st big stack will usually win if the game ever even ends.
I say- "we should play like it is played online, at binions WSOP, on the WPT tour, online, i guess everywhere else, if for no other reason then it is the correct way to play.
However i have other reasons - the correct raising of the blinds insures the game flows at the correct pace. When done properly as most of you know you always have a shot to win if you have chips, but with constant 2 chip increases one almost never has a chance to wear down the chip leader.
They dont buy this.
The other reason is it takes alot of time to continually count and move stacks of 20 chips just for blinds (they dont color up or anything)
Solution if played there way (if there is one)- am i correct? - play their way but raise chips equivalent to the correct way - like this - 1/2-2/4-4/8-6/12-8/16-12/24-16/32
ect. Still hard to count and move, but at least mathmatically correct.
Ideally we should do correctly - whatever in starting chips - all in 25, 50, and 100's.
Raise the blinds as so - 25/50-50/100-100/200-150/300-200/400-300/600-400/800-600/1200-800/1600, ect, and chip up to all 100's as we go - since it is simple to do. No confusion there it seems to me, but I am told it is too complicated to do this and of course, "it does not matter anyway"
LOL, please help me with these fools.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
When done properly as most of you know you always have a shot to win if you have chips, but with constant 2 chip increases one almost never has a chance to wear down the chip leader.
They dont buy this.

[/ QUOTE ]


I don't either.

[faith]

From my limited understanding, tourneys use the current faster method of raising blinds just to get them over quicker. If everyone's starting with only 17x the blind, they are all starting with a pretty small stack so there's no need to raise the blinds fast.

Besides, the faster the blinds go up, the less skill is a factor. With the small stacks you all start with, if you raise the blinds at a typical schedule, it would be an all-in shootout by level 3 or 4.

If they play very poorly and tend to make way too many bad all-in plays, you might try encouraging them to start with larger stacks while keeping the same blind schedule.

If they are better than you, you're definately right to encourage a faster blind schedule to minimize their edge based on skill.

[ QUOTE ]
Ideally we should do correctly - whatever in starting chips - all in 25, 50, and 100's.
Raise the blinds as so - 25/50-50/100-100/200-150/300-200/400-300/600-400/800-600/1200-800/1600, ect, and chip up to all 100's as we go - since it is simple to do. No confusion there it seems to me, but I am told it is too complicated to do this and of course, "it does not matter anyway"


[/ QUOTE ]
Why would it matter? Does the tourney end in an appropriate time? there are many "correct" formats for tourneys. If it works for the guys there, why should they change to a different format? Seems like a nice format to play to practice mid-late stages of multitable tourneys.

faith

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
So they play with say 35 chips to start, and raise as follows every 15 minutes: 1/2-2/4-3/6-4/8-5/10-6/12-7/14-8/16-9/18-10/20-11/22-12/24-13/26

[/ QUOTE ]

instead of this structure...what if they raised the blinds every 30 minutes from 1/2, 3/6, 5/10, 7/14, 10/20.

or thay could raise the blinds every 1 minute from 1/2, 1.1/2.1, 1.15/2.15, etc, etc.


some blind structures go faster than others. big deal.
..but I honestly don't understand your argument that the one structure makes it more difficult to catch-up to the big-stack. seriously, i don't know how you came to this conclusion.

[stinkypete]

you misunderstand poker.

it is far easier to catch up to the chipleader from a small stack when blinds go up very slowly (that is, if the small stack plays better than the chip leader, or at least almost as well). large blinds do not help the small stacks. this should be obvious.