Our 1st "renting a hall" size tournament. Input greatly appreciated

[Quicksilvre]

I never even thought of that. slamdunkpro is right; an event of this size could very well attract attention. Check the laws in your state.

[TomHimself]

i would never play in a terrible strucutre like that. if you really want to have a "professional" tourney buy nexgens or faux clays and label them. have 25, 100, 500, 1000, and maybe a 5k denom. give 3k in chips to everyone with blinds at 25/25, 25/50 50/100 75/150 100/200 200/400 3000/600, 400/800. 500/1000 etc.


pretty much your structure sucks

[Zetack]

Your structure is too fast for a six hour tourney, although if you have a lot of dead time with breaks and coloring up I suppose it might stretch that long.

An easy way to see how much pressure your blinds put on the tourney is to figure how many BB's you have on the table.

400/800 starts your 4th hour. With 50 players that puts 20450 chips in play or 25 BB's total. If you are down to 10 players (which seems about right for a tourney you want to go another couple of hours) that would make the average stack 2.5 BB's. Obviously you won't have 10 players left. With three players you have a little over 8 BB's in the average stack.

So most likely you have 2-3 players left at 4 hours into it, but possibly, with average stacks that low if the guysa are really playing at each other it could have actually ended here. If one of your three gets knocked out at 400/800 there are enough chips that the heads up guys could go for quite a while extending the tourney time, but my experience is that either they chop here, or most guys simply aren't experienced or patient enough to play for a long time heads up with 10 BB stacks so it probably ends pretty quickly.

--Zetack

edit: I hate the jump from 100/200 to 200/400, particularly if the next jump is to 250/500. Throw in a 150/300.

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
i would never play in a terrible strucutre like that. if you really want to have a "professional" tourney buy nexgens or faux clays and label them. have 25, 100, 500, 1000, and maybe a 5k denom. give 3k in chips to everyone with blinds at 25/25, 25/50 50/100 75/150 100/200 200/400 3000/600, 400/800. 500/1000 etc.


pretty much your structure sucks

[/ QUOTE ]

Boy that's a tough level...push all your chips before the Sb hits you, and if you're in the middle of the orbit, delay, delay delay... ("Why yes, Mr. Tournament director, deciding whether to open limp with my 9-5 offsuit PF is a 15 minute decision...")

--Zetack

[Ichabod]

Thanks for the blind level info, we will add some of those in, ie the 20/40 and 30/60.

We're not really targeting a 6 hour period, but we just don't want it to end either extremely early or drag on way too late.

The police raid thing makes me a little nervous. Has that ever happened to anyone? We had a bachelor party that had about 50 people there 3/4 tables of hold'em there, we even had a few friends there that are police officers and it didn't seem to be a concern. (or maybe it was, and I was just oblivious to it).

Anyway, did anyone have problems or concerns with other events they've been to, things they liked or disliked? From the way you drew for seats, or if a table loses 2 or more people sooner than other tables, payout structure..etc.

(by the way, I haven't mentioned rules on purpose as I think those here on these message boards or on Homepokertourney.com)

Thanks for all of the responses.

[Bulldog]

Your colors are weird.

Also, you don't need 54 (!) starting chips. Ugh. Your set is a mess. I'd like to revamp the whole thing, but how about just knocking the 24 white chips down to 15, so you can have stacks of $400 instead of $409?

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the blind level info, we will add some of those in, ie the 20/40 and 30/60.

We're not really targeting a 6 hour period, but we just don't want it to end either extremely early or drag on way too late.

The police raid thing makes me a little nervous. Has that ever happened to anyone? We had a bachelor party that had about 50 people there 3/4 tables of hold'em there, we even had a few friends there that are police officers and it didn't seem to be a concern. (or maybe it was, and I was just oblivious to it).

Anyway, did anyone have problems or concerns with other events they've been to, things they liked or disliked? From the way you drew for seats, or if a table loses 2 or more people sooner than other tables, payout structure..etc.

(by the way, I haven't mentioned rules on purpose as I think those here on these message boards or on Homepokertourney.com)

Thanks for all of the responses.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry if I'm going into more analysis than you want. I like very slowly rising blinds at the beginning, particularly for what looks like a major (in home game scale of things) tourney.

I was having trouble with your numbers, being mathematically challenged, so I had to change multiply everything by ten, giving you a starting blind of 20/40 and a starting stack of 4090 for it to be clear to me, but I think I've got a handle on your structure now.

Ok an hour into the tourney if you've managed to preserve your stack the blinds hit 10/20 and suddenly you only have 20 BB's. That's not terrible, but it really limits your ability to play. Basically if you come into one hand with a raise and miss the flop or get forced to fold at some point in the hand you're suddenly in short stack territory without even having played a big pot.

I like folks to have a lot of play early and this structure basically takes the play out by the end of the first hour. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, its just not to my taste.

If you went say:

1/2
2/4
3/6
4/8
5/10
10/20

Then you get to that 20 BB point if you've preserved your stack at an hour and forty minutes, it gives people a ton of play early because your first three levels are so low, and if you plug into your remaining planned structure, because its only lengthened your tourney by forty minutes is still probably about a 4.5 - 5.5 hour tourney.

Anyway, that's just what I like, tastes differ. I play with plenty of people who seem to prefer a lightning fast structure.

--Zetack

[Ichabod]

The colors are just those that our group has used for years. Are you talking about the blue chips being less than reds?

What do you mean by our "set" being a mess?

The buy-in aside, what is a decent amount of starting chips? I would rather lean towards having too many than not enough. I've played in several that start you out with a low number of chips and it seems, after losing a hand or two, that you are already short on chips.

To me, the actual amount of the chip total (the $409) is not as important so long as the rest of the math works out, the blinds, number of chips...etc. To take away starting chips for the only purpose of making it $400 instead of $409 doesn't seem necessary.

But, like you said, that if 54 chips to start out with is to many, then I see your point.

[slamdunkpro]

I don’t know where you are, but taking a “home” game to a rented facility makes it a un-licensed casino in almost every state. In other words if your state allows “social” gambling in the home (like Virginia) moving to a rented hall takes you out from under that protective umbrella. If you are advertising you’re going to attract a lot of unwanted official attention. In addition, if you are charging a fee, you are charging admission. A lot of community halls that are for rent don’t allow this – check your contract. If you’re going to serve beer, in a rented facility – you’ll need a liquor license.

Here in St. Louis, we have had several games this size get raided. Some of them were at local golf course clubs. You charge money, you pay cash prizes, you break the law. There might be some limits were it turns from friendly to illegal. I would check ahead of time.

They do have these at firehouses in the area, but the polie manage not to show up.