How to structure a tournament for knuckle heads

[HammerinHank]

I am hosting a tournament that we sold seats to at a school fundraiser. Can someone give me guidance on how to structure it? There will be about 30 players and most will have no clue what they are doing. We would like it to last about 3 hours and the tables we have can seat only 8 comfortably. The players will deal. The game is NLHE, of course.

What kind of chips do you have to work with? I would start there and work backwards. For relative noobs you might want to make the blind structure small (eg. 1/2, 2/4, 4/8 etc) so they don't have to do much math and figure that they might only average 15-20 hands per hour so you need a structure that get's heads up after 60 hands or so. BTW, 30 doesn't divide by 8 very well so maybe think about 6max tables.

[SossMan]

do a double shootout. w/ 5 tables.

[Runner Runner]

T1000 starting chips
Give everyone 10-T5, 10-T25, 7-T100
blinds
5-10 level 1
10-20 level 2
15-30 level 3
25-50 level 4 Color up (remove 5's)
50-100 level 5
75-150 level 6
100-200 level 7
150-300 level 8
200-400 level 9Color up (remove 25's)
300-600 level 10
500-1000 level 11
800-1600 level 12
1000-2000 level 13

15 min levels, tourney will last about 2-3 hrs
20 min levels, tourney will last about 4 hrs
30 min levels, tourney will last about 5 hrs

Start with 4 tables, consolidate at 24, 16 and 8 and make sure to move players randomly between tables if one tables gets unusually short. Have players shuffle pass to the player on the left to cut the deck and then deal out. Know in advance what you will do in cases of misdeals, string bets, arguements, etc...

Have fun.