Putting on a nl hold'em tourney for charity... help needed

[sbalzac]

Here's the situation...

I'm putting on a no-limit hold'em event. All cash, less chips, cards, and a crappy trophy go to charity.

There will be 15-20 guys at the event. I'd like for it to last between 3-4.5 hours. The skill level of most the players will be quite low, so I imagine things will move rather slow.

This fell on me because everyone knows I play a lot of poker... though I've never played in a live tournament.

Here's my questions:
How many chips should each guy get?
Denomanations?
How many rounds?
How long should the rounds go for?
How should I move up the blinds?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Or an idea of where to look.

Thanks for taking the time... it's for a good cause.

sbalzac

[jacki]

www.homepokertourney.com

[TN_POKER_MAN]

to raised additional funds, auction off the poker chips and cards, etc. (unless this will be a re-ocurring event or they are borrowed)...especially if you get some of the nicer chipsets.

a standard tourney starts with T1000 in chips. Which means everyone gets 1000 worth of chips.

if you use a standard chip configuration of 3 colors, assign them various values (5, 25 & 100) 4 colors works even better because you can "color-up" as the stacks grow.

you'd provide each player with the following breakdown

15 of the 5 valued chips
13 of the 25 valued chips
6 of the 100 valued chips

this totals 34 chips per person worth 1,000 to start with

if you can swing a 4th colored chip that would help a bunch as the chip stacks start to build. You can "color-up" and begin exchanging the lower valued chips for higher value chips.

as far as time per round, you'll probably want to keep this at 20-30 minutes so you can finish in 4 hours or so.

i'd go with big blind equal to twice the small blind and use a small blind schedule similar to this: 5,10,20,30,40,50,75,100,150,200

Schedule small breaks every hour so that you don't have guys constantly leaving their table between hands.

make sure each table uses 2 decks of cards (different colors for obvious reasons). This will allow for less down time because someone can be shuffling one deck while the existing hand is being finished.

i'd also keep the #of players at each table around 5/6. This will encourage a little looser play and more action. If you played 2 tables of 10, action would be very tight and slow. Having 5 at a table will speed things up because more folks may play lesser quality starting hands (which will be more fun for all).

Once you reduce the field to one final table of 5/6 make it somewhat more special by getting a dealer (you can usually get one of the losers to volunteer 30 minutes at a time). Unless you were planning to have dealers the entire time, then the whole event will have that special feel.

Another thing to consider. Don't let the tables get too lopsided. As in, try to always have the same # of players at each table. You don't want one table of 6 and another of just 4 players. Once they differ by more than 1, start shuffling folks from the larger table to the smaller table so that you have 2 tables of 5 instead of 6 & 4. Do this until you get to the point where you can eliminate one whole table and finally reduce it to just one final table of 6 or so.

[napawino]

If you really want to look like a pro, download the Tournament Director from www.thetournamentdirector.net & hook up a TV or projector to display the information. This will be really valuable for beginners, too, since you won't have people asking "What are the blinds now?" & "How much are the white chips?", etc.

This will also stop you from looking like the bad guy every time the blinds go up. (As the guy with the stopwatch usually does to newbies.)

Good luck.