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

[Scotty O]

There has been a lot of talk about "what blind structure do I use for my NLHE home MTT?" I have seen a lot of different ideas and great suggestions. Most of the time posters put up their blind structures that they made for their games and want to make sure it is the right one to use. There are so many structures out there (online and B&M), so why is this questioned asked so often? I really don’t know why, maybe it’s the wrong question to ask.

I feel “what blind structure” is not the right question. The better one is “how long do I want the tournament to last and how skillful do I want it to be?” The blind structure can be determined later. In general, a small starting chip count and fast aggressive blinds is crapshoot tournament. High chip count and a slow gradual structure is a skillful tournament, but it may put people to sleep if it is too slow. Another downside of a slow tournament at your house is you get knocked out early and want to boot everyone out but you can’t without a fight. A balance must be met between these two areas. A lot B&M structures are not too fast and allow for some skillful play.

So how do you pick a home tournament blind structure? I think you should start backwards. "I want the tournament to go no more than 4 hours." Generally, the tournament will end when the big blind reaches about 3-8% of total outstanding chips (this is from personal experience and data collected from an online sites. homepokertourey.com suggests 10%, I feel it should be less).

Lets try this for example: I have 30 players coming to the tournament and want it to end when the blinds reach some level at 4 hours. Next, take a standard blind structure (I use Foxwoods w/ or w/o antes, your choice on how you want it, see below). They use 20 min per level. So at 4 hours, the blinds are 1500-3000. Now, how many chips do I give each player to start? Use the following equation:

SCC=20BB/NoP

Where,
SCC=Starting Chip Count
BB=Big Blind at desired End Time
NoP=No. Of Players
20 in the equation represent the inverse of 5%

The result is T2000. Remember, this is just a rule of thumb. The tournament can run longer if your players are more passive or run shorter if you have maniacs at the table. Good luck and I hope this information will be useful for everyone.

Resources:
HomePokerTournament
Foxwoods

Scotty O
ScottyOWeb.com


FOXWOODS Blind Structure
SB-BB-Ante
25-25-0
25-50-0
50-100-0
100-200-0
Break/Chip Race
150-300-25
200-400-25
300-600-50
400-800-75
Break/Chip Race
600-1200-100
800-1600-200
1000-2000-300
1500-3000-400
Break/Chip Race
2000-4000-500
3000-6000-500
4000-8000-1000
6000-12000-1000
8000-16000-1500