setting up a "poker season" at home and would like some advice

[Profit]

I realize this may not be the proper location for this post but several of you i have played with and i know you have the weekly sng pts and standings (btw i redid my hard drive and lost the link to those standing if some1 can post it)

Last year we had a weekly poker game at my place where we ranged from 8-16 players. So essentially it was either a single table SNG or a 2 table SNG. THis year we want to make it a bit more interesting by keeping track of placings and having an acutal standings.

I figured i could have a points standings in which everyone who enters a tourney would receive 1 pt. Then you would receive 1 pt for every additional person you outlast. So if there were 8 ppl and you won you would get 1 pt for entering the tourney and 7 pts for outlasting 7 ppl. Seems simple enough.

The season would last an entire semester and would consist of 10 tournaments. To make things fair i figured i would only count ppl's top 7 finishes. (since we are all students it seems unfair to penalize some1 if they have an exam or something on poker nite) This will require more work out of me i realize.

Our buy-ins are $10. However to make the "season" more interesting we are going to collect $11 from every person and put the extra $1 into a pot for the end of the season.
So i would anticipate the pot at the end of the season will b around $100.

Here's where my question lies. I have several options of how to distribute this money but am unsure of the best route.

Option 1) Just divvy up the money to the top 3 places

Option 2) Have a $30 (or other value > 10) entry tournament at the end of the season, with free entries going to as many places as possible.

Option 3) Have only the top x amount of ppl, say 5, be entered into a free roll where they play for the money. Starting chips would be staggered by where you placed over the course of the season.

Option 4: Please share some ideas

Does any1 see any hiccups in this? Things i may b overlooking or things i could do differently to make it more enjoyable?

Thanks for any input,
Profit

[Lottery Larry]

You should come over to the Home Poker forum with this type of post.

I am winding up my first tournament season, here is what I have planned.

My point system is:
7 points- finish in bottom half of non-cash positions
10 points- finish in top half of non-cash positions (up to the bubble)
15 points- any cash spots below 3rd
20 points- 3rd place prize
25 points- 2nd place prize
35 points- winner

to compensate for smaller tournaments, I subtract points from the top three places (-5 if only 3 places paid, -10 if only 2 places paid)

We only have 7 tournament nights in the first year, so I will make a single-table championship tournament of 11 players- all of the tournament winners, then fill in seats with highest remaining point totals.

To reward performance during the year, I'm multiplying each player's points totals by 5 and then by the tournament nights (or PT x 5 x TN) for a starting chip stack value.
Then I'm adding equal chips to everyone so that the lowest qualifier gets T10,000 and higher point totals get more. Right now, that would give the points leader about T13500, not a insurmountable lead.

I'd go with Option 4: I didn't pull money from tournaments to fund the year-end pool, maybe next year. If I did as you did, I would probably use the money as an add-on to the prize pool that results from the players buy-ins to the final tournament, to build some real money.
Even a freeroll for all who qualify would be better than paying out money to some players- they all benefited already in cash by winning tournaments during the year, why get rewarded again without effort?


Hope that gives you some ideas to work with.
LL