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

[ky70]

Great post and I agree 100% with the theme of your post.

FWIW, homepokertourney.com suggests the tourney will end when the big blind is between 6 - 10% of total chips in play. My personal experience says 6% is best estimate for my game and I use a range of 5 - 8%.

Here is my personal blind schedule with predicted end times/rounds:
Starting chips = T5000
Round Minutes Small Big
1...........20......$25.....$50
2...........20.......50......100
3...........20.......100.....200
Break......7.........Remove 25s
4...........20.......200.....400
5...........20.......300.....600
6...........20.......600.....1,200
Break......5.........Remove 100s
7...........15.......1,000...2,000
8...........15.......2,000...4,000
9...........15.......2,500...5,000
Break......5.........Remove 500s
10..........15.......4,000...8,000
11..........15.......5,000...10,000
12..........15.......6,000...12,000

6-7 players: game will generally end during round 7 (between 2:12 - 2:27)
8 - 13 players: game will generally end during round 8 (between 2:27 - 2:42)
14 - 17 players: game will generally end during round 9 (between 2:42 - 2:57)
18 - 27 players: game will generally end during round 10 (between 3:02 - 3:17)
28 - 33 players: game will generally end during round 11 (between 3:17 - 3:32)
34 - 40 players: game will generally end during round 12 (between 3:32 - 3:47)

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Resources:
HomePokerTourney



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Fixed your link.

[Scotty O]

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Resources:
HomePokerTourney



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Fixed your link.

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This link works fine. This is not my website but it is a good one for folks to consider before setting up a tournament. My link is the other one.

Scotty O

At my home game, we usually play two tables. We start at 10-20 with 1500 chips+rebuys and we double the blinds all the time. It usually takes 3-4 hours to complete the tourney.

[Scotty O]

You dont state the time interval you play...

So for a 20 person game at T1500 to start you should be done by BB=1500. If you double you blind every level the by level 7 it should be almost over. At 4 hours long you blinds must double every 30 mins. This about right?

Scotty O

[tonypaladino]

This is good advice. I beleive "the tournament director" software has a feature where it can set blind levels based on the number of players and expected tourney time. You can google for the software, it's free.

The Tournament Director is great software for running a tourney. But it's blind structure is not very useful. It gives off denomoinations to bet that aren't related to number of chips people really have.

For example, I just asked for a blind structure for a 10 person tourney that lasts 4 hours with 20 minute levels and without rebuys. Here's what it suggested:

15/30
30/60
45/90
60/120
75/150
90/180
105/210
150/300
195/390
240/480
285/570
330/660

[Scotty O]

What was the starting chip count for everyone? Curious to see if it fits withing the my equation above.

ScottyO.net

1500 is the starting count.

I don't know if Tournament Director follows your formula. But the bet amounts are just odd. The SB goes from 240 to 285 to 330. Who really wants to put in 2 blacks, 3 greens, and 2 reds just for the SB? Why not just go from 250 to 300 to 350. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like lots of red chips and I'm actually going from the Home Poker Tourney recommendation (1000 starting chips; blinds start at 10/20) to a variant of Tex's Tears (1500 chips; blinds start at 25/25) just so I can eliminate the red chips.