Our 1st "renting a hall" size tournament. Input greatly appreciated

[Ichabod]

(As I wrote this, it became much larger than I expected, so if you could even skip around, we would appreciate it)

We have had home tournements with up to 32 people, but this fall we are renting a nice hall and plan to have 50 or so people there.

I'm asking this now as I would rather find potential problems or better ideas now rather than that night, so any input, concerns, ideas..etc that you have will be greatly appreciated.

First, we are starting at 6:00 on a Saturday and I hope to have it end around 12ish. We will have anywhere from 40 to 70 people. (We have 6 and maybe 7 poker tables and may need to make another one or two). As the event approaches, we'll have a better idea on the body count. Anyway, we have about 3,000 of the 11.5g dice chips.

Our diabolical plan: Buy-in will be either $30 or $40. Each person will receive $409 in chips:

24 White $1
16 Blue $5
8 Red $10
3 Black $25
3 Green $50
(we have Purple for $100 and Yellow for $500)

54 total actual chips to start.

Blinds will be in 20 minute increments:
2/4
4/8
5/10
10/20
15/30
25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200
200/400
250/500
300/600
400/800
500/1000
...and will keep raising although I can't imagine it going much further.

With this set up, can you foresee any problems? Too slow? Too fast?

If we get 50 or so people, we plan to reseat to 4 tables once we get to 32 people, then again at 3 tables/24 people, 2 tables at 16, and finally to the final table with 8 people. Each of these, of course, will add some time, perhaps 15 minutes.

We also have ordered these "neat" looking skull chips for a side game. Each person will get one, and if they take out a person, they get that person's chip. After each person is removed, they get their name in a drawing for $50 for each of these "kill" chips that they have.

We will also, more than likely, have another side thing, optional $5, for a high hand of the night in which the best hand takes the entire side pot.

We are also making these color/wooden things for drawing for your initial seat.

This is a nice hall and we seem to have decent poker stuff, even the colored cut cards, pewter dealer buttons (from ebay), so I would hate to go through all of this planning and spending, to have something go wrong.

If you have any ideas or input whatsoever, kindly post it. And, if you have read this entire post, I probably owe you a Coke or a Beer.

Thank you

[Quicksilvre]

Starts the blinds at 2/4 with T409 in chips is somewhat low. Also, the jump from 4/8 to 5/10 to 10/20 is kinda funky.

If I could make adjustments, I would

start at 4/8, then go to 6/12 and 10/20
replace the 25/50 level with 20/40 and 30/60 levels
get rid of the 250/500 level
add a couple of levels on the end: 600/1200, 800/1600, 1000/2000, and 1200/2400. You could very well need them.

What sort of payouts do you have planned?

[Lottery Larry]

I was going to give a long answer to this, but I stopped myself.

Why do you have only 7 posts, but yet I can only find this one over the last 6 months?

Why do you sound like a group that's starting up a "poker in bars" company and you're looking for us to do your work for free?

Sorry if I'm paranoid, but this seems weird.

I'll give you one piece of advice- lose the $9. Here's a second one- homepokertourney.com

[Ichabod]

Our thought with the first several levels was just to allow everyone to relax a little before the blinds get up there. Also, we would hate to have someone get dressed up for a big night of poker and be out after only 40 minutes. I know it can't be something that we can control or be overly worried about, but that was our thinking.

We also we're just rounding things off, for example, so we wouldn't have a 16/32 blind. But I like your idea of the 20/40 and 30/60.

Our payouts, and this is something that we haven't put enough thought into yet, and this is under the assumption of having 60 people (we'll have a sheet out there scaled up and down, meaning if we have 48 people show up, we would already have a plan)

With the buy-in being $30 and with 60 people (which is probably a little optimistic):

1st $650
2nd $350
3rd $250
4th $175
5th $125
6th $90
7th $70
8th $40

With $50 going to the Kill Chip side game.


As far as Larry's questions, I'm not sure what you are asking on a couple of those. I have only 7 posts and haven't been on this site for almost a year.

I don't know what you mean by a Poker In Bars Company.

The reason for the $409, which does sound like an odd number, was because we wanted to give out a decent number of starting chips. And, if we did it with 24,16,8,3, and 3, it seems easy to verify as there would be 6 stacks of 8 chips, so it would be easy to see an error. Plus, it works out to 54 chips. I see what you are saying with such an odd number, but we were just working from initial chip count backwards.

I was in a $50 tournement once and we started with 28 actual chips. Just paying the blinds twice made it seem like you were almost out of the game.

Is 54 chips too many to start with? The rest of the math works out, I think. I know the approx "divide the buyin amount by 50 and that should equal the big blind", which we are over, but we are not having re-buys and want people to get some playing time in before they are eliminated.

This is a friends/family event, so we want people to enjoy themselves, but then again we don't want the tourney to drag on much too long.

[Cin0s3]

Having played in a couple of these in my area I would make one suggestion, dont give out that many different colored chips to start. Start with 4 different colors max, then color up the 2 low chips at the first break (usually after the first hour or so) then color up one more time. Also you may want to consider simplifying your denoms and do like 1,5,25,100,500,1000. Makes it much easier to color up and make change between players.

[slamdunkpro]

Are you going to give a law enforcement discount? Because I guarantee they’ll show up.(But they might not want to play; at least not poker)

[Ichabod]

Eeeeh, what is the rules on these things? I thought, and I have no idea at all, that if there was a "house" winning money, that is a no-go, but as far as a friend/family poker night, I thought that was ok.

Are you saying that we need to put up black sheets on the windows?

[Scotty O]

You should be concerned if the Police bust you or not

[slamdunkpro]

http://www.gambling-law-us.com/State...mary/index.htm

[Quicksilvre]

[ QUOTE ]
Why do you sound like a group that's starting up a "poker in bars" company and you're looking for us to do your work for free?

[/ QUOTE ]

Hell, he already did the work; he was just looking for comments.