Home Tournament Advice

AMTF1988 said:

I'm planning on holding a tournament with my partner, we've held some tournaments before for fun, but this will be the first one with a buy-in and prize. I need some advice on: Chip Values, Starting Stack, Prize Distribution, Blind Levels and Round Durations.

I have a poker set with 500 chip with 4 colours without values, there will be between 6 and 9 people coming, looking to play for 4-5 hours, and approximately 50% of the buy-in will pay for food and drink for the night.

We're looking for a deep stacked game, but with the small amount of chips available I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

I have an iPad app called Blinds Up, it's really good and highly customisable so all blind levels, round durations, breaks, and antes can be entered.

Thank you in advance

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MstrBlast3r said:

500 chips will be tough but not impossible. Start your blinds at 25 - 25 then move them up as you see fit and assign blind lengths to get your game over when you want. Remember home tournaments like this dealing will be slow and you will not get a ton of hands per level. A 15 min blind level won't see everyone get a hand in the first couple levels until folks get knocked out.

Use 2 decks and have someone shuffling the off deck while playing the current hand.

Just a couple tips I have learned over the years.

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AMTF1988 said:

I'm planning on holding a tournament with my partner, we've held some tournaments before for fun, but this will be the first one with a buy-in and prize. I need some advice on: Chip Values, Starting Stack, Prize Distribution, Blind Levels and Round Durations.

I have a poker set with 500 chip with 4 colours without values, there will be between 6 and 9 people coming, looking to play for 4-5 hours, and approximately 50% of the buy-in will pay for food and drink for the night. What is the breakdown of colours/number of chips? Will there be rebuys? Will there only be one tournament? Do you have plans for a loser's lounge?

We're looking for a deep stacked game, but with the small amount of chips available I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'm happy to be proved wrong. It really depends on colour breakdown of chips.

I have an iPad app called Blinds Up, it's really good and highly customisable so all blind levels, round durations, breaks, and antes can be entered. Antes are best ignored in home games with inexperienced players IMO.

Thank you in advance

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mtl mile end said:

The prize payout really relies on the total number of buy ins including rebuys (?). I am assuming this to be straight up NLHE with no bounties?

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OzExorcist said:

Chip values are largely aribitrary, what's more important is the gaps between them. You probably want each chip to be worth 4-5 times the one below it.

Say you start with a $5 chip, you might go with:

$5, $25, $100 and $500 chips.

Say you start with $5-$10 blinds, you could give everyone 10 x $5, 6 x $25, 8 x $100 and 2 x $500 for a $2000 starting stack, which is 200 BB. That's pretty deep.

Best advice I can give after that is to work backwards:

Say you get eight players, and you go with the $2k starting stacks above (I'm assuming it's a freezeout / no rebuys too). That puts $16k total chips in play.

Tournaments like this usually end when there's between 10 and 20 big blinds total left on the table. So you want the blinds to get to something like $500-$1000 around the time you want the tournament to end. Work the timing of your levels back from there and you're good to go.

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