home tournament blind structure opinions

CrazyJoe113

hey guys, I'm running a 20 person 2 table no limit tournament at my apartment next weekend and was wondering if this seems like a good blind structure for starting chips of $1500 and blinds increasing every 12 minutes. Chip values are 10, 20, 50, 100, 500.


10/20
20/40
30/60
50/100
70/140
100/200
150/300
200/400
300/600
400/800
600/1200
800/1600
1000/2000
If necessary, blinds will increase by 500/1000 every 12 minutes after level 13

What do you guys think, this game should last around 3 - 3 1/2 hours right? level 13 (1000/2000) is hit around the 2 1/2 hour mark.

gordan_gecco

Hi Joe,

The blind schedule is pretty close to a SNG on Poker Stars, which is what I base my blinds on for a $1500 tournament. Of course, it doesn't really matter...your blinds look fine.

One thing I would suggest is 20 or even maybe 30 minute levels. I know the poker sites use 10 or 15 minute levels, but they also can get in about twice as many hands. In a live tourney, 12 minutes will go by in no time.

You also might want to check out www.homepokertourney.com. Everything you might want to know about hosting a tournament can be found there.

Hope this helps...good luck!

MickeyHoldem

I think your tourney will be over faster than you want.... with 20 players starting with 1500 each you'll have 30000 chips in play... At the 1000/2000 level, you'll have no more than 2 or 3 players left... imagine 3 players with 10000 each... 5x the BB... all very short stacked....

as gordon-gecco pointed out... 12 mins is very quick for a live tourney... you'll be lucky to get 5-6 hands in each level. I would increase it to at least 20 mins each.

For a general rule... small tourneys end up ending before (or around the time) the BB gets to the starting chips.... so around the 800-1600 level for your tourney.

Goms27

CrazyJoe113 wrote:

. Chip values are 10, 20, 50, 100, 500.

QUOTE]

Hey Crazy Joe - one little sugguestion I would make is your chip values. If possible(# of Chips) I would get rid of your $20 chips. In the long run I find it just confuses everyone when you have more colored chips. In my home games I do not even start with the 500 chips and when we chip up we simply add those in. Although it does not hurt to have a 500 chip at the start.

I would definately go with 20 - 30 minute blind levels. 12 mins is quite short in a home game.

I also have a question for anyone reading this post. Does anyone know of a program where you can run your blind levels and clock on a laptop - so everyone can see how much time is left in a level?

Zithal

Chip values are 10, 20, 50, 100, 500

This may be the purest in me, but I'd try as much as possible to keep chips as close to casino standards as possible. ( i.e. Replace 10, 20, 50 with 5, 25). What colour chips do you have available to use? (I'll assume 5 different colours?)

This way, you can change your 5th level to 75-150 and colour out the "5"'s just before you hit 50-100.

If you do this, the only difference between your's and the one I often use is that I also include a 15-30 level at the beginning.

blinds increasing every 12 minutes

As someone else pointed out, you can expect your tournament to end just before the BB equals your initial buy-in. (I'd guess around level 11) This clocks your tournament in at around 121 minutes (~2 hours) with a lot of people busting out in half that time. Best thing to do is to determine how long you want your tournament to last and work backwards from there. For 4 hours, 20 minute levels seem right, and if you replace 10,20,50 with 5, 25, I'd add in the 15-30 level.

Zithal

I also have a question for anyone reading this post. Does anyone know of a program where you can run your blind levels and clock on a laptop - so everyone can see how much time is left in a level?

The Tournament Director is an excellent donationware app that does everything you need. I think it's a very good app, and either use that or Poker Clock Pro. (though only because I purchased it before Tournament Director came out)

Look at homepokertourney.com for a list of timers available.

Tilter

Here is a pic of Howard Lederer Home blind structure:

http://tinypic.com/18nedx

CrazyJoe113

Goms27 wrote:

Hey Crazy Joe - one little sugguestion I would make is your chip values. If possible(# of Chips) I would get rid of your $20 chips. In the long run I find it just confuses everyone when you have more colored chips. In my home games I do not even start with the 500 chips and when we chip up we simply add those in. Although it does not hurt to have a 500 chip at the start.

I would definately go with 20 - 30 minute blind levels. 12 mins is quite short in a home game.

# of chips is the problem... i have a 500 chip set with 5 colors, 150 white, 150 red, 100 blue, 50 black, 50 green. I realize I should have more chips for a 20 person tournament, and I probably will for the next one, but for this one there will just have to be more color changes between players than usual, which isn't too big of a deal, I don't think it slows down the game as much as some sites suggest. I will definitely consider extending the blind levels to probably 18 mins or so. Thanks for the suggestions guys, I appreciate it.