Tourney Ideas
Posted by Bill Rini @ 9:50 amIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
After the other night’s tourney, we got some feedback and I thought I would throw it out there to the general poker community for some thoughts. Basically, it was a $50 buyin with $25 rebuys available at any time to anybody who went below $600 in chips (everyone received $1000 to start). At the third break everyone was allowed a rebuy regardless of how many chips they had and then all rebuys were eliminated going forward.
The structure of the game was limit poker with blinds increasing every 1/2 hour. After the third break and the end of the rebuys the game went NL with increasing blinds every 1/2 hour.
Now, the feedback we got was that some people didn’t like the rebuys. They felt too many people bet crazy because they knew they could simply rebuy their way into the tourney. We did in fact have 32 rebuys with 30 players so there’s something to this argument.
My suggestion was that we limit rebuys to one rebuy per person for the entire evening. If you rebought and then went out, you are out. I also thought it might be a good idea to go to NL sooner as the more quickly you can consolidate the chips into fewer and fewer hand the less likely it is that someone would want/need to rebuy.
So that’s the initial thinking at the moment. If anybody has any suggestions . . . I’m open.
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COMMENTS / 5 COMMENTS
mep added these pithy words on Apr 18 04 at 10:54 amrebuys are probably needed in a small tournament, as each rebuy generally equals 1/2 a player in your case ($50 entry, $25 rebuys).
my opinions is to play NL the entire night. 1st hour anyone can rebuy when they get below a specific level of chips (say 600). After the 1st break at 1 hour, everyone can do one rebuy regardless of chip level. Anyone under that specific level (600) can do a double rebuy. Then lock up all the cash and play NL until only one MAN remains. Have an extra table handy for those that bust out. Let the girls play whatever they want. They can still have action while the main NL tourney is underway.
Of course the structure is also important. short rounds (say 10 minutes) tend to help the lucky, longer rounds (say 30+ minutes) tend to help the better players. cheap or expensive blinds will tell the beter players how to play (tight or loose).
Most of the online structures won’t work in a live tournament, as online hands/hour will always be higher than a room full of real players. Stop by the Bike/HP/Commerce and pick up their NL strucutre sheet and tweak from there. 30 minutes rounds tend to be the norm in larger live tournaments. Make sure you get that ante in after the $100/$200 (or 5th/6th level) to make it real interesting. love watching the tight players watch their stack get smaller and smaller when they sitting there waiting for Bullets (AA) or Cowboys (KK) to show up.
Steve Zehngut added these pithy words on Apr 18 04 at 2:32 pmI think we’ll do the next one as No Limit all night long. The problem with the rebuys is that we had limit and no limit mixed in one tourney. Rebuys don’t really work with limit tourneys. They are meant to give players second (and third and fourth) chances if they get broken early on.
I don’t want to limit the rebuys to one-per-player. It will be hard to keep track of and it limits the final pot. If players want to keep rebuying, I say let them. We want the loose players at the game.
The suggestions are great, keep them coming, but I am leaning toward this structure for the next go around…- No Limit all night.
- Blinds get doubled every half hour.
- Unlimited rebuys for the 1st hour for anyone under $600.
- Anyone can do a single or double rebuy at the first break.
- No rebuys after 1st break.This is how all of the tourneys work that I have played at the Bike and Hollywood Park.
Thoughts?
-Zengy
mep added these pithy words on Apr 18 04 at 5:02 pmsounds good, except the blinds should probably not double every 30 minutes. The format used these days is the Texas TEARS. For some reason in the 30+ poker books I have, no one gives a sample structure for NL.
I stole this on from the net…so it probably should be adjusted a bit:
No Limit Hold ‘em (#6)
Ante S Blind B Blind
0 25 50
0 50 100
0 75 150
0 100 200
25 100 200
50 150 300
50 200 400
100 300 600
100 400 800
200 500 1000
200 800 1600
300 1000 2000
500 1500 3000
500 2000 4000The general idea of Texas TEARS it to keep the round going up for an average of 50% per round with a max and min of 65% and 35%.
The antes make it so that it gets more people invloved in the pot in the later stages. for round 5 ($25 ante, playing $100/200 blinds) there will be $525 in the pot before anyone gets any cards (assumes 9 handed), so people start moving, else you get blinded/anted to death. Simple math says will cost $525 per round for every player to play (9X$25 (antes) + $100 (S Blind) +$200 (B Blind)). Lots of pots to steal, etc. you’ll have to scale the antes/blinds depending on starting chips.
There is a $100+20 NL tournament at the bike on the 22nd (Mini-series of Poker - no rebuys). they will fax over a tournament rules/structure sheet if asked. 562.806.4646 ext. 545
30 minutes is probably fine for the 1st 4 rounds, might want to shorten the remaining rounds to 15 or 20 minutes, as they will be short handed and tend to drag at 30 minutes.
frank added these pithy words on Apr 20 04 at 6:26 pmFirst off — thanks so much for organizing these things. You guys rock.
Second — I thought the ante started out a little high at first — what was it, $50? It should probaably be $25 the first couple of rounds that it’s in effect.
Third — the buy-in at the break should probably be a double buy-in, if allowed. The stakes are so high once you go to NL w/ $200/$100 blinds that $500 in chip(s) doesn’t buy you much.
I agree that you should let people buy-in as much as they want up to the break; anyone who buys in 4 times probably ain’t going home a winner, and it just fattens the kitty.
I kinda liked playing limit, as I haven’t done that much, and it lets you get your feet wet slowly. But a whole night of No Limit sounds good, too. Maybe alternate that each month?
Lastly — at our table, play was really slow for two reasons: (1) We had to make a lot of change because of the chip/bet structure. Not sure how to solve that. (2) We had a couple players that literally didn’t know how to play; they just weren’t familiar with the dealing & betting structure. That was a bit of a drag. Not sure how to solve that, either.
Thanks again for doing this — I’m up for once a month, gigs permitting.
mep added these pithy words on Apr 23 04 at 9:43 amNL texas tears structure can be found at http://www.pokerpages.com/pokerinfo/texstears/no-limit-structures.htm
my only real comment is that if you play 15 minute rounds and use their chart (as opposed to the formula) it would take 2 hours of play until the antes get into play (which is when the foxes openly start stealing from the farmers that worked so hard to pile up all those chips)…Farmers NEVER win at tournaments.
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