Tourney Tournament Round Length (3 Viewers)

[Poker Zombie]

The better method is to shuffle two behind the dealer. Hi-jack shuffles, the cut-off cuts the deck and hands it to the dealer when the action is over. The dealer, who is now the cut-off passes the deck to the player on his left.

I was going to post the same, but wanted to avoid thr shuffle ahead/ shuffle behind debate.

 

[horseshoez]

The better method is to shuffle two behind the dealer. Hi-jack shuffles, the cut-off cuts the deck and hands it to the dealer when the action is over. The dealer, who is now the cut-off passes the deck to the player on his left.

My main poker club has assigned dealers every tournament, so the dealer and shuffler stay static throughout the game. My other poker club does what you mentioned since it’s a rotating deal. Whoever has the dealer button deals, the hijack shuffles, etc.

 

[Preditor]

It all depends on the size of your field.

For myself, I do 20 minutes for the first 10 or so levels, then 15 minutes. The calculation is not the BLIND level though per-se, it's the amount of people left.

When you're heads up, 20 minute levels can be excutionatingly long for a home game.

So I trim my levels to 15 minutes when I anticipate we'll be down to about 4-5 players. We're still getting the same number of hands per hour with the trimmed levels.

 

[Defarse]

I do 20 minutes for first 6 levels and 10 minutes for remaining levels. But we will usually play 3 of these when we get to together.....3-4 times a year with old college buddies. If I was running a weekly/monthly tournament I would do just one tournament and keep the blind levels consistent throughout.

 

[Preditor]

My main poker club has assigned dealers every tournament, so the dealer and shuffler stay static throughout the game. My other poker club does what you mentioned since it’s a rotating deal. Whoever has the dealer button deals, the hijack shuffles, etc.

Some clubs I go to do a hybrid of this: The dealer is dedicated, but also playing. So players still shuffle behind to give them a bit of a break.

 

[Frode789]

I run a very deep stack tournament, so the first two hours the levels are shorter (18 min). In a deep tournament, unless you are playing big multi-day tournaments, this part is the last section where you should allot your longest levels. At 2H mark we increase to 21 min levels as this is the "meat of the tournament". The mid section where pots are higher, blinds actually hurt and the first people are getting close to going bust... =) IMO the most enjoyable phase.

Then at about 4H mark we are usually down to last ~2-4 people or so and the blinds go back to 18 min. As mentioned earlier, since hands per hour is much higher (at this phase we usually have "dedicated dealers" from others that busted, as well), you can afford to decrease the time a bit and still not feel like the tournament is rushed. And we do want to finish at a reasonable time.

I also want heads up to feel like you don't just push around 8 BBs and go all-in and then it's all over.. A few tournaments ago we had a really long tournament with lots of chips in play, ~1,65M chips, and heads up lasted a couple of levels with some tense back and fourth. Ended at 25K-50K, which still equates to 32,5 BB in play.

 

[Jaxen]

Joining the party late, but I use much the same structure as in the OP. We do 20-minute levels for 9 levels (3 hrs of play) before switching to 15 minutes. With 2 full tables we're down to 5 or 6 handed by level 10 for the switch to 15 and the hands go faster and we get as many hands in as the early 20 minute levels. Tourneys last 4 1/2 to 5 hours.

 

[Mojo1312]

I was going to post the same, but wanted to avoid thr shuffle ahead/ shuffle behind debate.

Is the above code for whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich?

 

[PokerDogDoc]

.
A month late, but hopefully my experiences can help in future tourneys.

My structure:

I use 20 min levels throughout with a 10 minute break (8 min + two 1-min warnings) after every 4th level.
Players like the time consistency and I adjust blind levels to accommodate this.
Blinds go up between a minimum of 33% and maximum of 50% (with a few exceptions, mainly at the levels where the BB can be a single 500 or 1000 chip)

Also note that I start out at 50/100 to prevent the immediate doubling that would normally occur with starting at 25/50.

I also start them out with 200 bb so that it doesn’t turn into a shove fest too early.
Most can get 2-3 hours of play in at that stack amount before busting (no rebuys), then the blind pressure starts to mount and players begin to drop out faster in the later levels.
I also use BB antes to mimic what they will experience in the casino, and this also helps shorten the tourney.

The general rule that I find works in calculating tourney length is that the tourney will approximately end when the SB+BB+BB ante = 10% of chips in play. For your tourney just leave out the BB ante in that calculation.

In my structure above, with a 20K starting stack (x 18 players = 360K chips in play; so 10% = 36K) my tourney ends about Level 14-15 (SB+BB+BB ante = 30K-40K)… That’s about 5.5 hours… sometimes 1 level earlier due to being short stacked or if they chop it.

If you gave your players a deeper starting stack (15K) to avoid the early short stacked “bingo” play you mention, and followed my (or a similar) structure and blind level % increase, yours would end when the SB+BB = 27K, or about Level 15-16 (5.5-6 hours), and probably even a level earlier.

One final note: I keep chip denominations in play that are 1 denomination below the BB chip denomination. So as long as 100s are used for the blinds, I keep 25s in play. Once we go to 1000s for blinds, then I keep 100s as my smallest denom and color up the 25s. This is repeated at 4K/8K (keep 500s, color up 100s).

Good luck. Let us know what you institute and how it turns out.