So I've been recruited locally to help run and deal some bar poker tournaments on weekdays. The bar's angle is to get customers in on otherwise slow nights, the dealers get some compensation and tips, patron's get to play a freeroll tournament with a $150 cash prize (bar tab credit to second I think). Last week was my first experience with bar poker, and it was wild. The bar has 2 tables, the most players they've had so far is 18 (seated 16 and then allowed alternates to sit down when someone busted). Starting stacks are 15k with a t100 base, but here's where it gets wild. Tipping the dealer $5/$10 gets you an additional 5k/15k in chips. Tips are allowed at the start and after each break, four 12 minute levels between breaks, and the amount of chips the tip gets you goes up. I believe it was something like 15bb after the first break for $10 tip, and then 7.5bb after each subsequent break (30k, 150k, 1.5mil I think are the amounts of the addons, they have a 15mil addon on their schedule if it goes long enough). Players also get tickets for buying drinks, and can turn in up to 2 tickets at the start of each level for additional chips as well (2k/ticket before first break, then 5k before second break, 10k, 50k). By the end of the night 1 mil chips were in play. Not great poker, but everybody sure enjoys it.
The bar owner is wanting to get some chips with the bar logo (I'm trying to steer him towards ABC ceramics or at least labeled china clays but he's currently looking at dice chips or similar with stickers from somebody he knows and that may be his budget so...we'll see. Pray for us!) The current TD doesn't really have much experience running tournaments, we met at a home game, and I'm the chip guy now. I don't think I'm very experienced in running tournaments, much less such a crazy format as they currently have going, and I'm struggling to come up with a good recommendation for how many chips per denom are needed. Ideal starting stacks can go out the window for getting this done with as few chips as possible, I think they currently are starting with 20 chips, 5x100, 9x500, 5x1k, 1x5k because that fits in a rack nicely and they're short on dice chips... They also use 10k, 50k, 100k in their chip progression, no 25k. Math wise, I believe the top end would be something like 140x t500k, and 40x t1m give or take to cover the longest it's gone with the maximum players.
Anybody else have experience with poker like this? Any improvements to structure that keeps all 3 parties (bar, dealers, players) happy? How many chips does this craziness need?
The bar owner is wanting to get some chips with the bar logo (I'm trying to steer him towards ABC ceramics or at least labeled china clays but he's currently looking at dice chips or similar with stickers from somebody he knows and that may be his budget so...we'll see. Pray for us!) The current TD doesn't really have much experience running tournaments, we met at a home game, and I'm the chip guy now. I don't think I'm very experienced in running tournaments, much less such a crazy format as they currently have going, and I'm struggling to come up with a good recommendation for how many chips per denom are needed. Ideal starting stacks can go out the window for getting this done with as few chips as possible, I think they currently are starting with 20 chips, 5x100, 9x500, 5x1k, 1x5k because that fits in a rack nicely and they're short on dice chips... They also use 10k, 50k, 100k in their chip progression, no 25k. Math wise, I believe the top end would be something like 140x t500k, and 40x t1m give or take to cover the longest it's gone with the maximum players.
Anybody else have experience with poker like this? Any improvements to structure that keeps all 3 parties (bar, dealers, players) happy? How many chips does this craziness need?