Tourney Blind Joe's (first) bounty tournament (1 Viewer)

[Blind Joe]

Held my first bounty tournament on Saturday (my fourth time hosting) and it went down a treat. The guys loved the bounty concept so I will definitely be doing it again at some point. I think having that extra pot of money to play for gives those who miss the bubble a chance at some consolation.

We were 8 handed, so a full table for my table topper. I tweaked my previous schedule ever so slightly to keep the majority of blind raises at 33/50% (I changed L12 from 1K/2K to 1100/2200 which I know not everyone will like, instead preferring the more aesthetically pleasing 1K/2K, but it's consistent and keeps the T100s in play a little longer so they can be coloured up along with the T500s at the fourth and final break) and had a break scheduled for every hour of play.

Buy in was £10 for 10K and the bounty was £5 (last tournament winner had a scratch card bonus bounty on him). Two £5 5K add-ons per player were allowed during levels 1–6 (two hours of play) and could each be used only when a stack was at 5K or below (both could be used together for a full rebuy if felted). Somewhat surprisingly the add-on take up was 75% - up 25% from last time. Maybe I set the tone when I went all in with 7-2 on the first hand trying to bluff my way to a quick double up and catch the 7-2 bonus Not a good start! Both add-ons immediately gone and under pressure!

Speaking of bonuses, we had 3: Magnificent Seven, for winning with a pocket pair of 7s; The Whipcracker for pulling off a win with 7-2o; and Smoking Guns, for felting 2 or more players at once, all paying out £5 each. Only the Whipcracker paid out after two failed attempts to win it (my early one and another player's attempt mid tourney after he got sucked in by pairing up his deuce on the flop but was easily crushed by pocket queens). Down to 3 handed and now chip leader I put in a standard 3BB raise with the WHIP planning to fold a re-raise or any dicey post flop action but it was enough to steal the blinds and take the £5 bonus.

We had a royal flush pretty early on, a first for all of us. The guy who hit it had barely played poker before and it was his first time with us. He ran so good for the first couple of hours and seemed to get dealt pair after pair, including JJ, QQ, KK and AA - it was enough to make him chip leader and secure 2nd place even when his luck ran out.

Miraculously I came 1st after my disastrous start, playing the bulk of the tournament incredibly nitty and letting the field eliminate itself for the most part (I only eliminated 3rd and 2nd myself).

For the second time in a row we finished on L17 - 5K/10K (not even on the official schedule), this time with 15BB on the table, so I'm starting to think I should expect this and plan for it rather than the 40–60BBs we were getting down to last year or even the 'standard' 20.

In total we played 4.5 hours of poker and had 40 minutes of scheduled breaks, which is a little bit on the long side for my liking, compounded by the fact that I kept pausing the clock during breaks because people were enjoying chatting round the fire—we play in the (still unfinished and looking like a shipping crate) summer house which has a fire pit outside—and yes, it's nice and sociable and I don't want to lose that, but we ran way over and a couple of people had to leave before the end (luckily they were already eliminated), so I think I need to up my game as TD. Maybe a slightly earlier start than 8pm (though not always possible with family commitments) coupled with a more strict break schedule will have us finishing around 1am (rather than after 2 ).

Thanks for reading. All comments are welcome!

 

[aaronroch]

Joe, I'm blown away by your matching... everything! NICELY DONE SIR!!

For running long... I've found things can be social and long or focused and quick. If you go with a single longer break instead of many short ones, say a 20 minute break after 2 hours, you'd cut your scheduled break time in half and also won't feel so bad stopping the break to get back to poker.

 

[Mr Winberg]

Great job! I love all the effort and the different bonuses you've got!

 

[BGinGA]

I run a 5-minute break roughly after every hour of play (usually 4x 15 minute levels, or 3x 20 minute levels), with color-up breaks being 10 minutes long.

Verbal warning at 60 seconds to end-of-break (plus the timer beeps), and cards are in-the-air when the buzzer sounds. You keep the clock running, and they will adjust. Same as when you don't.....

 

[Blind Joe]

Joe, I'm blown away by your matching... everything! NICELY DONE SIR!!

For running long... I've found things can be social and long or focused and quick. If you go with a single longer break instead of many short ones, say a 20 minute break after 2 hours, you'd cut your scheduled break time in half and also won't feel so bad stopping the break to get back to poker.

Thank you!

I'll have a think about the breaks but my initial reaction is that my players couldn't go 2 hours without a pee or a cigarette In all fairness the bathroom is a bit of a walk back up to the house so I think there's a risk of missing quite a bit of action if they can't hold it in! We did used to have less frequent breaks but we felt it wasn't enough. However, if we can't stick to 10 mins per hour it will have to be reconsidered! I'll see how the next one goes.

Great job! I love all the effort and the different bonuses you've got!

Nice one Mr W!

Edit: thanks @BGinGA that's pretty much what I just said to one of my players - when the buzzer goes, the cards are getting dealt! And the software does give us a 60 second warning so there's no excuse really.

 

[aaronroch]

It sounds like your guys don't like sitting still very long and also want some time to socialize.
I've played with groups that prefer a little less poker and a little more hanging out time. That's not what I prefer, but it is easy enough to accommodate once you determine that's the case.

If your guys fall into that category, just do one less blind level. Then you have an extra 20 minutes to add to breaks. From the sound of your group I'd think that 3 x short breaks + a long break in the middle might work really well.

Last thing I'll throw out there is I find that people often want the last break of the evening to be as short as possible.

EDIT: I'm totally stealing your idea of a scratch-off ticket bounty on the previous winner. That's brilliant.

 

[Blind Joe]

I'm totally stealing your idea of a scratch-off ticket bounty on the previous winner. That's brilliant.

I think I read a post somewhere on here recently about using scratch cards in place of bounty chips and I thought it would be a good idea to have one just for the previous winner. It adds a bit of razzmatazz to knocking him out of the comp! It was a big hit with our guys and we decided we would continue the tradition in all future tourneys.

I don't know how it works in your neck of the woods but here you can check scratchers online to see how many top prizes are still in play. Most of the ones on sale have prizes ranging from tens of thousands to millions but almost all of them have only 1 or 2 top prizes left at most and plenty of them have none at all making them a bit pointless. I realised if I went with one of the big prize cards we could be playing for years (decades even) and probably never win anything, so I opted for a low prize high payout card - top prize of £100 but at the time of purchase there were over 6,200 top prizes in circulation Our guy only won £2, but that's beside the point

 

[1A25R]

It seem to be nicely organized! I love the scratch ticket bounty idea

 

[aaronroch]

Joe, I showed this post to a friend that runs a monthly league that’s been going for about 5 years, and he immediately started taking notes. Apparently all 4 of your “Rewards” are going into his game next week.

Thank you sir!

 

[cpac54]

Wow, some really great ideas here. I think I'd definitely like to implement some of these as a way to get new players more into the game. Question re: the bonuses: Are these $5 bonuses coming out of the buy-in/top-up pool? If not, from where?

 

[1A25R]

Are these $5 bonuses coming out of the buy-in/top-up pool?

Yes, usually the tournament is announced something like $50+$5+$3.
Where the 50 goes to the price pool, the 5 is the bounty and the 3 the tournament fees to cover expenses (ex:drinks, etc.)

 

[Blind Joe]

Wow, some really great ideas here. I think I'd definitely like to implement some of these as a way to get new players more into the game. Question re: the bonuses: Are these $5 bonuses coming out of the buy-in/top-up pool? If not, from where?

Yeah the way I did it was that any bonuses which are cashed are paid out of the main prize fund. Any that aren't cashed remain in the prize fund. We had 3 bonuses but only one cashed out so just £5 out of the main prize fund.