I suppose I'm just looking for a bit of advice, although I'm not sure if anything can be done to mitigate this problem.
Trying to grow a game will naturally sometimes mean introducing people to poker who have never played before, and while this in itself is a good thing it can also have a detrimental effect on the game at hand.
On the face of it, tournaments are great for newbies because there is a fixed outlay and a more-or-less fixed duration. I imagine many of us here played our first poker after being invited to a home tournament.
So here's my conundrum: this weekend I had 2 newbies join our table of 7 which already included one fairly new player (though he is pretty much up to speed now). So we were 9 handed and spending quite a lot of time prompting the newbies when it was their time to act, reminding them what actions they had available to them, explaining why they lost or won hands, it was quite frankly a nightmare, although the guys themselves were really great and I do want them to return.
The upshot of all that extra time spent helping the newbies meant our hand count was way down (we weren't making a full orbit in a 20 minute level so probably only playing about 7ish hands) and I think that affected the duration of the tournament (although this could be a mistaken assumption on my part which I'm happy to be corrected on).
Here's the schedule we used:
We had 2 rebuys and finished at L18. I make that around 7BB in play - would I be right in thinking playing more hands per level would have shortened the game somewhat? If so, is there anything I can do besides waiting for newbies to become more conversant with the game to keep things on track. I'd much prefer 4—4½ hours than 5+
I'm starting to see why so many people prefer cash games because you're not constantly trying to keep up with a schedule and usher people along, which can feel more stressful than fun.
Trying to grow a game will naturally sometimes mean introducing people to poker who have never played before, and while this in itself is a good thing it can also have a detrimental effect on the game at hand.
On the face of it, tournaments are great for newbies because there is a fixed outlay and a more-or-less fixed duration. I imagine many of us here played our first poker after being invited to a home tournament.
So here's my conundrum: this weekend I had 2 newbies join our table of 7 which already included one fairly new player (though he is pretty much up to speed now). So we were 9 handed and spending quite a lot of time prompting the newbies when it was their time to act, reminding them what actions they had available to them, explaining why they lost or won hands, it was quite frankly a nightmare, although the guys themselves were really great and I do want them to return.
The upshot of all that extra time spent helping the newbies meant our hand count was way down (we weren't making a full orbit in a 20 minute level so probably only playing about 7ish hands) and I think that affected the duration of the tournament (although this could be a mistaken assumption on my part which I'm happy to be corrected on).
Here's the schedule we used:
We had 2 rebuys and finished at L18. I make that around 7BB in play - would I be right in thinking playing more hands per level would have shortened the game somewhat? If so, is there anything I can do besides waiting for newbies to become more conversant with the game to keep things on track. I'd much prefer 4—4½ hours than 5+
I'm starting to see why so many people prefer cash games because you're not constantly trying to keep up with a schedule and usher people along, which can feel more stressful than fun.