Family tournament game - No money involved! (2 Viewers)

[vulp]

Hi,

We’re planning a fun family tournament with kids (10–12 years old) attending.
For parenting reasons, there won’t be a real‑money prize pool.
We might have a small trophy or something similar as the first prize.

Since some participants are travelling from distant towns, I don’t want it to be a simple freezeout — what if someone busts in the first five minutes?

So my idea is that everyone starts with two extra life tokens. If you go broke, you can redeem a token and receive the initial 10k chips again.
(This would replace the usual “rebuy before the first break”.)

Do you think this could work?
I want the players to feel that something is at stake, but I also want to avoid early eliminations.

 

[NotRealNameNoSir]

You can definitely play that way, but if you give out two free lives I would expect more pople to go broke in the first five minutes. One may be a better balance.

Another wrinkle could be "teams"; everyone is randomly (or systematically, I dont care) separated into two teams, and it doesn't change anything except adds a level of "I hope someone from my team wins". This makes theming easier. Ran a fun one in college where it was aliens vs cowboys. Gives them something to root for after they go broke.

Definitely give a prize, even if its a silly toy or a certificate or something. People love hardware.

 

[danopoker]

In before someone says "Just play a cash game!"

The tokens thing will work. Do people with tokens get chips for them without going broke at some point (like after an hour or two) as a reward for not going bust?

I would go with very short rounds, start the blinds small-ish but bump them up aggressively unless you want a long tournament, especially with 30k in play for each player.

Some sort of prize or small set of prizes at the end would be nice.

 

[vulp]

Cash game without real money? That would turn super boring fast....

I didn't think about rewarding players with tokens remaining at a certain time during the tourney.
Anytime you are broke, you use your token or get eliminated -> the only player who might have a token at the end is the winner.

I'm wondering about the blind levels and time.
All the players are super new to the game (that's also why they don't want real money) so I expect a very slow game -> we should have longer blinds.
But I want to finish in max 4 hours -> shorter blinds.

My plan for the levels is kind of the standard (BBs): 50, 100, 150, 200, 300, 400, 600, 800, 1200, 1600, 2000, 3000, 4000, 6000, 8000, 12000

I have no idea how this will turn out. I just hope we will have fun.

 

[danopoker]

Well with 10 people, if a stack is 10k and you give everyone two tokens, that is 300k. The tournament should end right around when you get to a big blind of 30k (10% of total chips in play), which is [counting ...] ... 18-19 levels. If you want a max of 4 hours, you're looking at 12 minute rounds if I've done my math right.

 

[BigGrizz]

Hi,

We’re planning a fun family tournament with kids (10–12 years old) attending.
For parenting reasons, there won’t be a real‑money prize pool.
We might have a small trophy or something similar as the first prize.

Since some participants are travelling from distant towns, I don’t want it to be a simple freezeout — what if someone busts in the first five minutes?

So my idea is that everyone starts with two extra life tokens. If you go broke, you can redeem a token and receive the initial 10k chips again.
(This would replace the usual “rebuy before the first break”.)

Do you think this could work?
I want the players to feel that something is at stake, but I also want to avoid early eliminations.

I have run this exact model. It works great. The only change is make the life tokens go away after a certain blind level. Anyone with a life token at the cutoff gets brought back up to starting stack (less common that you would think as most who didnt burn their lives have way more than a starting stack).

 

[AlbinoDragon]

As much as we (generally) hate compressed tournament structures around here, if the player pool doesn't have that many folks (I'm thinking a family game where there might be ten people), maybe build an accelerated structure where you could run two 'faster' tournaments? Everyone gets time at the table, and a "second chance" if they bust early.

Maybe not ideal poker being played, but that's being sacrificed to allow the greatest play time for everyone.

[EDIT, misspellings]

 

[vulp]

Oh, I haven't mentioned, that there will be around 7-8 players.

I want to optimize the structure for fun!
Nobody is a serious poker player, I just want them to experience a poker tourney and maybe later play a bit more seriously.