Tourney Favor to ask if you're hosting or playing home tourney soon... (1 Viewer)

[Larold]

TL;DR: I would love some help collecting simple data.

Someone recently made a theoretical but excellent observation about tournaments that I really liked on another one of my threads. It goes like this:

(Assuming no more rebuys / addons) In very general terms, a tournament will have (can support) roughly N players remaining for every (10 x N) big blinds of chips in play.

e.g. If blinds are currently 1k / 2k, and there are 180k chips in play, you could expect a ballpark of 180k / (2k x 10 BBs) = ~ 9 players.

I would love help from those of you hosting or playing in upcoming home tourneys in collecting data around this. (I will do the same, but no opportunity until late Feb.)
I think we'd just need to note:
- Total chips in play once freezeout period starts
- Total number of players
- When each player gets knocked out, note the blind level

Sincerely appreciate the assist from anyone who's able and willing to do this! I'll report my findings as well.
Cheers!

 

[Moxie Mike]

I run tournaments periodically in a league format that's going into it's 11th season. I can't speak for everyone, but from my perspective, asking people to track this data while also running their tournaments is asking a lot.

What are you trying to achieve with this?

From my experience, the tournaments I run have unlimited rebuys for the first 4 levels and a break add on, so this might not be very useful to you. But here's some data:

Tournament runtime is from 6:30 pm - 12:30 am. We're usually done by midnight and we never run late.

Total chips in play is usually around 1.3m.

Unless someone busts and doesn't rebuy (which is unusual), most eliminations happen after the first break. People are usually pretty consistently eliminated starting around level 6 or so.

Final table (9 players) usually convenes around level 11 and we typically start with 18 or so with about 25 total entries.

Here is the structure for reference (I know the times aren't correct at the end):

 

[Larold]

I run tournaments periodically in a league format that's going into it's 11th season. I can't speak for everyone, but from my perspective, asking people to track this data while also running their tournaments is asking a lot.

What are you trying to achieve with this?

From my experience, the tournaments I run have unlimited rebuys for the first 4 levels and a break add on, so this might not be very useful to you. But here's some data:

Tournament runtime is from 6:30 pm - 12:30 am. We're usually done by midnight and we never run late.

Total chips in play is usually around 1.3m.

Unless someone busts and doesn't rebuy (which is unusual), most eliminations happen after the first break. People are usually pretty consistently eliminated starting around level 6 or so.

Final table (9 players) usually convenes around level 11 and we typically start with 18 or so with about 25 total entries.

Here is the structure for reference (I know the times aren't correct at the end):

View attachment 1252895

Thanks for the info. The way I'm going to minimize overhead of collecting data is simply have a sheet taped to the wall with the blind schedule (a copy) and ask players to make a little tick mark as they get knocked out. (I'll apologize and explain I'm doing it to help make my tourneys better.)

The reason I'm doing this is that I don't like the idea of scheduling an event around a minority of attendees. And when one designs a tournament around the question, "When do you want it to end?", you are primarily designing around two specific people - 1st and 2nd place - the right edge of the bell curve.

My preference is to design the tournament around "When would I like X% of the field to be eliminated?". My crowd has a lot of folks that for various reasons benefit from knowing a general time range they might get knocked out if they don't make it to the money.

I realize this problem can be generally solved by just using a time range in the invite, but I'm personally very interested in this topic and others might be as well. If collecting the data is too hard, easy solution - don't do it. Hence, the term 'favor'.

 

[CSW]

I’m in, @Larold. I have our first game of the year on 1/27 and am already tracking this data.

I started tracking all kinds of tournament data last year, and I think the data I have is granular enough to get you 7 tournaments worth of the info you are looking for from last year. I will check my database when I have a moment. Feel free to PM so that I don’t forget to send it to you.

For what it is worth, my players skew to the inexperienced end of the curve. My observation is that this results in the stacks getting shorter in my games before players start making moves and busting out, compared to games with more experience players. As you are collecting data, it would probably make sense to code a field for which PCF member sends you the data, so that you can spot any anomalies that may result from different pools like mine.

If you end up getting many takers, such that you compile a good little data set, I would appreciate you sharing the compiled data.

In addition to the points that you raise about why this could be helpful, it might also help with planning different tournament structures. For example, this year, I am running a time-limited tournament at the end of the year, where the game will end after a certain number of levels, and people will be paid out both their cash prizes and season league points based on the number of chips they have at the end. It could be helpful to know how many players I should expect to still be in the hunt at the end of that last level.

Similarly, I have plans to run a survivor tournament at some point in the future, where the top X% of the field will be paid. Structuring that one would be greatly aided by this data as well. I know that the structure can be slower than my usual structure and still end at a similar time, but I’m not quite sure just how much slower the structure can be.

 

[Larold]

I’m in, @Larold. I have our first game of the year on 1/27 and am already tracking this data.

I started tracking all kinds of tournament data last year, and I think the data I have is granular enough to get you 7 tournaments worth of the info you are looking for from last year. I will check my database when I have a moment. Feel free to PM so that I don’t forget to send it to you.

For what it is worth, my players skew to the inexperienced end of the curve. My observation is that this results in the stacks getting shorter in my games before players start making moves and busting out, compared to games with more experience players. As you are collecting data, it would probably make sense to code a field for which PCF member sends you the data, so that you can spot any anomalies that may result from different pools like mine.

If you end up getting many takers, such that you compile a good little data set, I would appreciate you sharing the compiled data.

In addition to the points that you raise about why this could be helpful, it might also help with planning different tournament structures. For example, this year, I am running a time-limited tournament at the end of the year, where the game will end after a certain number of levels, and people will be paid out both their cash prizes and season league points based on the number of chips they have at the end. It could be helpful to know how many players I should expect to still be in the hunt at the end of that last level.

Similarly, I have plans to run a survivor tournament at some point in the future, where the top X% of the field will be paid. Structuring that one would be greatly aided by this data as well. I know that the structure can be slower than my usual structure and still end at a similar time, but I’m not quite sure just how much slower the structure can be.

Absolutely - it goes without saying that any data I collect and/or gather myself, I'll be sharing back with the crowd.

Love your ideas for the different structures, and I agree data will be very helpful in planning. Two decades ago, I bet you could've used Turbo Texas Hold'em to simulate a tournament, but I can't remember if it listed the blind levels that players got knocked out on.