There are a lot of ways to do this. I'll mention 3 basic ways. However, what I would do first is poll your players and find out what they want.
I played in a league before starting one. The league seemed like a good idea. I asked various players what they liked and didn't like about it. But they also told me about other leagues they played in and what they liked and disliked about those. I got some surprises. Then I built my league to avoid those things a majority of players didn't like, and try to focus on the things they did like. My tournament at the time was going to draw from my own player list and that group's player list. I realize that wasn't a wide sample, but it's what I had.
Formats
TOC Format -- A Tournament of Champions requires players to qualify to play based on some criteria. Usually this seems to be a "final table" where it is a single-table format. However, it could be multi-table. If for example, you wanted 2 tables of 10, you could use the top 20 qualifiers.
Challenges -- keeping players who are losing coming. Once they are out of the running, do they still have an incentive to come play? Then, will they want to play again the next season? If you want to keep it going over time, I think you must address these two issues.
Classic Format -- All members are eligible to participate. You need some way to sort if you have more wanting to play in it than you have spaces.
A variation is the open tournament. It's open to anyone who wants to come. One advantage of that is the opportunity to use it to recruit more people to the game.
Ultimately, there isn't a right or wrong on this. There are are things that are better or worse for your group. I polled players every year. I know of no way to find out without some form of polling, even if it is just informally talking to players. If you don't seem to be open to their ideas though, some people just won't tell you anything useful.
Entry Cost
Several ways to do this.
- All players pay the same amount for the final game and it stands on its own.
- All players pay the same amount for the final game but some of the prize money comes from prior events. Example: 10 league games, everyone pays $5 for the final event. Player A comes to all 10 and has prepaid $50. Player B comes to 5 and has prepaid $25. Player B makes up what he hasn't already paid to enter. Once players understood that, it made sense to them. Note: I personally felt bad for people who came and paid, but for whatever reason couldn't come to the final, so I stopped doing it.
- Players pay different amounts based on some criteria. In talking to players prior to starting mine, that was easily the biggest complaint they had about other leagues. In the league I was in, there were 11 games. You had to come to 8 to be eligible. Players who came to 8 games only paid less that those who came to 9, 10, or 11. Players started looking at it like they should only come to 8. That hurt attendance. That's why I adjusted this, so everyone still had an incentive to come.
Starting Stacks
There are 2 ways to do this. One is everyone starts with the same stack and the other is your stack varies based on prior performance. The second strongest negative comments I got were about staggered stacks. Maybe I saw them as the second strongest negative because I personally don't like them. I'd like to think going in that I have the same chance as everyone else.
For a few years, I dealt for a bar league that was weekly. I'm leaving out some facts here, but they had a special event for the dealers. Made it sound like a big deal. I went, ordered food, and then found that stacks were based on how often you had dealt. They had games I think 4 nights a week, and some of those dealers dealt every night. I dealt 1x/week. Further, there were nights I had to work, so I'll say I dealt about 75% of the time on that one night. Of those nights I dealt, they were glad I showed up -- they seemed to need the dealers.
I found I had the smallest stack. Some stacks were 10x my stack, but the next smallest one was about 3x my stack. I realized quickly I was just cannon fodder. The blinds were structured in such a way that I would be short stacked by the second round. The first round lasted through 3 players, and the next round 4 players. By the third round, I was basically all-in or fold -- that desperately short stacked, and I was the BB. I raised all in, lost, and left -- never to return. I just dropped out. I was dealing to help them. I set aside that time to participate with the other dealers, but I have no realistic chance at all unless I could double up before the first orbit was over. That's not poker to me.
If you aren't going to start everyone equally, make sure that the shortest stacks have a viable chance. Some are more tolerant of stack variations than others, but if I were doing varied stacks, I'd not give the largest stack more than 20-25% more than the smallest stack. That's just me -- YMMV.
Points
The very biggest thing is don't use a linear structure. That is each place has the same spacing, whether it's 1 pt or 10 pts. I like every position gets the same percentage more, which is non-linear. I like something for coming -- we did 1 pt for attending. I like something based on the tournament size. I like something for those who did the best. In our case, only those who made the final table got more. I multiplied attendance by final position. I had 9 at the final table, here was the scoring I finally settled on for up to 27 players:
| # Plrs | Att Pts | Finish | Fin Pts |
| 2 | 0.889 | 1 | 26.844 |
| 3 | 0.925 | 2 | 16.777 |
| 4 | 0.962 | 3 | 10.486 |
| 5 | 1.000 | 4 | 6.554 |
| 6 | 1.040 | 5 | 4.096 |
| 7 | 1.082 | 6 | 2.560 |
| 8 | 1.125 | 7 | 1.600 |
| 9 | 1.170 | 8 | 1.600 |
| 10 | 1.217 | 9 | 1.600 |
| 11 | 1.265 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 12 | 1.316 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 13 | 1.369 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 14 | 1.423 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 15 | 1.480 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 16 | 1.539 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 17 | 1.601 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 18 | 1.665 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 19 | 1.732 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 20 | 1.801 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 21 | 1.873 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 22 | 1.948 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 23 | 2.026 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 24 | 2.107 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 25 | 2.191 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 26 | 2.279 | 10 | 1.000 |
| 27 | 2.370 | 10 | 1.000 |
Attendance -- I used 5 as a base, and for every player over that, it went up by 1.04%. You could use 1.05%. I found that better than attendance pts x number of players where 2x players counted 2x as much.
Finish points -- Making the final table got 1.6x the attendance. Then I had 6 "in the money" positions, even though we didn't really pay 6 positions, and sometimes it was only paying 3.
I used a spreadsheet to calculate, so the decimals didn't bother me. If they bothered you, you could accomplish the same thing by multiplying everything by 1,000. That would generate huge numbers without decimals. You could also round off to whole numbers (27, 17, 10, 7, 4, 3, 2, 1) and get very similar results.
I liked this because it was simple. You could use a different multiplier than 1.6 and get the same basic results. You could also double the points for those who made the final table (FT) and start those FT points from that.
It accounts for attendance, # of players per tournament, and final finish. When we chopped the pot, I chopped the points as well. Some would just give all choppers the lowest points.
Hope this helps. Obviously there are a lot of ways you could do it that would be successful.
