Tourney Help me run a Turbo Tournament. (1 Viewer)

[AdamAAAA]

I love poker. However, being from England means we're low on available players when it comes to home games. Given I've just acquired these babies, I want to put them to use.

I have a good group of guys I used to work with between 8-10 who will play. However, they don't play cash and they won't play a long tournament. They're only interested in quick fire games. £5 each, last three remaining split the pot 30/15/5.

Dreadful, I know. But it's all I got so I want to make it work the best I can. Here's where I need the help of you fine gentlemen.

Terrible Turbo Tournament
Chips available: 220= 25, 100, 500, 1,000 / 70, 70, 50, 30
Game length: 60-90 minutes
Players: 8-10

Please could you recommend a good starting stack and blind structure. At the moment we're kind of guessing.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Adam

 

[DJ Mack]

Paging @BGinGA ... He should be along momentarily...

One option is to dispense with level timing all together and have the blinds increase with each orbit. But even that might be too long for your groups' tastes if you've got slow dealers and all 10 turn out.

 

[AdamAAAA]

I was hoping he'd stop by

 

[Dwight87]

If you had a poker genie or some other tourney clock manager, you just need to enter the chips you have, # of players, and desired length of tourney time and it will do the rest.

For an hour tourney, expect 7 min blinds to escalate quickly and a jam fest...

Also, this structure sucks for the first few guys who bust out cuz they need to wait about an hour for the next tourney. I guess they could start learning cash games while they wait...

 

[BGinGA]

Terrible Turbo Tournament
Chips available: 220= 25, 100, 500, 1,000 / 70, 70, 50, 30
Game length: 60-90 minutes
Players: 8-10

Please could you recommend a good starting stack and blind structure.

Your set will support 8 players with T6000 stacks of reasonable construction:

8 x T25
8 x T100
6 x T500
2 x T1000
------------
24 chips = T6000

You can cobble a ninth T6000 stack together with the spares (14 chips, 4/4/1/5), or use it to offer a single re-buy to the first player who busts out.

You will have 8 extra T1000 chips to color-up the T25 and T100 chips if needed/desired. This all leaves exactly six chips in the set unused.


As far as keeping it within a 1.5 hr time frame goes, there are a couple of ways to go about it:

approach #1 - small starting stacks (relative to starting blinds) with short blind times using a reasonably-paced blind structure:

approach #2 - larger starting stacks (relative to starting blinds) with longer blind times using an aggressive blind structure


structure A

50/100 starting blinds (60BB)
9-minute blind levels
blind increases averaging 43%

lvl sb bb
L1 50 100
L2 75 150
L3 100 200
L4 150 300
remove T25 chips
L5 200 400
L6 300 600
L7 400 800
L8 600 1200
L9 800 1600
L10 1200 2400 ***
L11 1600 3200
L12 2000 4000

This structure will typically end no later than L10 (90 minutes), and probably a good bit sooner depending upon the aggression level in your group (or orchestrated money chops). After the first 45 minutes of play (five blind levels @9 min each), an untouched starting stack is now worth just 10 big blinds.


structure B

25/75 starting blinds (80BB)
15-minute blind levels
blind increases averaging 100%

lvl sb bb
L1 25 75
L2 75 150
L3 150 300
remove T25 chips
L4 300 600
L5 600 1200
L6 1200 2400 ***
L7 2500 5000

This structure will typically end no later than L6 (90 minutes). After the first 45 minutes of play (three blind levels @15 min each), an untouched starting stack is also worth just 10 big blinds -- it's just how you get there that is different.


structure C

25/50 starting blinds (120BB)
23 minute blind levels
blind increases averaging 267% (!!)

lvl sb bb
L1 25 50
L2 75 150
remove T25 chips
L3 300 600
L4 1200 2400 ***
L5 4000 8000

This mega-turbo structure will rarely if ever get past L4 (90 minutes). After the first 46 minutes of play (two blind levels @23 min each), an untouched starting stack is also worth just 10 big blinds. As crazy-aggressive as it looks at first glance, this structure actually allows the greatest amount of meaningful play in the first half of the event, where the blinds are relatively small compared to the stack sizes. Players will start getting knocked out pretty quickly after the color-up, and even just getting to L4 successfully will require a pretty healthy chip stack. This pretty much keeps everybody playing during the first half of the tournament, and players get knocked out in quick succession during the second half.


All three structures have benefits and drawbacks. For your group, I'd probably recommend structure C. Groups with other dynamics may be happier using one of the other two.

yeah, you read it here first, folks. BGinGA actually recommended a blind structure where the blinds TRIPLED and QUADRUPLED.

 

[AdamAAAA]

Excellent, thank you. I've added all the schedules you've put there into the Blinds Up app so will try them all and see which one people prefer.

 

[Wils]

It's a faff, but you could experiment with reducing the blind times as the levels advance. Early ones longer than the late ones gives more time with more blinds without drastic blind increases.

I was going to try this with my regs, but my blinds software crashed

 

[AdamAAAA]

That's not a bad idea. My local casino does this, too. The trouble I have with the quicker blinds is my group is a little slow, so dealing is a slow process unless I just sit in the middle and do it all night.

I really wish I could find a better home game, but beggars cannot be choosers, right?

 

[Phantom]

I reckon they will want to play longer when they handle chips good luck mate

 

[AdamAAAA]

Your set will support 8 players with T6000 stacks of reasonable construction:

8 x T25
8 x T100
6 x T500
2 x T1000
------------
24 chips = T6000

You can cobble a ninth T6000 stack together with the spares (14 chips, 4/4/1/5), or use it to offer a single re-buy to the first player who busts out.

You will have 8 extra T1000 chips to color-up the T25 and T100 chips if needed/desired. This all leaves exactly six chips in the set unused.

structure C

25/50 starting blinds (120BB)
23 minute blind levels
blind increases averaging 267% (!!)

lvl sb bb
L1 25 50
L2 75 150
remove T25 chips
L3 300 600
L4 1200 2400 ***
L5 4000 8000

This mega-turbo structure will rarely if ever get past L4 (90 minutes). After the first 46 minutes of play (two blind levels @23 min each), an untouched starting stack is also worth just 10 big blinds. As crazy-aggressive as it looks at first glance, this structure actually allows the greatest amount of meaningful play in the first half of the event, where the blinds are relatively small compared to the stack sizes. Players will start getting knocked out pretty quickly after the color-up, and even just getting to L4 successfully will require a pretty healthy chip stack. This pretty much keeps everybody playing during the first half of the tournament, and players get knocked out in quick succession during the second half.


All three structures have benefits and drawbacks. For your group, I'd probably recommend structure C. Groups with other dynamics may be happier using one of the other two.

yeah, you read it here first, folks. BGinGA actually recommended a blind structure where the blinds TRIPLED and QUADRUPLED.

If I managed to lay my hands on some 5k chips (around 70) would you change the starting stacks at all?

 

[BGinGA]

If I managed to lay my hands on some 5k chips (around 70) would you change the starting stacks at all?

Not if just running a single table and you still plan on keeping the tournament length short. You won't need the T5000 chips in the current structure, and anything that does use them will run a lot longer than 1.5 hours.

 

[AdamAAAA]

Excellent, I didn't think so. Thanks.