Tourney Home Razz Tourney Structure (3 Viewers)

[BGinGA]

It does significantly change the pot odds offered, making a larger number of speculative starting hands and subsequent draws worth playing.

Not necessary better, but different than a more conventional stud game.

 

[aaronroch]

Lol! I set starting stacks in the case and printed blinds posters at 10pm last night, so my ability to course correct for tonight’s game is limited.

Thank you for all the advice though!

...I think 30 big bets is way too small for a tournament, players could go broke after only two crazy hands. Another thing I would change is the size of the bring-in relative to the ante -- I prefer at least 2x.

Thanks, BGinGA. I’ll have to think about what last-minute adjustments I can make.

 

[aaronroch]

Table antes work great in cash games, where there are no artificial inequities or increasing monetary/stack pressure, but it is ill-advised for tournament play.

And thanks for this- that brings clarity about when to use table antes.

 

[APatHand]

That is a very large ante for stud. Typically the sum of antes 8 handed is between 1 and 1.5 small bets.

True, but then most of these players have no problem calling 2 bets with a K in the door in Razz.

 

[Legend5555]

True, but then most of these players have no problem calling 2 bets with a K in the door in Razz.

Then large ante away my friend!

 

[aaronroch]

AAR:
So this was fun and went pretty well but I think the odds are very low that we’ll do another. Razz is very fun and very frustrating all at the same time. Part of me REALLY wants a repeat just so I get another shot at it.

One player bailed and we played with 6. I increased the starting stacks to 2,000 so we had 12,000 chips on the table. The game ended at the very end of level 6 (200/200/500/1000). Heads up, the big stack started playing VERY tight and although the small stack was taking the antes like 3 hands out of 4, he got impatient and tried to out-draw the big stack when he knew he was behind. Otherwise it would have gone at least one level longer.

Tentative conclusions:
(1) BGinGA was right (shocker) 40 BB deep is not deep enough. A larger bring may have helped move things along at the end.
(2) Razz is NOT a simple game to play well.
(3) if one player gets very nitty at the end things can really drag out... not sure what is the fix for that.

Razz will make it back to my table for sure, but probably as part of a mixed game tourney and as a cash game.

 

[23slam]

As @Shaggy said earlier, I’ve done of these every year the last few years. Basically, I always follow the WSOP chart for their $1,500 buy in tourney. We usually have around 14-18 players for this tourney (the lowest turnout every year lol), and I structure everything for around 6 1/2 hours of playing time (not counting breaks). Using that WSOP structure, 25 minute levels (no rebuys) has worked really well. To protect myself (especially since we haven’t done too many of these), I put in a safeguard——at 1:30am (we start at 6:30pm), all levels are 10 minutes. So you’d need to adjust based on your total time AND number of entries. Most of my friends are cool doing this like once every couple years in my league—actually taking a break from it this season!

 

[honkydevil]

AAR:
So this was fun and went pretty well but I think the odds are very low that we’ll do another. Razz is very fun and very frustrating all at the same time. Part of me REALLY wants a repeat just so I get another shot at it.

One player bailed and we played with 6. I increased the starting stacks to 2,000 so we had 12,000 chips on the table. The game ended at the very end of level 6 (200/200/500/1000). Heads up, the big stack started playing VERY tight and although the small stack was taking the antes like 3 hands out of 4, he got impatient and tried to out-draw the big stack when he knew he was behind. Otherwise it would have gone at least one level longer.

Tentative conclusions:
(1) BGinGA was right (shocker) 40 BB deep is not deep enough. A larger bring may have helped move things along at the end.
(2) Razz is NOT a simple game to play well.
(3) if one player gets very nitty at the end things can really drag out... not sure what is the fix for that.

Razz will make it back to my table for sure, but probably as part of a mixed game tourney and as a cash game.

Do you think 50BB would be a good starting stack or would you try going to 75BB, I think that’s what BG said.

 

[aaronroch]

Mr. Devil,
I suspect it depends a lot on your players.
I’ve tentatively concluded that short turbo formats go terribly with Razz.

If you can schedule a long enough tournament, I’d go at least 60 BB.

If your players are very cautious like mine apparently are, you may go several levels longer than planned.

 

[aaronroch]

One further thought: we held a half-hour “learning session” before the game where we reviewed both razz and limit betting, and everyone found that extremely beneficial.

Edit: I also printed out a version of Abby99’s mixed game card for razz and gave everybody one.

 

[BGinGA]

One further thought: we held a half-hour “learning session” before the game where we reviewed both razz and limit betting, and everyone found that extremely beneficial.

Besides starting hand selection, make sure you include lessons on raising (vs calling or limping), and betting/raising (vs checking/calling) on later streets. There is a lot of strategy in Razz, and a bunch of players that limp/check/call too much can really slow down a tournament (and cost themselves winning bigger pots). Convincing new players to bet (not only their own hand, but the runout too) will speed things up considerably.