Tourney Hosting a 6-player game with new players who don't want to buy in for much (1 Viewer)

[demax51]

Hey all! I host home games pretty regularly, but I usually run .25/.50 or 1/2 cash games. My wife has some friends in from out of town this week, though, and when they saw my poker room, they asked if we could try to get a game together. One of them has never really played before and the other hasn't played much, and one of the other two people I invited is more or less brand new, too. I think the most some of these newer folks would want to buy in for is $10. MAAAAYBE $20. Keeping in mind that the "experience" (as opposed to winning money) is what these folks will most likely value, what do you think is the best structure for a buy-in this small that'll keep people playing for 4 or so hours?

I have no shortage of chips that run from .25 up to 5,000, so I can run just about any format, but I'm not sure if a microstakes cash game or a tournament ($10 buy-in with $10 rebuy?) would be better for this group. I'm currently leaning towards a tournament, but I'm not very familiar with SNG structures and I have no idea how deep to make the starting stacks or the best way to handle rebuys/add-ons. Any advice is appreciated; thanks in advance!

 

[Labrat]

Have you considered a limit cash game?

 

[Tonystark137]

Limited cash game or a sit and go tournament format, blinds only go up when some knew busts. Probably recommend dealing for the table to keep the action going. Hell do a play money black jack game and they will probably get a kick out of it. Gf's friends was over the other night and wanted dto play "poker" and when I mentioned blinds , they were like we want the one where you hit.

 

[demax51]

Have you considered a limit cash game?

I’ve run limit cash games for newer players in the past, but they were with slightly bigger stakes (.25/.25 blinds, .25 to 2.50 spread, $50 buy-in), but I couldn’t think of a very good limit format for $10 buy-ins. What would you suggest?

 

[SteveEH]

Fixed limit hold'em is the best for noobs - no need to think about bet sizing, no high pressure decisions, no risk of busting out the first hand and having nothing to do for 4 hours.

 

[Labrat]

Depending on what they want to play (I'm assuming HE, but don't discount Stud8) you can run a limit cash game with your normal chips and divide everything by 10.

$5 or $10 gets them $50 or $100 in chips. Nobody gets hurt, nobody gets mad, everybody has fun.

 

[Sparkynutz]

Do they know poker hands? Have a hand order chart for them to look at.
Maybe try and play more games of chance than just holdem? Horse racing? Roulette?

We play 25c ante, 25c bets. 3 bet max per round. 50c if natural pair is showing. Last bet is $1 max. Mostly dealers choice games. Maybe they know some or make some up on the fly like we do.

 

[SteveEH]

I’ve run limit cash games for newer players in the past, but they were with slightly bigger stakes (.25/.25 blinds, .25 to 2.50 spread, $50 buy-in), but I couldn’t think of a very good limit format for $10 buy-ins. What would you suggest?

For fixed limit hold'em I'd do .10/.25 (or .25/.25) blinds, .25 small bet/.50 big bet.

Communicate: "You'll probably win/lose about $10 over the night, but bring $20 in case you get really unlucky early on so you can still play."

 

[demax51]

For fixed limit hold'em I'd do .10/.25 (or .25/.25) blinds, .25 small bet/.50 big bet.

Communicate: "You'll probably win/lose about $10 over the night, but bring $20 in case you get really unlucky early on so you can still play."

I thought of that, but 40 big bets maximum just felt like too little. A loose player could easily blow that in a couple of hours and then still be sitting out for the rest of the night. And lowering the stakes just, to me, would make the stakes too low to be taken seriously.

 

[Grimalkin]

I think T25 base, T20K stack would make it a real fun night. Tourney style is much funnier than a cash game IMO for newbies, since you can deep stack them and give plenty of chips to play with, with 16/16/8/9/1

Starting blinds off at 25-50 gives them a 400BB stack. I’d let them do max 2 rebuys each for the first 2 hours (or maybe no cutoff time for rebuy). You could do initial buyin at $10, then a $5 rebuy for full chip amount, which gives them a cheap way to get back in.

Here's a sample blinds schedule that assumes 6 buy ins for 20K, and then 6 total full rebuys for the night, bringing 20xBB at 12K, which is level 14, but likely the game will end around lvl 12 or 13. If you want to lengthen the game more, you can add a 25-75 lvl.

LEVEL	BLINDS		%BB	TIME	REMARKS
1	25	50		0:00	Blinds at 20 min intervals
2	50	100	100.00%	0:20
3	75	150	50.00%	0:40
4	100	200	33.33%	1:00
5	150	300	50.00%	1:20	Colour up T25 / Break
6	200	400	33.33%	1:40
7	300	600	50.00%	2:00	End Rebuy / Reload
8	500	1000	66.67%	2:20
9	1000	1500	50.00%	2:40
10	1000	2500	66.67%	3:00	Colour up 100/500 / break.
11	2000	4000	60.00%	3:20
12	3000	6000	50.00%	3:40	Ending Zone
13	4000	8000	33.33%	4:00	Ending Zone
14	6000	12000	50.00%	4:20	Final Ending Zone
15	10000	15000	25.00%	4:40
16	10000	20000	33.33%	5:00

 

[demax51]

I think T25 base, T20K stack would make it a real fun night...

This looks great, thanks!

 

[Grimalkin]

This looks great, thanks!

If you find you are not going to get to 6 rebuys for the night, you can lengthen the blind intervals to extend the game. Rebuy Tournys are hard to make blinds for, and even more so when newbies are involved and you have no idea how loose they will be.

I will say this, I used to host $10 buyin tournaments, and typically almost everyone would rebuy for the $5 price after going all in early on, some people did 2-3 rebuys back when I allowed unlimited.

 

[SteveEH]

I thought of that, but 40 big bets maximum just felt like too little. A loose player could easily blow that in a couple of hours and then still be sitting out for the rest of the night. And lowering the stakes just, to me, would make the stakes too low to be taken seriously.

I didn't have this problem but I also had a 3 bet cap and told the noobs if they play every hand and never fold they'll lose all their money.

 

[Tonystark137]

If they don't know the hand rank I would stay away from tournaments imo. Too many denomination of chips, constantly changing blinds. I imagine they will want to be social so they will talk.