Tournaments are designed to eliminate all but one player. Everyone has to go broke sometime and it's easy for eliminated players to blame a structure flaw, or a bad card or something like that. But that's how tournaments work.
there are options to get a smoother progression and ease players into the higher stakes instead of doubles that force the gamble quickly.
Ah, but there's the rub. Since blind structure progression -- and how fast/slow it
feels -- is a combination of stack size, rate of increase, and
time, doubling the blinds every level doesn't necessarily "force the gamble quickly".
I've posted a similar comparison before, but it serves as a good reference of how there are multiple ways to skin the tourney blind structure cat, and that all (or a combination thereof) can be very reasonable approaches.
I offer the four structures below, each with the same starting stack size (10k), opening blind level (100/200, 50bb), and estimated tournament length (3 hours). The only differences are 1) the duration of the blind levels in each structure, and 2) the rate at which the blinds increase per level.
The first and last structures below are opposite extremes regarding times and rates (very short times with very small increases vs very long times with very large increases), but all four structures start and end at the same place -- they just take different paths to get there. The number of big blinds relative to the 10k starting stack is shown at the beginning of each hour:
A) 12 minute levels, ~21% avg increases
L1 100/200 50bb
L2 125/250
L3 150/300
L4 175/350
L5 200/400
L6 250/500 20bb
L7 300/600
L8 400/800
L9 500/1000
L10 600/1200
L11 700/1400 7bb
L12 800/1600
L13 1000/2000
L14 1200/2400
L15 1500/3000
B) 20 minute levels, ~40% avg increases
L1 100/200 50bb
L2 150/300
L3 200/400
L4 300/600 17bb
L5 400/800
L6 600/1200
L7 800/1600 6bb
L8 1100/2200
L9 1500/3000
C) 30 minute levels, ~72% avg increases
L1 100/200 50bb
L2 175/350
L3 300/600 17bb
L4 600/1000
L5 900/1800 6bb
L6 1500/3000
D) 60 minute levels, ~288% avg increases
L1 100/200 50bb
L2 400/800 13bb
L3 1500/3000 3bb
What is really interesting (in terms of the blind increases discussion) is that after the initial 20 minutes (where blinds in both structures are the same 100/200), Structure D -- with a whopping 300% initial blind increase -- is actually
slower (i.e. less demanding) than Structure B for the next 40 minutes, then just marginally faster for only 20 minutes before being equal again for 20 minutes, and then becoming significantly slower for another 20 minutes until reaching Hour 3.
So in terms of the 'blinds pressure' on stacks (being forced to gamble quickly), the significantly higher increases over longer time periods of Structure D is actually
less demanding overall (for the first two hours) than the more gradual increases and shorter blind times of Structure B.
Structure D does slam down hard at the beginning of the third hour with another big 275% jump (eventually reaching equilibrium in the latter part of the hour), but the real takeaway here is that with some softening changes to that third hour, the longer times and larger increase during the first two hours actually
reduce the "forced gamble" one would expect from the blinds quadrupling. Similar results can be found cross-comparing the other structures as well.
Tacking the last three 20-minute levels of Structure B onto Structure D (replacing L3) actually creates an arguably better structure than either one -- even with the initial 300% increase (and new 100% increase at L3):
Hybrid, ~118% avg increases
L1 100/200, 60 minutes
L2 400/800, 60 minutes
L3 800/1600, 20 minutes
L4 1100/2200, 20 minutes
L5 1500/3000, 20 minutes
Doubling the blinds isn't always bad after all, it seems. And in this example, consistency isn't necessarily that important, either.
Just have a plan when you build a structure, and try to avoid having the increases jumping massively both up
and down.
