Tourney Moving to T25 Tournament & purchasing chips. Feedback welcome. (1 Viewer)

[Preditor]

Since the (rightful) critiques of my T5 tournament structure, I have been reading posts in this forum like crazy and have decided to change my tournament structure next month based on all I've been reading.

Looking for critiques of all aspects of this, but especially the chip purchase amounts before I pull the trigger. Always wanted a nice set of chips, and I've decided this is something I want to keep doing.

First step is going to be moving to a T25 Tournament and getting some Majestic Chips. Ordered some samples and liked them the best.

Most of my players are very green. The goal is to host fun tournament and add some side games (bounty, high hand, bad beat) to get as many people paid as we can. Goal is to have roughly 25% of our people walk away with 50-70% of their money from bounties and/or side-pots, and 25% walk away doubling or tripling their money from the tournament payouts/bounties.

MANDATORY BUY-IN: $30, plus a $10 bounty.
OPTIONAL: $10 entry for a high hand ($5) and bad beat ($5) pots to be awarded at the second break (after the 6th round). That’s early in the night, but since we have some really green players, I want to award this early to maximize the chance these pots go to players who don’t place in the tournament.
STARTING STACK: T25 Tournament with a T10K starting stack.
12/12/5/6 preferred for 14 players or less.
8/8/4/7 for up to 20 players.
I don’t anticipate having anymore than 12 players any time soon, but I would rather spend an extra $50 for chips now due to shipping costs. I'm also getting some extra T5Ks in case I decided to tweak it to a T15K starting stack.
RE-BUYS: Players may re-buy once until the first break, either full ($30 for T10K) or half ($15 for T5K). Everyone who doesn’t get felted in the first hour can also top off once at the first break at full ($30) or half ($15), but rebuy starting stacks can never exceed T10K. Excess chips are forfeited.
Budgeting 10 full rebuys of 5xT1Ks and 1xT5Ks in my chip quantities.
BONUS: Awarding a T1000 on-time bonus. Usually 75% of players receive it. Budgeting chip quantities for everyone to receive it.

Open to suggestions.

CHIP PURCHASE AMOUNTS
T25: 175
T100: 175
T500: 100
T1000: 225 (need extra to cover on-time bonus)
T5000: 50 (more than I need, but want to be open to doing some T15K starting stacks)
TOTAL: 725 chips

EXCEL SHEET I MADE TO HELP ME DO THE MATH

BLINDS:
Target is 4-5 hours of play (not including breaks). Hard cap at 6.
20 minute levels with a 10 minute break after 3 levels. A little frequent for breaks, but I think an hour with this crowd calls for more.
If tournament play is slow to knock people out, I might add a “Next blinds begin after each knockout” rule. Also going to add turbo 5 minute levels after the 5th hour.

25 / 50
50 / 100
75 / 150
BREAK (Last chance for rebuys/addons)
100 / 200
150 / 300
200 / 400
BREAK (Color up T25s / Award high-hand and bad-beat winners)
300 / 600
400 / 800
600 / 1200
BREAK
800 / 1600
1K / 2K
1500 / 3000
BREAK (Colorup T100s & T500s)
2K / 4K
3K / 6K (Likely tournament end for 8-12 people)
5K / 10K
BREAK (Turbo 5 minute blind levels)
8K / 16K (likely tournament end with max 20 players and T320,000 in play)
10K / 20K
15K / 30K
MANDATORY TOURNAMENT END. SPLIT POT IF NEEDED

Long post, but thanks for reading! Appreciate this forum a lot and am learning a ton.

 

[allforcharity]

You go, dude!

P.S. I don't think there's anything wrong with a T5 tournament. Especially when you can easily turn it into a T5000 tournament.

 

[RagingAZN]

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/thre...p-lots-of-little-questions.67298/post-1350844

Follow this, EZ game.

 

[Poker Zombie]

OPTIONAL: $10 entry for a high hand ($5) and bad beat ($5) pots to be awarded at the second break (after the 6th round). That’s early in the night, but since we have some really green players, I want to award this early to maximize the chance these pots go to players who don’t place in the tournament.

Of the 42 bad beats we have awarded, only 9 have gone to players that have also finished in the money. I'm not opposed to cutting it off early, but you may be adding a protection that is not necessary. Plus, when someone knocked out is owed a bonus, they are more likely to hang around and help shuffle or deal for the table (very helpful when it gets down to the final 4 or 5 players).

We have also done 9 high hands, and 5 of them have gone to in-the-money finishers.

RE-BUYS: Players may re-buy once until the first break, either full ($30 for T10K) or half ($15 for T5K). Everyone who doesn’t get felted in the first hour can also top off once at the first break at full ($30) or half ($15), but rebuy starting stacks can never exceed T10K. Excess chips are forfeited.

We also allowed 1/2 rebuys in our early days. I think someone took it once, and it was before anyone had Venmo/PayPal so all they had was a half rebuy on them. Nobody has taken it since we started keeping records in 2009. We no longer offer it, to keep closer in line with casino play. YMMV, but when you are talking low buy-ins, the decision to rebuy is rarely an economic decision.

 

[BGinGA]

Since the (rightful) critiques of my T5 tournament structure, I have been reading posts in this forum like crazy and have decided to change my tournament structure next month based on all I've been reading.

Looking for critiques of all aspects of this, but especially the chip purchase amounts before I pull the trigger. Always wanted a nice set of chips, and I've decided this is something I want to keep doing.

First step is going to be moving to a T25 Tournament and getting some Majestic Chips. Ordered some samples and liked them the best.

Most of my players are very green. The goal is to host fun tournament and add some side games (bounty, high hand, bad beat) to get as many people paid as we can. Goal is to have roughly 25% of our people walk away with 50-70% of their money from bounties and/or side-pots, and 25% walk away doubling or tripling their money from the tournament payouts/bounties.

MANDATORY BUY-IN: $30, plus a $10 bounty.
OPTIONAL: $10 entry for a high hand ($5) and bad beat ($5) pots to be awarded at the second break (after the 6th round). That’s early in the night, but since we have some really green players, I want to award this early to maximize the chance these pots go to players who don’t place in the tournament.
STARTING STACK: T25 Tournament with a T10K starting stack.
12/12/5/6 preferred for 14 players or less.
8/8/4/7 for up to 20 players.
I don’t anticipate having anymore than 12 players any time soon, but I would rather spend an extra $50 for chips now due to shipping costs. I'm also getting some extra T5Ks in case I decided to tweak it to a T15K starting stack.
RE-BUYS: Players may re-buy once until the first break, either full ($30 for T10K) or half ($15 for T5K). Everyone who doesn’t get felted in the first hour can also top off once at the first break at full ($30) or half ($15), but rebuy starting stacks can never exceed T10K. Excess chips are forfeited.
Budgeting 10 full rebuys of 5xT1Ks and 1xT5Ks in my chip quantities.
BONUS: Awarding a T1000 on-time bonus. Usually 75% of players receive it. Budgeting chip quantities for everyone to receive it.

Open to suggestions.

CHIP PURCHASE AMOUNTS
T25: 175
T100: 175
T500: 100
T1000: 225 (need extra to cover on-time bonus)
T5000: 50 (more than I need, but want to be open to doing some T15K starting stacks)
TOTAL: 725 chips

EXCEL SHEET I MADE TO HELP ME DO THE MATH

View attachment 1188202

BLINDS:
Target is 4-5 hours of play (not including breaks). Hard cap at 6.
20 minute levels with a 10 minute break after 3 levels. A little frequent for breaks, but I think an hour with this crowd calls for more.
If tournament play is slow to knock people out, I might add a “Next blinds begin after each knockout” rule. Also going to add turbo 5 minute levels after the 5th hour.

25 / 50
50 / 100
75 / 150
BREAK (Last chance for rebuys/addons)
100 / 200
150 / 300
200 / 400
BREAK (Color up T25s / Award high-hand and bad-beat winners)
300 / 600
400 / 800
600 / 1200
BREAK
800 / 1600
1K / 2K
1500 / 3000
BREAK (Colorup T100s & T500s)
2K / 4K
3K / 6K (Likely tournament end for 8-12 people)
5K / 10K
BREAK (Turbo 5 minute blind levels)
8K / 16K (likely tournament end with max 20 players and T320,000 in play)
10K / 20K
15K / 30K
MANDATORY TOURNAMENT END. SPLIT POT IF NEEDED

Long post, but thanks for reading! Appreciate this forum a lot and am learning a ton.

BGinGA approved.

 

[Preditor]

Of the 42 bad beats we have awarded, only 9 have gone to players that have also finished in the money. I'm not opposed to cutting it off early, but you may be adding a protection that is not necessary. Plus, when someone knocked out is owed a bonus, they are more likely to hang around and help shuffle or deal for the table (very helpful when it gets down to the final 4 or 5 players).

We have also done 9 high hands, and 5 of them have gone to in-the-money finishers.

Good point here. I was conflicted whether to let the jackpots play to the end or not. I'll play around with this. Right now my instinct is to still award them out at the end of round 2, especially high hand. But I may tweak it/ask the group how they feel.

We also allowed 1/2 rebuys in our early days. I think someone took it once, and it was before anyone had Venmo/PayPal so all they had was a half rebuy on them. Nobody has taken it since we started keeping records in 2009. We no longer offer it, to keep closer in line with casino play. YMMV, but when you are talking low buy-ins, the decision to rebuy is rarely an economic decision.

Again, good point. In case I wasn't clear though, each player can re-buy OR add-on once during the first hour of the tournament. I see the "1/2 rebuy" as being 99% used as a "1/2 add-on" for players who are T4-6K stacked after the first hour; but I didn't want to prevent anyone from rebuying at T5K if they wanted the option. Will do it this way for a few months and report back.

Looking for any other optional side pots (but not long-running ones, things that can pay out the night of). Let me know if you have any.

 

[BPTDirector]

I run that almost identical structure and go between 4 and 5 hours every time. I’d just suggest one more sleeve of 25’s and 100’s to allow for early workhorse extras. Good job, looks like a very fun game to play in.

 

[Poker Zombie]

Again, good point. In case I wasn't clear though, each player can re-buy OR add-on once during the first hour of the tournament. I see the 1/2 rebuy as being 99% used as a 1/2 add-on for most players who are T4-6K stacked after the first hour, but didn't want to prevent anyone from rebuying at T5K if they wanted the option. Will do it this way for a few months and report back.

I also do a surrender when rebuying, which the last rebuy is available through the last break. Typically, non-nit players will rebuy if they have 1/2 stack or less.

I would guess you would get more rebuys with the 1/2 rebuy option, but I'm not sure it would really affect the overall prize pool. I'd be interested to see how this plays out (% of rebuys, and % of 1/2 rebuys).

 

[GetUrShineBox]

Great job! Kudos for all hosts out there!
My biggest suggestion would be to buy the extra chips to cover 20 players at the 12/12/5/6. Making change at some levels especially 75/150, 200/400, 400/800 with only 8 - 25's and 8 - 100's will slow the pace a great deal and cause a lot of confusion unless you have a dedicated dealer, with your players not be that seasoned to poker tournaments. With the extra chips you can even do 16/16/x/x when you have less players which is even more awesome!!! If you do a good enough job and stay consistent, people will talk and you'll be up to 20 players in no time.

Another suggestion instead of keeping track of a bad beat scenario is just to have one or even a few $5/person side pots. Like the first person to get dealt AA wins the side pot or pocket 88's or some other special hand that you choose. If nobody gets it then it can roll over to the next week or throw it back into the pot.

Good Luck, let us know what you end up doing!

 

[GetUrShineBox]

I also do a surrender when rebuying, which the last rebuy is available through the last break. Typically, non-nit players will rebuy if they have 1/2 stack or less.

I would guess you would get more rebuys with the 1/2 rebuy option, but I'm not sure it would really affect the overall prize pool. I'd be interested to see how this plays out (% of rebuys, and % of 1/2 rebuys).

Oh no, you brought up the "S" word. Nooooo!!! Hahaha

 

[JustinInMN]

Your calculation is impeccable, can't find any faults, just alternative possibilities to consider.

1) Since you only need 80 T500 chips but the purchase requirement is 100 anyway, you might consider paying your first 10 on-time bonuses using 2*T500 instead of 1*t1000.

This might enable you to save on t1000 chips and get your set to 700.

2) You could plan all of your rebuys to be 2*T5000 which would further reduce the T1000 chips needed.

So basically you could consider a buy of 175/175/100/175/75 for a smooth 700 chips.

Accommodates 21*8/8/4/7 or 14*12/12/5/6 with extra t500/t1000 chips for bonuses/color ups. Plenty of t5000 to accommodate deeper stacks/rebuys.

 

[Preditor]

Thanks for all of the suggestions!

My biggest suggestion would be to buy the extra chips to cover 20 players at the 12/12/5/6.

Valid point. Like you, I prefer a 12/12/5/6 starting stack (though 16/16/x/x/ seems a tad unwieldy).

But my thinking right now is I don't want to buy waste. I expect to yo-yo between 8-14 players come November, which is right at my 14-person cutoff for a 12/12/x/x/ stack. This current set gives me the option to get more people in if they RSVP, but doesn't stick me with a ton of chips I won't use if they don't. If I do get to 20, then hopefully by that time I'll have some regulars who can help me manage the change situation at 8/8/x/x.

If I consistently get over that 14 threshold I will consider adding on to get 12/12/x/x for 20.

Another suggestion instead of keeping track of a bad beat scenario is just to have one or even a few $5/person side pots. Like the first person to get dealt AA wins the side pot or pocket 88's or some other special hand that you choose. If nobody gets it then it can roll over to the next week or throw it back into the pot.

I like this! I may do something like this instead of a high hand since that usually favors the people who get paid in the tournament. So maybe it's bad-beat pot and first to pocket Aces. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[BGinGA]

I also do a surrender when rebuying, which the last rebuy is available through the last break. Typically, non-nit players will rebuy if they have 1/2 stack or less.

I would guess you would get more rebuys with the 1/2 rebuy option, but I'm not sure it would really affect the overall prize pool. I'd be interested to see how this plays out (% of rebuys, and % of 1/2 rebuys).

I often offer 1/2-stack re-buys when running circus game tournaments (available if current stack is at 50% or less) since the pots tend to be larger, leading to many players re-buying to chip up. You can buy two 1/2-stack re-buys if felted.

 

[Preditor]

1) Since you only need 80 T500 chips but the purchase requirement is 100 anyway, you might consider paying your first 10 on-time bonuses using 2*T500 instead of 1*t1000.

Definitely thought about this (and you can see a cell for it in Excel). But after mulling it over, I think I'd rather have more of the workhorse chip overall. Still, I may change my mind.

2) You could plan all of your rebuys to be 2*T5000 which would further reduce the T1000 chips needed.

Definitely thought of this as well (another cell). May be more inclined to go this route and save a bit.

Still thanks for your post! Love hearing suggestions. At the end of the day, I think having extra T1ks would give me a lot of flexibility. And since I am not penny-pinching, I figure buy them now.

 

[JustinInMN]

Definitely thought about this (and you can see a cell for it in Excel). But after mulling it over, I think I'd rather have more of the workhorse chip overall. Still, I may change my mind.


Definitely thought of this as well (another cell). May be more inclined to go this route and save a bit.

Still thanks for your post! Love hearing suggestions. At the end of the day, I think having extra T1ks would give me a lot of flexibility. And since I am not penny-pinching, I figure buy them now.

Sounds good.

One other thought, if you aren't penny pinching, you could take your set up to 800 and have the look of full racks with a 200/200/100/200/100 buy.

This will give you the flexibility of
"Regular" mode: 16 * 12/12/5/6 (plus two "bonus" stacks of 4/4/7/6)
OR "Stretch" mode: 25 * 8/8/4/7

This would make your excess T500's less wasted, and still build in an extra T1000 to pay an on time bonus to each stack. In "regular" mode, you could pay all 18 starting stacks and on-time bonuses and still have 6*T500, 88 * T1000, and all 100 * T5000 left over before you even have rebuys. In "stretch" mode you would have to use all of the T1000 chips and under to make the 25 starting stacks (assuming everyone gets an on time bonus), but still have 100 * T5000 left left over accommodate all color ups and still well over 40 re-entries. Or if you did T15K start, even in "stretch" mode, you would still have enough T5000 for about 14 re-entries.

 

[Eriks]

Since the (rightful) critiques of my T5 tournament structure, I have been reading posts in this forum like crazy and have decided to change my tournament structure next month based on all I've been reading.

Looking for critiques of all aspects of this, but especially the chip purchase amounts before I pull the trigger. Always wanted a nice set of chips, and I've decided this is something I want to keep doing.

First step is going to be moving to a T25 Tournament and getting some Majestic Chips. Ordered some samples and liked them the best.

Most of my players are very green. The goal is to host fun tournament and add some side games (bounty, high hand, bad beat) to get as many people paid as we can. Goal is to have roughly 25% of our people walk away with 50-70% of their money from bounties and/or side-pots, and 25% walk away doubling or tripling their money from the tournament payouts/bounties.

MANDATORY BUY-IN: $30, plus a $10 bounty.
OPTIONAL: $10 entry for a high hand ($5) and bad beat ($5) pots to be awarded at the second break (after the 6th round). That’s early in the night, but since we have some really green players, I want to award this early to maximize the chance these pots go to players who don’t place in the tournament.
STARTING STACK: T25 Tournament with a T10K starting stack.
12/12/5/6 preferred for 14 players or less.
8/8/4/7 for up to 20 players.
I don’t anticipate having anymore than 12 players any time soon, but I would rather spend an extra $50 for chips now due to shipping costs. I'm also getting some extra T5Ks in case I decided to tweak it to a T15K starting stack.
RE-BUYS: Players may re-buy once until the first break, either full ($30 for T10K) or half ($15 for T5K). Everyone who doesn’t get felted in the first hour can also top off once at the first break at full ($30) or half ($15), but rebuy starting stacks can never exceed T10K. Excess chips are forfeited.
Budgeting 10 full rebuys of 5xT1Ks and 1xT5Ks in my chip quantities.
BONUS: Awarding a T1000 on-time bonus. Usually 75% of players receive it. Budgeting chip quantities for everyone to receive it.

Open to suggestions.

CHIP PURCHASE AMOUNTS
T25: 175
T100: 175
T500: 100
T1000: 225 (need extra to cover on-time bonus)
T5000: 50 (more than I need, but want to be open to doing some T15K starting stacks)
TOTAL: 725 chips

EXCEL SHEET I MADE TO HELP ME DO THE MATH

View attachment 1188202

BLINDS:
Target is 4-5 hours of play (not including breaks). Hard cap at 6.
20 minute levels with a 10 minute break after 3 levels. A little frequent for breaks, but I think an hour with this crowd calls for more.
If tournament play is slow to knock people out, I might add a “Next blinds begin after each knockout” rule. Also going to add turbo 5 minute levels after the 5th hour.

25 / 50
50 / 100
75 / 150
BREAK (Last chance for rebuys/addons)
100 / 200
150 / 300
200 / 400
BREAK (Color up T25s / Award high-hand and bad-beat winners)
300 / 600
400 / 800
600 / 1200
BREAK
800 / 1600
1K / 2K
1500 / 3000
BREAK (Colorup T100s & T500s)
2K / 4K
3K / 6K (Likely tournament end for 8-12 people)
5K / 10K
BREAK (Turbo 5 minute blind levels)
8K / 16K (likely tournament end with max 20 players and T320,000 in play)
10K / 20K
15K / 30K
MANDATORY TOURNAMENT END. SPLIT POT IF NEEDED

Long post, but thanks for reading! Appreciate this forum a lot and am learning a ton.

Holy hell, if everyone new did his/her homework this damn well @BGinGA would be out of a job

 

[Preditor]

Ordered and arrived! Thanks to everyone who gave feedback before I pulled the trigger on these. I oiled them this weekend and they shined up like a new penny.

I took @JustinInMN 's advice and ended up going a little higher in quantity than I initially posted here to make the set an even 800 chips and not have any half-full chip trays in my carrying case. Though I went with my own quantities, the ones I felt would give me the most variation possible to experiment with various starting stacks. I plugged multiple number confirmations into my excel sheet, and settled on the following.

My hosting partner and I have determined that we could comfortably host 3 full tables of 8 players and no more. That’s 24 players. We’re a long way from that, but I decided to budget chip amounts for 25 people.

FINAL CHIP PURCHASE AMOUNTS
T25: 200
T100: 200
T500: 125
T1000: 225
T5000: 50
TOTAL: 800 chips

This allows me two 8-players tables with my preferred 12/12/5/6 starting stack, and three 8-player tables with a 8/8/4/7 starting stack.

I was torn between going with 25 extra of the T500s, or 25 extra of the T5Ks. I ended up going with 25 extra T500s, which might seem like a bad decision to some. But I felt it gave me most flexibility with a 10% on-time bonus. I want to toy with starting stack size if T10K feels too small. T15K seems like a more reasonable option to me than a T20K for my group, but if we did that I would need the extra T500s for a 10% bonus.

Maybe I'll regret that, but I'm a long way from that. If a year from now I do I’ll just purchase 25 more T5Ks for $12.00 and store the unused T500s away. No big deal to me, and I have plenty of overhead right now with well below my 25 player limit that I won’t notice.

With these chips amounts, the following scenario would utilize literally every chip bought:

• 25 Players
• T15K Starting Stack at 8/8/4/7/1 configuration
• T1500 (10%) starting bonus for 25 players (one T1K, one T500)
• 10 Rebuys (5 with 5xT1K + 2xT5K, and 5 with 3xT5ks)

Obviously this isn't practical, but I liked the math worked. But theoretically, this would use all of the chips I bought. And it seemed most harmonious.

Overall I am super happy with the chips. Lots of people have praised the Majestic, and rightly.

Next home game is on the 24th! Hoping to get 12 players for our first two-table night.

 

[Preditor]

First tournament with these new chips and structure, and it was a hit!

And the payouts for all of the side games worked the way I wanted, going largely to our greener players. The Bad-Beat Jackpot went to a guy who didn't even know what blinds were when he showed up lol. But knowing that was an option to win made him actually top-off when he was short-stacked after the first hour. So he was in for $60, and left with $40.

I love that though. He asked before he left for me to send him some apps to practice, so I sent him to PokerStars.net and Jonathan Little's "Master the Fundamentals" class. I love getting my friends into this.

We also added a Most Wanted Bounty on me ($20 instead of $10) since I won last time. But I won this time as well, so I'll have it on my head next month too.

Overall, game was a massive hit. People seemed to have a lot of fun (8 players). My co-hot got a Barrington table, and I set up a blind timer on BlindValet.

The chips were also well received, though the table and blind time stole the show... and I was made fun of for oiling the chips.

But hey, their loss for not appreciating well-maintained China Clays!