Tourney My experience with a poker league (8 players) (2 Viewers)

[Waarwaar]

Hello everybody,

Don't know it this section is the right place and i also don't know if anybody is interested to read this, but i will just post this.

After years of not playing poker i asked my friends if they would like to play poker again. They all loved the idea, and we played a tournament a couple weeks later. It was a great evening, so i started to think about how to make the poker evening more regular.... The awnser was (i hope) a poker league. I found some information on this forum about other poker league's and just created my own. Properly i don't do everything right, but it's just a friendly 8 players (friends) poker league. I am gonna use this threat to post my experience, and i hope it will result in a better league next year. Just here to learn.

Poker league 2017

- We play 5 tournaments. In the first 4 tournaments everybody starts with the same starting stack and every player can score points for the final tournament at the end of the year.
- Every player gets 1 point for showing up.
- Every player gets 1 point for every knock out.
- Every player gets points for their placing in the tournament:
Position 1 = 9 points
Postion 2 = 8 points
Postion 3 = 7 points
Position 4 = 6 points
Position 5 = 5 points
Position 6 = 4 points
Position 7 = 3 points
Position 8 = 2 points

Because there are only 5 poker evenings in the whole year, we can make it work that everybody shows up. Maybe next year i would like to play more tournaments and i should use a system that gives the opportunity for players to miss 1 or 2 tournaments.

The total of points are greating the final tournament starting stack. 1 point = 7.000 worth of chips. Why 7.000? I wanted to have the final tournement a special feeling with high demons. I aim at an average stack of 200k, so i can use those T25k chips .
There are in total 236 points to earn in the four tournaments, 29,5 point average for each player. 29,5 x 7.000 = 206.500.

How does this work in real life? I only have played the first tournament, so i will give an update after every tournament. The results for the final starting stack after one tournament are:

Player 1: 91.000 (13 points, position 2 = 8 points, showing up = 1 point and knock outs = 4 points)
Player 2: 84.000 (12 points, position 1 = 9 points, showing up = 1 point and knock outs = 2 points)
Player 3: 63.000 (9 points, position 3 = 7 points, showing up = 1 point and knock outs = 1 point)
Player 4: 49.000 (7 points, position 4= 6 points and showing up = 1 point)
Player 5: 42.000 (position and showing up)
Player 6: 35.000 " "
Player 7: 28.000 " "
Player 8: 21.000 " "

The next tournament will be plannend soon and i hope we can play it before all the summerholiday's. I will give an update after that.

Best regars, Rob


Ps. For the people who wanne know... I have 91.000 at the moment

 

[Kyle]

Very cool. A good excuse to get together somewhat regularly with your friends.

I run a similar league also and have enjoyed it.

Good luck in yours.

 

[upNdown]

Good stuff. I hope to get something like this running at some point.
I'm not sure why you're giving a point for showing up, since last place gets show-up points anyway. But your league, your rules.

 

[Waarwaar]

Good stuff. I hope to get something like this running at some point.
I'm not sure why you're giving a point for showing up, since last place gets show-up points anyway. But your league, your rules.

Thanks. I know that the show-up point isnt necessary, but i noticed that my friends were really happy that they already started with 1 point

 

[Waarwaar]

Very cool. A good excuse to get together somewhat regularly with your friends.

I run a similar league also and have enjoyed it.

Good luck in yours.

Indeed, its really a good exucse to get together. The first time we had also a theme: special beers.

If you have some tips from your own league, i would love to hear them!

 

[Kyle]

Indeed, its really a good exucse to get together. The first time we had also a theme: special beers.

If you have some tips from your own league, i would love to hear them!

Yeah. I have an extra chip bonus for arriving at least 15 mins before start time. We start with 2000 chips and the extra chip bonus is 300.

It really works and we actually start on time. You still get a few here and there that are a few mins late but by then everyone is sitting down playing cards. Just blind those players in until they show.

And if your players like getting a point to show up, keep doing it because they like it. Whatever it takes to keep players coming back.

 

[Waarwaar]

Yeah. I have an extra chip bonus for arriving at least 15 mins before start time. We start with 2000 chips and the extra chip bonus is 300.

It really works and we actually start on time. You still get a few here and there that are a few mins late but by then everyone is sitting down playing cards. Just blind those players in until they show.

And if your players like getting a point to show up, keep doing it because they like it. Whatever it takes to keep players coming back.

Thats a great tip! Last time we started 30 minutes later because some didnt arrive at time. Sometimes we just start, but those early blinds don't have much effect. Gonna try your method.

 

[Kyle]

Thats a great tip! Last time we started 30 minutes later because some didnt arrive at time. Sometimes we just start, but those early blinds don't have much effect. Gonna try your method.

I recommend it. It should work. (y) :thumbsup:

 

[TexRex]

Waarwaar, that's a start. I bet you will get a lot of responses to this.

Four tournaments is a very short season. I did 12 games, and that is a short season. I personally think in a cash game you get a great idea of how players compare after they've played 10 games, but in tournaments, I think that number is more like 30. For that reason alone, I wouldn't base the final tournament starting stack on results. However, I'll admit I hate leagues that do that. When I put my league together, I was playing in another league. I talked to many players before I set mine up. I asked them what they liked and disliked. The number one thing they disliked was varying starting stacks in the final tournament. Of course, some did like that. Generally though, players think it's fair when everyone who is there on time gets the same chip stack. It's easier to manage to. It eliminates arguments or bad feelings players may have because of improper recording or weird plays. For examples, these both happened the first hand of a night. [1] Two players get AA, ultimately go all in pre-flop, and one catches a flush. [2] Player flops the nut flush; goes all in on the turn where no cards pair on the board, gets 1 caller. River brings yet another flush card, but caller catches a straight flush. Was the loser really the worst player in the tournament? Not in either case. Both times losers of that first hand were among the top players of the group.

I measured KOs for several years. Looking at your current standings, those at the top have the most KOs. We had a similar experience. I found some player are pretty good at KOs, some are OK, and some rarely get KOs. I'm convinced it's a skill, but I'm not sure I figured out how to score it. We tracked it within our scoring system and separately for it's own award (Top Bounty Hunter) at the end of the year. When it was part of our scoring system, it counted very little and only made a difference when two players were close in other scores. With yours, it counts almost the same as a place. Compared to a place, it's by formula going to look like this -- KOs / KOs + 1. I had some players who consistently did well at every other category except KOs. I personally think your system counts KOs way too much. That might be fixable in other ways though.

A progressive scoring system makes more sense. I ultimately used a Fibonacci sequence down to 7 (our average was in the 15-20 player range). So scores for 1-7 were 34, 21, 13, 8, 5, 3, 2, and then everyone else got 1 pt. I multiplied their finish score by the number of players. I used 2 different systems. One divided the number of players by 10 and that was the multiplier. If we had 20, the top player for that tournament got 68 points. That system makes each successively larger tournament worth slightly less points-wise even though the number of points increases. BG suggested a different multiplier where each additional player multiplied the prior number by 1.04. That keeps the ratios the same. I ran both systems through every league year. The results were the same in terms of final order. However, they probably would not be the same if you had a lot more players than I had.

Other issues with your current system is this. How do you deal with late players? A late arrival who comes after a player is eliminated will finish better than the player already out. I don't think that makes sense. Some would not let a player start late if someone else is already out. If a player is KOd the first hand, the guy who was caught in traffic for 5 minutes doesn't get to play, and his money isn't in the prize pool.

Dr. Neau has a system I looked at. I think for a single table tournament, it's pretty good. It's been a long time since I looked at it, but I seriously considered using it. I ultimately used something I think from Bluff Magazine's system because I thought it was better for multiple tables. Once you have two tables, order of finish down to the end can have so many variables it's almost useless. Poker is not like anything else. Players don't always start at the same time. With multiple tables, the pace isn't always the same between tables so they aren't playing the same number of hands. As players move, they might miss a hand. In a short tournament, those things add up to throw off results.

Over time, it's unlikely you will have the same exact players. That further complicates trying to rate players. Some play all the tournaments, some only play half of them. What about this scenario? X comes to one game with 8 players. He wins and records all 7 of the 7 KOs. If I'm reading your plan right, he gets 16 points. Then he has to miss the rest of the tournaments. It seems like that throws your whole system off. Can that guy come to the final tournament? Does he get 112,000 while the others average 206,500? I can hear screams of unfairness from all sides.

What I did is we had a season of 12 games. We based all our awards on those, and only used our Main Event as a tie breaker (which did happen with KOs one year). Our Main Event is planned as a 6 hour tournament instead of a 4 hour tournament. It's very deep stacked -- start at 25/50 with 100,000 in starting chips. Everyone starts with the same amount if they arrive on time.

How many can be at the final tournament? If you had 8 players every time, but it was 12 different players who came, and your final tournament can only allow 8, 9, or 10, how do you decide who makes it? One problem is how to keep players completely out of the running from dropping out. I never had to choose between players for our Main Event, but what I made clear from the beginning is that if I did have to choose, it would be based on attendance first and how soon they signed up for the Main Event second. Since I can take 30, if I had 31 sign up and the last 2 couldn't both come, the one who attended more games would get the slot. I'm not sure that's really fair, but I'm not sure how to be fair. By fair, I don't mean by the rules, which by definition is fair. I mean what makes players feel like its fair, which is quite different.

Will there be any rollover money for the final game? If so, how much? I did 10% a couple of years. It allowed us to pay out more places, one year everyone who made the final table at least got their money back. Some do more than that. Same problem of losers dropping out. After all, they then just subsidizing the winners by continuing. I dropped the rollover money when I realized some wouldn't pay the additional amount for the bigger Main Event tournament, and they didn't want to subsidize it.

Suggestions:

• Want to get your 25k chips in play? Design your games to use them! It's really that simple. I have in my tournament sets 25; 100; 500; 1,000; 5,000; 25,000; and 100,000. A time or two a year instead of doing 25,000 starting at 25/50 starting blinds, I'll do 100,000 starting and 100/200. I really only use ALL the chips in our Main Event. Now, the 25,000 chips don't come out until at least the final table, but they get in play. The more players we start with, the earlier they come into play.
• Consider letting each tournament stand on its own. Keep score, but for either fun where it doesn't affect anything at the last game, or give some small awards. I'd make them really small because honestly, at 4 games, there is too much luck involved to have it really mean anything.
• Consider having 5 tournaments where everyone starts equally. Each tournament stands on its own with all entry fees paid out at that tournament.
• If you use rollover money, equalize the buy-in. Example: $5 of rollover money per player per tournament. If a guy comes to only 3, he pays $5 more for the final event fee. That way every entrant pays the same amount to enter. If they show up for all the tournaments, they are just paying part of it as they go. I did that because in addition to players being annoyed about varying starting stacks, the second biggest thing they didn't like was that some paid less to enter the final tournament than others but got the same starting stack.
• If the must attend a certain number of games to make the final event, that can also discourage attendance once a player has either missed too many to come, or he realizes his schedule will force him to miss that many.

There is plenty written on this website on scoring systems. None are perfect, but some are a lot better than others. The biggest thing I start with is "What are you trying to measure?" Every system is artificially constructed to obtain the results the scorer values the most. There are a lot of opinions on that. What many say is they are trying to determine the best player, but one guy's definition of the best player is quite different than others.

What I did was try to determine what was measurable, then try to weigh those things based on difficulty with more difficult things counting more. If you think money won determines the best player, construct your points to equal that and go by points only. If you think the highest average finishing place is the best measure, then use that. If you think KOs are the best determination, use that. If you think it's more than one thing, figure out what they are and a way to weigh them. Right now your system values finish and KOs, with attendance counting a very small amount. If you really believe that after reading this, ignore me and others who will disagree. It's YOUR league! But if you are looking for feedback to get more ideas to make yours better, consider what people tell you and then pick what you think is best after considering why they think something.

Hopefully this helps. I've love to know what you end up with!

 

[Kyle]

We do a $40 buy-in with $5 going to the final tournament prize pool. It adds up and puts a little extra cash in for the final tournament.

We play 6 games and the 7th game is the final tournament.

Some action shots.

 

[TexRex]

Start on time and figure out how you will deal with late players. If you keep starting late, it will kill your game. If you are waiting on a player, what happens when he's late, and then can't make it at all? Life happens. Poker isn't the most important thing. Things that have kept players from coming that are truly legitimate -- car accident on the way, medical emergency in the family on the way, death in the family, unexpectedly having to work late for a work emergency, unexpected out of town trip, etc.

What we started this year was an Early Bird bonus. Players now start with 22,000, but they get 3,000 for being signed in and paid 10 minutes before start time. I also tried putting full starting stacks at every seat. Players were randomly assigned seats. When the BB hit an empty seat, we removed a BB and SM from the empty seat stack and removed it from the game. After 2 hours, all empty seats had their stacks removed as that was the end of registration. I have also given every player a full stack without blinding. That's the WSOP/TDA rule; casinos do it and it doesn't keep people from coming. They only blind pre-paid stacks. However, players perceive that to be unfair. The Early Bird bonus instantly penalizes the player who is the least bit late, but because it's announced, no one can claim it's unfair or that they didn't know. That might discourage some from coming late, but doesn't seem to have had much of an impact on attendance. It definitely affects starting time!

 

[Waarwaar]

We do a $40 buy-in with $5 going to the final tournament prize pool. It adds up and puts a little extra cash in for the final tournament.

We play 6 games and the 7th game is the final tournament.

View attachment 98330 View attachment 98331

Some action shots.

Love the action photo's and the chips you are using!

 

[Waarwaar]

Waarwaar, that's a start. I bet you will get a lot of responses to this.

Four tournaments is a very short season. I did 12 games, and that is a short season. I personally think in a cash game you get a great idea of how players compare after they've played 10 games, but in tournaments, I think that number is more like 30. For that reason alone, I wouldn't base the final tournament starting stack on results. However, I'll admit I hate leagues that do that. When I put my league together, I was playing in another league. I talked to many players before I set mine up. I asked them what they liked and disliked. The number one thing they disliked was varying starting stacks in the final tournament. Of course, some did like that. Generally though, players think it's fair when everyone who is there on time gets the same chip stack. It's easier to manage to. It eliminates arguments or bad feelings players may have because of improper recording or weird plays. For examples, these both happened the first hand of a night. [1] Two players get AA, ultimately go all in pre-flop, and one catches a flush. [2] Player flops the nut flush; goes all in on the turn where no cards pair on the board, gets 1 caller. River brings yet another flush card, but caller catches a straight flush. Was the loser really the worst player in the tournament? Not in either case. Both times losers of that first hand were among the top players of the group.

I measured KOs for several years. Looking at your current standings, those at the top have the most KOs. We had a similar experience. I found some player are pretty good at KOs, some are OK, and some rarely get KOs. I'm convinced it's a skill, but I'm not sure I figured out how to score it. We tracked it within our scoring system and separately for it's own award (Top Bounty Hunter) at the end of the year. When it was part of our scoring system, it counted very little and only made a difference when two players were close in other scores. With yours, it counts almost the same as a place. Compared to a place, it's by formula going to look like this -- KOs / KOs + 1. I had some players who consistently did well at every other category except KOs. I personally think your system counts KOs way too much. That might be fixable in other ways though.

A progressive scoring system makes more sense. I ultimately used a Fibonacci sequence down to 7 (our average was in the 15-20 player range). So scores for 1-7 were 34, 21, 13, 8, 5, 3, 2, and then everyone else got 1 pt. I multiplied their finish score by the number of players. I used 2 different systems. One divided the number of players by 10 and that was the multiplier. If we had 20, the top player for that tournament got 68 points. That system makes each successively larger tournament worth slightly less points-wise even though the number of points increases. BG suggested a different multiplier where each additional player multiplied the prior number by 1.04. That keeps the ratios the same. I ran both systems through every league year. The results were the same in terms of final order. However, they probably would not be the same if you had a lot more players than I had.

Other issues with your current system is this. How do you deal with late players? A late arrival who comes after a player is eliminated will finish better than the player already out. I don't think that makes sense. Some would not let a player start late if someone else is already out. If a player is KOd the first hand, the guy who was caught in traffic for 5 minutes doesn't get to play, and his money isn't in the prize pool.

Dr. Neau has a system I looked at. I think for a single table tournament, it's pretty good. It's been a long time since I looked at it, but I seriously considered using it. I ultimately used something I think from Card Player magazines system because I thought it was better for multiple tables. Once you have two tables, order of finish down to the end can have so many variables it's almost useless. Poker is not like anything else. Players don't always start at the same time. With multiple tables, the pace isn't always the same between tables so they aren't playing the same number of hands. As players move, they might miss a hand. In a short tournament, those things add up to throw off results.

Over time, it's unlikely you will have the same exact players. That further complicates trying to rate players. Some play all the tournaments, some only play half of them. What about this scenario? X comes to one game with 8 players. He wins and records all 7 of the 7 KOs. If I'm reading your plan right, he gets 16 points. Then he has to miss the rest of the tournaments. It seems like that throws your whole system off. Can that guy come to the final tournament? Does he get 112,000 while the others average 206,500? I can hear screams of unfairness from all sides.

What I did is we had a season of 12 games. We based all our awards on those, and only used our Main Event as a tie breaker (which did happen with KOs one year). Our Main Event is planned as a 6 hour tournament instead of a 4 hour tournament. It's very deep stacked -- start at 25/50 with 100,000 in starting chips. Everyone starts with the same amount if they arrive on time.

How many can be at the final tournament? If you had 8 players every time, but it was 12 different players who came, and your final tournament can only allow 8, 9, or 10, how do you decide who makes it? One problem is how to keep players completely out of the running from dropping out. I never had to choose between players for our Main Event, but what I made clear from the beginning is that if I did have to choose, it would be based on attendance first and how soon they signed up for the Main Event second. Since I can take 30, if I had 31 sign up and the last 2 couldn't both come, the one who attended more games would get the slot. I'm not sure that's really fair, but I'm not sure how to be fair. By fair, I don't mean by the rules, which by definition is fair. I mean what makes players feel like its fair, which is quite different.

Will there be any rollover money for the final game? If so, how much? I did 10% a couple of years. It allowed us to pay out more places, one year everyone who made the final table at least got their money back. Some do more than that. Same problem of losers dropping out. After all, they then just subsidizing the winners by continuing. I dropped the rollover money when I realized some wouldn't pay the additional amount for the bigger Main Event tournament, and they didn't want to subsidize it.

Suggestions:

• Want to get your 25k chips in play? Design your games to use them! It's really that simple. I have in my tournament sets 25; 100; 500; 1,000; 5,000; 25,000; and 100,000. A time or two a year instead of doing 25,000 starting at 25/50 starting blinds, I'll do 100,000 starting and 100/200. I really only use ALL the chips in our Main Event. Now, the 25,000 chips don't come out until at least the final table, but they get in play. The more players we start with, the earlier they come into play.
• Consider letting each tournament stand on its own. Keep score, but for either fun where it doesn't affect anything at the last game, or give some small awards. I'd make them really small because honestly, at 4 games, there is too much luck involved to have it really mean anything.
• Consider having 5 tournaments where everyone starts equally. Each tournament stands on its own with all entry fees paid out at that tournament.
• If you use rollover money, equalize the buy-in. Example: $5 of rollover money per player per tournament. If a guy comes to only 3, he pays $5 more for the final event fee. That way every entrant pays the same amount to enter. If they show up for all the tournaments, they are just paying part of it as they go. I did that because in addition to players being annoyed about varying starting stacks, the second biggest thing they didn't like was that some paid less to enter the final tournament than others but got the same starting stack.
• If the must attend a certain number of games to make the final event, that can also discourage attendance once a player has either missed too many to come, or he realizes his schedule will force him to miss that many.

There is plenty written on this website on scoring systems. None are perfect, but some are a lot better than others. The biggest thing I start with is "What are you trying to measure?" Every system is artificially constructed to obtain the results the scorer values the most. There are a lot of opinions on that. What many say is they are trying to determine the best player, but one guy's definition of the best player is quite different than others.

What I did was try to determine what was measurable, then try to weigh those things based on difficulty with more difficult things counting more. If you think money won determines the best player, construct your points to equal that and go by points only. If you think the highest average finishing place is the best measure, then use that. If you think KOs are the best determination, use that. If you think it's more than one thing, figure out what they are and a way to weigh them. Right now your system values finish and KOs, with attendance counting a very small amount. If you really believe that after reading this, ignore me and others who will disagree. It's YOUR league! But if you are looking for feedback to get more ideas to make yours better, consider what people tell you and then pick what you think is best after considering why they think something.

Hopefully this helps. I've love to know what you end up with!

I really appreciate your post and want to thank for your time to write it, thank you very much! I just started my league with little knowlegde and i know i could make it way better. This league has the goal to get all my friends exicted about doing this, thats why its also only 5 tournaments. After those 5 tournaments i believe i can make it longer with more tournaments.

After reading your post i realise (even more) my league isn't great. And if i want to make it longer with more tournaments i need more and better rules. I like the idea about different rewards, and use the main event only as an tie breaker.

To be honest, at this moment i can't change the league structure i think. We already started and everybody knows what the rukes are.
So a new structure can be implemented after those 5 tournaments. I'm going to read your post again , and i will design something new. I will give an update if i come up with something!

 

[TexRex]

If you are only one tournament end, talk to the others. They might very well agree to a change. Or you can wait, but I suspect they would be willing to make a change.