Zombie and BG both gave good advice. Here is how I would do it, but I'll try to give all I consider when buying a chip set.
- T25 = 300 (12 ea starting)
- T100 = 450 (12 ea starting) -- I would have enough to completely color up the T25s. You don't have to do it that way, but I've learned you might use a different configuration along the way and that gives you more flexibility when your lowest is T100.
- T500 = 160, 135, or 195 (3 or 5 ea starting) -- I'd be most inclined to do 160 and use 5, but not plan on many color up chips. I would go with 3 each if I were trying to save some money because 3 is very playable, though 5 is a little better. Neither one affects the number higher value denoms, so it's 60 chips more.
- T1000 = 280 (6 or 7 ea starting) -- These will be your primary color up chips for smaller denoms.
- T5000 = 150 (0 to 3 ea starting) -- Not needed to start with a 10K starting stack, but allows 3 re-buys per player at that level. Also allows you up to 40K starting stacks, and anything in between.
- T25000 = 120 (0 starting) -- Allows a lot of flexibility and coloring up starting with the 1000s for late in the tournament. Also allows T100000 starting stacks -- good for an all day (12 hour) tournament).
Total = 1460 chips. I'd add 5-10 extras per denom. To be OCD compliant (love that line BG!), you may have to go to 1600 if your OCD requires even numbers of barrels and even numbers of racks. Or you use 4x25 boxes like I do and must have them in 25s instead of 20s and full boxes.
You can do it with fewer chips, but if that's what you want, decrease the smaller chips and increase the larger chips. For example, instead of 450 T100s, only go with 300 and plan to color up using higher chip values. I'm much more inclined to use more higher value chips because they create flexibility for future changes. I even have T100,000 chips in my tournament sets, designed for up to 40 players.
BG said you could use 40% average blind increases and play a long time. He's right. We use an average increase of between 1.55x to 1.6x increases. That requires higher values and deeper stacks to do the same thing as 1.40x, but is just as playable. He and I both like steady increases, and so do players, even if they can't express why.
There are 5 factors that determine the length of your tournament. Alter one and you alter the tournament time. The 5 factors, in no particular order, are:
- Starting stacks in BB -- A tournament is deep stacked if over 150, very short stacked at 100. A player is considered to be competitive at 50 BB, short stacked at 30 BB, seriously short stacked at 20 BB, and desperately short stacked at 10 BB. By itself, this is a good guide, but this is somewhat in a vacuum. You have to look at the average blind increases too.
- Average blind increases -- How rapidly blinds go up (most increases should be 1.33-1.6 – 2.0 or higher is considered too high).
- Length of rounds -- 1 hour or more is considered slow; 30 minutes about average, 15 or less very fast, and under 10, lightning fast. The average hand is about 2 minutes, so anything less than 2 minutes per player at maximum players per table is probably too fast as it doesn’t give every player a chance at every position every round.
- Number of players
- Total chips in tournament -- There are two different formulas to determine how long a tournament will last. One is when Antes (A), Small Blind (S), and Big Blind (B) added together equals 5% of the total amount of chips in play (T), the tournament will end. This is expressed in several ways, but one is A+S+B = T*.05. A second formula is when B equals 5%, expressed as B=T*.05.
Tournament structure is primarily science, but there is some art to it. It gets more difficult to calculate length when one factors I unknown. Allowing re-buys alters the total chips in the tournament. You can make intelligent guesses, especially if re-buys are limited to a certain number per player, a time, or both. How much those re-buys are in BB when they are allowed may or may not lengthen the tournament by much.
When I buy a chip set, I look at structures that involve average increases from 1.25x to 2.0x blind increases; one table more than I think I'll likely have in case my chips are used outside my own house; and very deep stacked tournaments because I've learned players like that.
Perception counts a lot, but it's also funny. I used to have a 200 BB starting stack. Another local game had 300 BB starting stack. Though my freeze-outstructure was much better, players felt like they got more for their money at that game. That game also allowed one re-buy or add-on. If you never felted until the break, that same 300 BB to start was only a 15 BB add-on starting at the 6th round. Somehow some players thought they really got 600 BB in that game, but at most it was 315 BB. So I changed my structure to 500 BB in the starting stack. Mine was still a freeze out, but almost everyone saw mine as better.
Perception is funny.
- I discovered that I could add more chips, alter the starting blinds, have fewer BB in the starting stack, but because players got more chips, they think it's better.
- Though we try to use 50-67% increases in blinds every time, I double the first time. I don't really like it, but players complained the game was too slow when I started with a 50% increase. Talk about silly... Anyway, I just added to the starting stack to make up for that one 2x bump.
- A surprising number of players, at least to me, don't like re-buys. I'm more of a "get their money in the prize pool" type. Re-buys are to me better for players who don't re-buy. As best I can tell, there are 2 reasons cited. They [1] don't like not knowing how much they could lose, or a double buy-in is too much for them, or [2] they don't like having to knock someone out twice. I don't personally have enough data to support my theory that players who re-buy don't do as well in tournaments when they re-buy as when they don't, and not because they re-buy.
BG doesn't like the first round doubling. I agree with him, but he understands something most players don't. To keep the "customers" happy, I made an adjustment that doesn't alter the outcome of my tournament.
The answer on this board is always more chips....
