New and weird tournament format (1 Viewer)

[BigGrizz]

So my players arent big gamblers and are mostly board gamers. That said, the hold outs are down to play a game with lower pressure. Also, my players hate player elimination. So I have devised a way to lower the pressure, keep players in the game, and also give my chip some use. The idea is to get more people into playing poker and not just board games. I'll break down these points. Keep in mind, this is a 1 table tournament of newer players.

1. Tournament is based on rounds and phases, not a tournament clock. I'll put these guys on a clock later but for now they get eased in.

2. Rebuys are unlimited and included with entry. That said, each time you get reloaded, the amount decreases. Players can also surrender a short stack and use a reload. This keeps everyone involved until the final phase.

So, phases are color coded by chip. Each phase lasts 2 revolutions of the table. First is red phase which uses some T-5 chips. This is just a get comfortable phase with a bet limit of 100. After red phase, no-limit is in full effect. Then we go green, black, purple, yellow, and orange. The last phase is blue phase which is basically sudden death, no reloads, massive aggression for the end. The end of a phase is a color up. Blue ends after a set number of hands with winner and placing decided by stack size.

Each phase has set blinds. They will be some big ass jumps but players know they are coming. Havent got the blinds dialed in yet. Red phase would be 5-10, green 25-50. Beyond that will need tuning.

Any thoughts? I know its weird, but getting rid of player elimination is a key for easing this group in.

 

[Tonysquander]

Why not just do a regular tournament style game but with super low buyin/rebuy up to a certain level? You can basically control how long the rebuy period will last (and the minimum game time) by setting blind levels at whatever you want. You control the $ exposure by setting the buy-in amount.

Example: you want a minimum 2 hour game, use 15 minute level with rebuys through level 8. Buyin at $5, even if a guy rebuys 3 times he is only risking $20. If that’s too much, lower the buy-in amount. That way they are becoming used to how the game actually plays instead of some wild version you will have to ween them off of later if your goal is to eventually get to normal gameplay and strategy.

 

[BigGrizz]

Good point. I was thinking of this as a training tournament where they didnt have to deal with clock anxiety. You are probably right though.

The other thought it that since I'm trying to cultivate players making sure they got super deep playing time by killing player elimination. Player elimination is pretty taboo in board gamer culture.

 

[frugal]

So my players arent big gamblers and are mostly board gamers ... I know its weird, but getting rid of player elimination is a key for easing this group in.

If you don't want player elimination, why play a tournament format? You could have every play a cash game format with 100 BBs for each player every hand (or whatever stack size you want) and track the chips won or lost as positive or negative points. That way it plays like a board game without player elimination and it will be straightforward for your players to learn strategy because it has the same payoff structure as a normal cash game.

To learn strategy for your proposed format your players need to learn ICM for custom tournament format that's like no other poker game they'll ever play in again.

Player elimination is pretty taboo in board gamer culture.

This is not universal although it might seem like it if you have a group that only plays Euros or some other specific genre that avoids player elimination and the group doesn't know other genres exist. Most of my board game groups (which have zero interest in poker) play games with player elimination. I'm not saying those games are better, but player elimination being taboo is local a preference to your group and not something about board gamers in general (lots of board gamers like Diplomacy, for example). If they're open to expanding their horizons, maybe you could introduce them to a game like Skull, which has player elimination and a betting and bluffing element but plays a lot faster than a poker tournament. If they think Skull is a drag they're probably not going to like poker. If they like Skull, you can introduce poker as Skull with deeper strategy.

Another way to introduce poker is to start with The Gang. One of my game groups started playing poker after getting into The Gang. I'd bet on Skull being a better predictor of whether or not people like poker but The Gang can get people to take an interest.

 

[BigGrizz]

So, player elimination is tolerated so long as its not an overly long time out. Like King of Tokyo is popular, but once you die its maybe 15 min until a new game is starting. Having to leave for the night after elimination is rough.

That said, I really like what you are saying! That might work much better. Thanks!

 

[Taghkanic]

Why not just do a regular tournament style game but with super low buyin/rebuy up to a certain level? You can basically control how long the rebuy period will last (and the minimum game time) by setting blind levels at whatever you want. You control the $ exposure by setting the buy-in amount.

Example: you want a minimum 2 hour game, use 15 minute level with rebuys through level 8. Buyin at $5, even if a guy rebuys 3 times he is only risking $20. If that’s too much, lower the buy-in amount. That way they are becoming used to how the game actually plays instead of some wild version you will have to ween them off of later if your goal is to eventually get to normal gameplay and strategy.

^^^ This

 

[Taghkanic]

Player elimination is pretty taboo in board gamer culture.

The whole point of tournaments is player elimination.

Maybe a microstakes cash game would be better? Low enough that your guys feel totally comfortable topping off/reloading endlessly.

 

[SALB]

I feel like low stakes with endless reload is the way to go .

 

[BigGrizz]

Ya. I probably had a couple too many beers and tried to reinvent the wheel...

 

[slurpeee]

Another option: (Have done it for slightly similar reasons you mentioned. I was pretty skeptical about it going in, but it actually worked pretty well)

• Think uber low stakes cash game buy-in. We did $5 w/ $3 rebuys.
  
  
• Chip stacks for buy-ins are like tournament stacks.
  • We did $1000 stacks. This did 2 things:
  • (1) Got people thinking in terms of "points" vs. pennies and cents. I don't understand the psychology, but for some reasons, big stacks and points fueled their competitive juices. But pennies and chips/actual cash values in the moment seemed to trivialize it in their minds for some reason. I know, makes no sense, but seeing it play it out, had a real effect.
  • (2) Gave me a chance to use a bunch of chips I seldom use.
• The game played like a cash game. Fixed blinds, no levels. If busted you only had to pay a very modest amount to rebuy/keep playing. Like you mentioned, the goal here was to keep people playing as much as possible. But still have some downside (albeit trivial) of busting.
  
  
• Payouts at the end of the allotted time were like a tourney payout by percentage of the total buy-in for each place.
  
  
• We had about a 4 hour window to play, so did this twice as 2, 2-hour games. Feedback at the end was if we did it again, to do even more, shorter "individual games" in the same window of time. I didn't like that idea, but others did.

 

[FestiveKnight]

If you don't want player elimination, why play a tournament format? You could have every play a cash game format with 100 BBs for each player every hand (or whatever stack size you want) and track the chips won or lost as positive or negative points. That way it plays like a board game without player elimination and it will be straightforward for your players to learn strategy because it has the same payoff structure as a normal cash game.

As an avid board gamer too, I really like this. The only thing I might change is the stack size part because like this you miss the whole differing stack size dynamic. Instead I might do something like:

-Start of hand everyone has 150BB or whatever
-Play hand like normal
-After hand, everyone nets their wins/losses from their points.
- Award hand winner a blue chit and losers a red chit. At the start of each hand, you get +5 BB per blue chit and -5 BB per red chit. Blue and red chits cancel each other out when received.

In theory someone could still get stacked but they’d have to systematically lose a lot of hands.

This lets stack sizes play a little and have the table dynamics of big winners and losers and also the benefit for folks who are playing too many hands to see how that taxes their stack

 

[FestiveKnight]

As an avid board gamer too, I really like this. The only thing I might change is the stack size part because like this you miss the whole differing stack size dynamic. Instead I might do something like:

-Start of hand everyone has 150BB or whatever
-Play hand like normal
-After hand, everyone nets their wins/losses from their points.
- Award hand winner a blue chit and losers a red chit. At the start of each hand, you get +5 BB per blue chit and -5 BB per red chit. Blue and red chits cancel each other out when received.

In theory someone could still get stacked but they’d have to systematically lose a lot of hands.

This lets stack sizes play a little and have the table dynamics of big winners and losers and also the benefit for folks who are playing too many hands to see how that taxes their stack

This would entail a lot of chip counting, but it’s good practice and board games should be able to learn to do it smoothly. Especially, if as @frugal assumed, they’re used to euros

 

[BigGrizz]

Loving these ideas! I really want a low risk and full engagement way to play. And points conversion is absolutely a must for this group. Otherwise they will all likely nit like crazy.

 

[BigGrizz]

Okay. Prior idea totally abandoned.

Now the tournament is traditional with 20 levels. First 3 levels are early play for those that want more game time. On time bonus for players who arrive by level 4. Everyone has 2 rebuys built in that expire at level 11.

Early play is T5 based. Level 4 is the real start with T25 base. 25k stacks. Early play is just an hour of fun for the early birds. With this format everyone should get about 4 hours (5 for early players) with the last hour being when everyone starts knocking out.