Tourney Super-fast tourneys - Starting chip stacks? (1 Viewer)

[thoomp]

Hey PCF peeps,

Seth here from Boston, and it’s nice to meet you all. Although I’m a long-time lurker, I’m recently a registered member. You guys are great.

For nearly 15 years now, I’ve hosted a casual monthly poker night with a small group of 5-6 friends. We usually meet up on a weeknight for dinner, followed by 3 hours of NL tourneys (4 x 45 minutes, no rebuys, blinds double when someone is knocked out). Although our stakes have always been laughably low, it has ultimately always been about catching up, bragging rights, and just having fun. Although we’re not hyper-competitive, we take the actual poker play very seriously and all look forward to it. When someone is knocked out, their penalty is not much about money loss – but is instead about waiting the remainder of the 45 minutes until the next tourney (which usually involves a lot of shuffling).

For years, I’ve used a fantastic set of 300 Paulson Classics that my incredible wife got me, many years before they were discontinued. (Yes, I’m seriously kicking myself for not buying more when they were readily and affordably available!) Until now, it has been weighted towards limit/cash games, and I’ve always wanted higher denominations. For about a decade, we’ve gotten by where the chip values never matched the printed values. That has always been a PITA, and has always slowed down the game.

Finally, I bit the bullet and way overpaid on eBay last night for more chips (stupid eBay for changing their user interface – I accidentally bid incorrectly – Argh!). Anyhow, this greatly augmented the set overall and I should have the extra chips by the end of the week.

Here’s what I’ll have:


COLOR $ COUNT
__________________________________

WHITE 1 174
RED 5 125
BLUE 10 25
GREEN 25 74
BLACK 100 98
PURPLE 500 50
ORANGE 1000 50
__________________________________
TOTAL CHIPS: 596


I’ve read the threads extensively. Given that the lightning tourneys work really well for us, what are some good starting chip stacks? 12/12/7/5 (25 x 100 x 500 x 1000)?

From what I’ve read, ideally you want a 4:3:2:1 ratio, but that would mean a ton of 25s and apparently they’re really hard to come by. In the very least bit, it would be nice to pick up 26 green $25s and 2 black $100 to round up the set to even numbers.

For years, we’ve done chip counts of 10 /10/5, which broke down to $25/$50/$100…with blinds doubling when someone was knocked out. It kept things simple, but it’s time to move on to ratios that are similar to standard NL tourneys at casinos and so forth (and not 1:4). Ideally, I’d like to have each person have more chips and variations than what we’ve had up until now.

Plus, to offset the purchase, I’m thinking of selling off some of the rarely used lower denomination chips (whites, I guess) to offset the purchase if I’ll never use them. Meanwhile, I’d like to future-proof the set to be as flexible as possible (maybe I’ll have times with many more people, cash games, limit games) and so forth.

Anyhow, feel free to fire out all sorts of suggestions per T1000, T10K, and other variants! After reading and re-reading both here on PCF and elsewhere, my head is spinning – so I’m all ears to hear what you experts say. I know this sort of question has been asked many different times before…but there have been different objectives and stack sizes – and I only have a certain number of chips to work with here.

(And I’m assuming @BGinGA – You’re the master at figuring this stuff out?)

So many thanks, everyone!


- Seth

 

[upNdown]

It’s always interesting how long-running home games evolve on their own.
So you’ve typically played with 6-8 guys, with 1250 starting stacks, and what were your starting blinds, 25/50?
And you’d play at that level until somebody got knocked out and then it would go to 50/100? And after the second guy got knocked out, it would be 100/200, then 200/400, and so on?
And when you say 45 minute tournament, is that just how long the average one would last, or was there actually something that would happen after 45 minutes that would end it?

 

[thoomp]

Nice to meet you, @upNdown. Plus, it's really great to hear from someone local. It looks like there are a lot of poker guys in Boston, and I hope to finally meet up with some of you really soon. Over the years, I've admittedly never had much spare cash to comfortably gamble with; hence I've always been a bit shy of reaching out to the local poker community in fear of either being "fish for sharks" or facing hyper-competitive players who are more into winning and expanding their bankroll over making new friends. But that's just me.

Having played so many nickel-dime-quarter poker games over the years (more luck than skill), I started it up my NL tourneys back in the early-2000s when Hold'em was first taking off.

At the time, I had scoured the forums (before I even had Paulsons) for guidance and I always had about 5-6 people. After some brief experimenting, the 10-10-5 stacks worked really well and I stuck with it. Exactly...the starting blinds were 25/50 and it went up from there. It has worked very well, but we're talking a funny non-standard ratio of 1:2:4 ratio instead of the more standard 1:5:5:4 ratio that you see per casinos, etc.

Tourneys are timed, which forces people to make a move. If there are only 5 players, blinds double exactly at 20 minutes in. The one with the most chips at the end of the last hand is the winner (you play out the last hand when the buzzer goes off). Also, with timing the tourneys, that ensures that we get in at least 4 tourneys a night, which is great. Plus, the stupidly low stakes means not only zero hard feelings between friends, but also that jumping in the next tourney is a no-brainer.

We could go with 3 tourneys at 1 hour each, but 4 tourneys is refreshing and it gets people to bet and have fun with it.

(Still smarting at accidentally overpaying via eBay last night per the Paulson Classics, but eBay changed their "Place Bid" thing where there was no confirmation window. Just hope I didn't do something stupid in the purchase as it really set me back!)

So, any thoughts per starting chip structuring, and if I need to flesh out my accumulated chipset shortly? Thanks!

 

[upNdown]

Nice to meet you too. I’ve met a bunch of poker guys in the MA NH area through here. Some of them play aggressive $1/$1 games, some of them play aggressive .25/.50 games, but all of them good guys and good card players.
I like playing cash games but I’m usually more comfortable at .25/.50 stakes. I love tournaments and I haven’t come across many locals who do, yet, so my tournament play happens at the casinos and NH cardrooms.
Given that, I have no idea what to suggest about your game. I prefer to play tournaments where each blind level lasts 30 minutes, so your 45 minute quickies are totally foreign to me. If you’re actually looking to make the switch to a tournament with more typical rules, I bet @BGinGA could suggest an 8 man format with 10 minute levels that lasts maybe 2 hours, maybe a little less? I dunno. I’m not even really spitballing here because like I said, what your crew does is just so different from anything I could suggest.

 

[thoomp]

Thanks, @upNdown - I really appreciate it. For me, I really love both the fun of NL tourneys and having fun with friends. Fast tourneys are great for plenty of ribbing and table smack talk between friends, with ample opportunity to quickly get back on the horse when the clock restarts. With at least four opportunities to win a tournament, nobody goes home pissed. That's in stark contrast to busting out of a single tourney that you waited a month and trekked cross town for...or having a continuing losing streak of an evening where you go home broke from a cash game.

The really cool thing? Because it's not ultra-competitive, sometimes there's even post-hand discussion - so we all wind up improving our game in the end. In turn, many of us have fared extremely well at other tourneys with all the practice we get.

A few questions about the local cash games:

* How do you guys generally work that out per chips? Do you use non-denominational chips and cash in/out per a given night?
* Also, how much do people generally gain/lose in a given evening?
* Do you guys generally do limit games in that case?

Again, way cool and thanks for the thoughts/feedback/information!

- Seth

 

[upNdown]

Thanks, @upNdown - I really appreciate it. For me, I really love both the fun of NL tourneys and having fun with friends. Fast tourneys are great for plenty of ribbing and table smack talk between friends, with ample opportunity to quickly get back on the horse when the clock restarts. With at least four opportunities to win a tournament, nobody goes home pissed. That's in stark contrast to busting out of a single tourney that you waited a month and trekked cross town for...or having a continuing losing streak of an evening where you go home broke from a cash game.

The really cool thing? Because it's not ultra-competitive, sometimes there's even post-hand discussion - so we all wind up improving our game in the end. In turn, many of us have fared extremely well at other tourneys with all the practice we get.

A few questions about the local cash games:

* How do you guys generally work that out per chips? Do you use non-denominational chips and cash in/out per a given night?
* Also, how much do people generally gain/lose in a given evening?
* Do you guys generally do limit games in that case?

Again, way cool and thanks for the thoughts/feedback/information!

- Seth

All the cash games I’ve played with guys from here have been either NL games or PL games sing denominated chips worth the amount specified. There’s one guy just north of Boston who hosts a $1/$1 game with denominated custom CPCS chips. Most guys will buy in for at least $120 (they’d get 20x$1 and 20x$5) and often for $200 or more. It’s a game where guys like to straddle and chips get splashed around and there’s probably $3,000 or more on the table at the end of the typical night. I’ve only played there a few times, but Mybrange of nights there has been from down $250 to up $750. That game is mostly NLHE, but they’ll sometimes mix in some Omhaha games.

I played a .25/.50 game recently, hosted by somebody here. He used denominated chips (a mixed set of paulsons from various casinos) and we played a variety of games - NLHE, SOHE, double board PLO, mini SOHE. I bought in for $60 and cashed out for $175. But I brought a buddy who blew through something like $350 in the same amount of time.

I haven’t played any limit games ever (except online) but I’d certainly like to try.

 

[thoomp]

Thanks for the fast reply, @upNdown . I figured that those buy-ins would be as such, and unfortunately are currently way outside my comfort zone. Where I'm at right now, I just can't afford to be that down or blow through that amount of money in an evening. Plus, losing even just $50 to a friend can get a bit sticky and I'd rather lose that to strangers at a casino -- where there are no hard feelings.

Limit HE is good to try, although it's albeit nowhere near as exciting as NLHE. I've played quite a few sit-and-go $1/$1 tables at casinos and it's a fun way to spend an evening. As it's limit, you both stand to both win and lose less than NLHE, so I've often found it to be sort of fun with low risk. Although it has been quite a few years since I've done so, I think I remember encountering both a disproportionally elderly population...plus quite a few calling stations and tons of limping. But since you know what you're getting, you can easily adapt your play to such and do reasonably well on big hands. Finally, there's no way you'll find pros at low limit tables, as they certainly can't grind out a living doing so - so you can safely play against amateurs at limit tables, who are generally fish who are out for a good time.

Again, it's a question of what you're looking for. My NLHE tourneys are about laughing, smack talk, competition, but without the serious bank-roll - and that's fine for me. I know that once a month, I have a social evening where it's going to be a blast. And of course - with most excellent Paulson at the table.

 

[Ken]

Another trick we use for super turbo tourneys is to play to the final two players and have them split the top two prizes. A lot of time is spent heads-up so this is completely avoided.

 

[thoomp]

Great point, @Ken ! We've played with that; given our particular crew - heads-up play does work as often they're racing against the clock and are trying to quickly double-up. Frankly, it can lead to some crazy hijinks in certain situations and we've kept that in.

 

[AWenger]

I’ve read the threads extensively. Given that the lightning tourneys work really well for us, what are some good starting chip stacks? 12/12/7/5 (25 x 100 x 500 x 1000)?

From what I’ve read, ideally you want a 4:3:2:1 ratio, but that would mean a ton of 25s and apparently they’re really hard to come by.

I'd disregard this ratio, and go by the other chips stacks in other threads here, like the 12/12/7/5 or 8/8/4/7, for T10000 stacks, etc. If you're looking for short turbo tourneys, you can take the same blinds as other longer tournaments, and just reduce the starting chip stacks, for example, instead of 8/8/4/7 for T10000, use 8/8/4/2 for T5000 or 8/8/6 for T4000, or something like that.

You can also have tournament chip denominations that start at T1 or T5, if that fits with your chip set better. You can try searching the threads for these chip stacks/breakdowns/blind structure.

 

[thoomp]

Thanks, @AWenger . Good to know that the 4:3:2:1 ratio isn't set in stone; I think it was highly regarded back in the last decade - but I think that some of the other ratios may make sense. I do want the guys to have larger starting stacks...even if it means hustling to win hands before time's up and the buzzer goes off. I'm leaning towards the 12/12/7/5 as that's 36 chips...instead of the 25 that we've used for years.

If I do the stuff like 12/12/7/5...Is it worth trying to sell off most of the $1s and $5s that I probably won't use? Or would the above numbers in the lower denominations ever be worth using for cash/limit games?

Open to all comments; this is definitely a help!

 

[AWenger]

I do want the guys to have larger starting stacks...even if it means hustling to win hands before time's up and the buzzer goes off. I'm leaning towards the 12/12/7/5 as that's 36 chips

That's a good # of chips starting stack. In my experience in home tournaments, the ones I've played in use somewhere between 23 and 40 chips per starting stack per player. Another way to do turbo tourneys is to use the same starting stack, but start at a much later level (like level 3 or 4) and/or reduce the time for blind levels (although I may be pointing out the obvious here).

 

[thoomp]

It's not pointing out the obvious, @AWenger and I really appreciate it. It's going to take some experimentation; we've been set in our ways for over a decade and this will be a big change. Looking forward to trying the 12/12/7/5 configuration. (Just really hoping I can snag just a few more 25s and just two more 100s!)

Again, I also now wonder if I should just try and sell off so many of the 1s and 5s - if they'll ever be useful or necessary - particularly given that these are now harder chips to come by.

 

[BGinGA]

3 hours of NL tourneys (4 x 45 minutes, no rebuys, blinds double when someone is knocked out).

the lightning tourneys work really well for us

Tourneys are timed, which forces people to make a move. If there are only 5 players, blinds double exactly at 20 minutes in. The one with the most chips at the end of the last hand is the winner

it can lead to some crazy hijinks in certain situations

Whatever you want to call it, it's not tournament poker. And if unwilling to embrace something other than such a incredibly luck-based structure without much regard to poker skills or strategy, I can't help you.

If it works for you and your group, fine. But it's not remotely close to actual tournament poker, and imo, does a great disservice to any of your players who might want to actually play in a real casino (or a real tournament) one day.

 

[upNdown]

Truth

I was trying to think of a nice way to say it, but I knew I could count on BG to give it to you straight.

I was thinking about how your games must go. And I figured that it might be similar to the .25/.50 game I play with my drinking buddies where our buy-ins are $20 and we’re always short-handed. So often, we’ll each know the other guy doesn’t have crap and end up betting half out stacks in a hand that’s won by a 10 high.
It’s fun, and it has some aspects of good poker. But the way you have your tournaments structured, you’rej ust missing out on some of the most important aspects of tournament poker.

 

[BigSlickTux]

Another fun tourney style is a heads-up tourney. We've played with double elimination braket so if you get knocked out quick you can still have a chance at some play. I know this doesn't answer your question, but it's another fun style.

 

[thoomp]

Thanks for your candor, @BGinGA - I certainly had hoped to hear you weigh in at some point, particularly given that you appear to be one of the more experienced members of the forum here. Having read many of your other generous replies to other new posters to this forum per tournament structures, I figured that you might be willing to similarly take a moment to offer your own suggestions and insights.

Your response was clearly straightforward, but also seemed a little harsh/dismissive; I guess I was hoping for a more welcoming reply. Although I may be new to actually posting to the board, I’m a long-time lurker and have enjoyed playing the game seriously for over twenty years. If I somehow annoyed and/or offended you somehow in the process of my asking, I apologize.

Maybe I’m wrong, but you seem to quickly write off our unique tournament structure as a bunch of luck and poor and unskilled play. That couldn’t be further from the truth and I elaborate below.

Again, I’m simply asking you and others for clear information, particularly in light of the severe time constraints that we have. By all means, I’m certainly open to “embrace” alternate solutions that you might be willing to offer that might offer the best NLHE experience possible. Believe me; if I knew the correct answers per ideal starting chip stacks and how we might best use our time, I wouldn’t have asked the question in the first place.

***************
Let me explain a bit more per our dilemma and backstory; maybe it’ll make more sense to all readers here why we play the way we do.

My friends who make it to poker night are ridiculously busy these days with their kids and jobs. I’m guessing that some of you who host games may empathize; as a host I’m lucky if I can magically coordinate a single night each month where I can get a minimum of five of my friends to navigate hellish rush-hour traffic to make it to my place, and then spend three hours together as a group on a weeknight.

Over the years, some of us have been under-employed or unemployed, which has necessitated ridiculously small stakes (which generally seems counter to much of this forum). But if you were present and watched our play, you would see that we all actually play excellent poker. The truth is that both hijinks and donkey-play are uncommon, as we all take the tournaments themselves incredibly seriously – yet never to the point where we’re being jerks to each other. We’re not a bunch of newbies who limp in with crap; that would be luck. Frankly, I consider myself lucky that our small group doesn’t need artificial motivators such as a lot of money or long tournaments to encourage “correct” plays. Maybe it’s because that we’re close friends that we generally don’t goof around during play, yet still have fun in the process.

The spirit of the event is actually to play the best that we can, in the light of the extremely limited time that we have. If it was a single three-hour tourney, none of us would risk juggling other commitments to be able to take out a monthly night for poker, travel to my place, get knocked out an hour after getting there, sit around for the rest of the evening doing nothing, and then travel home.

I never proposed that our lightning tournaments are akin to genuine tournament/casino play. But as I said earlier in this thread, I’m happy to say that many of us have actually gone on to casinos and have played both tables and tournaments – and have done quite well after consistent practice at our small game (which at one time was weekly). It may be hard to believe, but it’s true.

***************

Again, we do the best we can with what we can and our format has worked well for around 15 years now. But it’s time for a change and I’m asking for help.

I am open to as much advice as anyone here is willing to offer, as I genuinely want to improve our overall experience. I wish we had the luxury of time to do long tournaments, but that’s “not in the cards” right now. Please teach me how we can improve our game given that we’re generally short-handed, and lack both funds and time.

Finally, given that these Paulson Classics are so damn expensive and are clearly hard to come by, I figured I’d ask the forum for answers before I carefully try topping off the set and making it the most versatile set possible. (I thought about starting over with a different Paulson set with higher values for NLHE tourneys, but as my wife thoughtfully surprised me with the original set many years ago– I’m not going to let them go for sentimental reasons – and I just broke the bank augmenting what I do already have.)

Thank you all again for your input.

 

[GIANTDustySquid]

there is a local game here played very similarly. The game takes about 1.25 hours for 8-9 players, and everyone plays about 3-4 games in a night. Blinds double (or more) every 10 mins. Starting stack is 100 BB, beginning at 1/2 with a stack of 200.

Blind levels
1/2
2/4
5/10
10/20
20/40
50/100
game over.

the game is a luck-fest, but the people who play it enjoy it. they are there for the fun of it.

they play top 2 split no matter what, so you're always playing for 2nd place, and winning about 4x your buy-in.

not the format i prefer to play, but still fun, and i still play from time to time.


to each his own.

 

[BGinGA]

does a great disservice to any of your players who might want to actually play in a real casino (or a real tournament) one day.

the way you have your tournaments structured, you’re just missing out on some of the most important aspects of tournament poker.

To elaborate a bit....

I won't call your game a tournament, because it isn't. It's a structured sequence of poker hands with a time-defined ending.

An experienced cash game player would be able to compete effectively in your structured game using his developed skill set. An experienced tournament player would be able to compete effectively in your structured game using his developed skill set. Both formats contain game play at various times that mimic your structure, and an accomplished cash or tournament player will be well-versed in such situations.

However, a player who developed his skills in your structured game would be totally outclassed in either a deep-stack cash game or in a real tournament setting..... simply because he/she would never have been exposed to some aspects of those games, much less had the opportunity to hone their skills in those areas. The structure simply does not adequately allow for poker to be properly played, given the artificial constraints, and highly skews results towards being luck-based vs poker skill-based.

Hence my "disservice to players" comment above. Maybe your players don't care, and that's fine. I'm not dismissing or even discounting your game as being appropriate for your players. But it's not a structure that I would be personally interested in playing, nor one that I would recommend to other hosts or players, under any circumstances. And it's not about the money being wagered; that's pretty much irrelevant. There are many ways to spend 3 hours playing very-low-stakes competitive poker with friends, and in my opinion, your way is one of the worst. I'd rather not play.

If that sounds harsh, so be it. I prefer to call it a realistic evaluation, and I tend to call a spade a spade. I can't help you improve your structure (and I don't even think you asked), because I think it's flawed from conception to completion. But if it works for you, then stick with it. But the players will suffer for it, if it's the only poker exposure they get.

 

[upNdown]

If you’re willing to go to 90 minutes per tournament instead of 45, this should work, using the chips you presently have, for 6-8 players. I can’t see the point in running it any shorter. If you’re not willing to go to at least 90 minutes you might as well stick to what you’re doing now. If you absolutely need to speed it up, I suppose you could cut out level 6. But I think you should give this a shot and see how it goes.

Tournaments will typically end in the level where the big blind equals 5% of the chips in play, so if you’re playing with 6 players, this thing might wrap up as quickly as level 8 or sooner.

T3900 starting stacks

T25 x 8
T100 x 12
T500 x 5

10 minute levels

1 - 25/50
2 - 50/100
3 - 100/200
4 - 150/300
5 - 200/400
6 - 300/600
7 - 400/800
8 - 600/1200
9 - 800/1600

Best practice would be to take a quick break after level 4 and color up the 25’s but in this lightning quick format, you could probably get away without it.

 

[thoomp]

Thanks so much, everyone. This is a huge help.


@upNdown - Many thanks for your concrete suggestions per the T3900. If the number/denomination of chips per person were no issue, would you stick with T3900 at 8/12/5? Also, per the T3900, would you color up at all with 1000K chips at any point?

@GIANTDustySquid - Thanks! What are the starting chip stack breakdowns for what your local game?

@BigSlickTux - Thanks for the idea of heads-up tourney brackets for the guys who are knocked out.


@BGinGA - I genuinely appreciate your reply and evaluation. I totally respect your strong opinion about what precisely defines a NLHE tournament. From this forum, you appear to be an expert, which means that I must be in the right place and am probably asking the right guy!

After some ideally careful thought this morning, I guess it’s no different than my being a professional chef, where it makes my blood boil when anyone calls any tiny hamburger a “slider,” which it isn’t. (Trust me; I’ll rant all day long that a slider is a very specific hamburger that you get from White Castle® (or Krystal® as you well know down in GA), which is square, stupidly thin and small, steamed with onions on a griddle, and is served on a very soft roll.)

If an amateur home cook asked me for help with making “sliders,” and they've cooked burgers “the wrong way" for at least a decade, you can bet that I’d be quick to get on my soap box and explain the vast differences between sliders and mini-hamburgers as it's something that I'm passionate about. But I wouldn't stop there. I'd pause to throw in a kind/welcoming word to avoid potentially coming across as dismissive. I'd try to work with their constraints (i.e., maybe they don’t have a professional griddle but only a grill) and suggest the best workarounds possible until they could truly improve their slider game. All this together would hopefully convince them to "see the light" per achieving ideal slider perfection and to shoot for it whenever possible.

So in our case, you believe that NLHE tournaments are very specific in nature, and that our style of play is largely luck-based and might hurt our play elsewhere. Okay, that's a genuinely helpful start! But to re-clarify, I am asking you and others here for detailed help - all of which I hope will ultimately help our crew "up our poker game." Please teach me, so we won't be "outclassed" by other players in the real world.

To you (and everyone here), if you're up for it, please tell me what you believe to be the very minimum timeframe and structure is required to do so. Given my Paulson Classic chipset investment, please tell me what remaining chips (if at all) would be required for the ideal starting chip stacks. Having read countless threads, I'm eager to hear about favorite starting chip stacks per various tourneys (T1K, T10K, etc.). Please suggest which chips I could potentially sell off if they won’t offer my chipset versatility down the road (limit, cash games), as that might help me offset the recent purchase cost of the higher denomination chips.

The bottom line is that I'm here to learn. This forum seems to be a fantastic resource for those of us who love the game enough...enough to fork over insane amounts of money for "real" poker chips in order experience the most authentic experience possible outside of a casino! And the same holds true for the actual play itself.

If not, totally no worries and it's all good. As I genuinely value your (and others' here too) expertise per your responses in this and other threads, I appreciate your taking the time out to offer your thoughts on this, @BGinGA . And again, no offense intended at any point. Thanks again and BTW- I hope it warms up for you guys down in GA this week.

 

[upNdown]

My thought process was to give you a structure that was deep enough to play decent poker in the early rounds, but would end as quickly as possible, and then fit that in with your available chips, while keeping the whole thing as simple as possible.
So I picked 80 big blinds (which became 78, because you don’t have quite enough 25’s or 100’s) because that’s the minimum I’d want to start any NLHE game with.(Tournament-wise, I’d rather start with 400 big blinds, but ain’t nobody got time for that, apparently.)

So to answer your question, if you had the chips available, I’d start with T4,000 starting stacks. And I’d do that 12/12/5. But since you only need the 25’s for the first 4 levels, I figured 8xT25 was acceptable.

If you were willing to commit more time to the tournament, I’d either lengthen the rounds (to 12 min or 15 min) and/or add a 75/150 round. Or maybe make round 1 a double-length round. You could also increase the starting stacks and plan on playing additional rounds as necessary, but personally I’d rather longer rounds with gradual increases.

As far as coloring up goes, like I said, you can color up the 25’s after the 150/300 round, and most people would say you definitely should. I’m in the minority around here in that I don’t go crazy over coloring up chips for a single table tournament. Sure, rid of the smallest chip if convenient, but I think you can get away without doing so, especially if you’re only starting with 8 of them. If you had bigger stacks or more players, or if you just really wanted to color up your 100’s, you could make the 9th round 1,000/2,000 at which point you could color up the 100’s with 1,000’s.

This is all spitballing, because like I said, I’m used to deeper, longer formats. But I think it’s sound advice and hopefully others will chime it to critique it.

 

[MaxB]

(a mixed set of paulsons from various casinos)

that should read: (a BEAUTIFUL mixed set of paulsons from various casinos) (y) :thumbsup:

 

[upNdown]

that should read: (a BEAUTIFUL mixed set of paulsons from various casinos) (y) :thumbsup:

I do remember some cool green $20’s.

 

[Poker Zombie]

Welcome Thoomp.

I don't know where to start... the tournament, or the slider.

A little background on me...
I have a number of players that drive over an hour to get to my house. Since getting KO'ed on the first hand would suck, we allow rebuys for all but 1 game, the Zombie Poker Classic.

At the ZPC, anyone ko'ed from the main event is welcome to play at the consolation table. It is a free buy-in (paid from the main event prize pool). It starts as soon as there are enough people to start. As more players are KO'ed out of the money from the Main Event, they sit at the consolation table.

So if I were in your situation, I would run a 3 hour tournament. When players are KO'ed, they can immediately start a second game. Depending on your set-up it could be another table, of the same table with some seating rearrangements. That tournament could be scheduled to last a little shorter, and when players get KO' from there, a 3rd game can fire-up - though you'd be awfully short on people. Maybe a 2 hour main event would guarantee a 3rd game.

Now, about the slider, from Wikipedia:

A slider is an American term for a small sandwich, typically around 2 in (5.1 cm) across, made with a bun. The term primarily refers to small hamburgers, but can also cover any small sandwich made with a slider roll.[1][2] Originally, used to describe the onion-steamed small burgers at White Castle restaurants. White Castletrademarked the spelling variant "Slyder" and used it between 1985 and 2009.[3]

From Merriam Webster:

a very small meat sandwich typically served on a bun; especially : a small hamburger

I can tell my poker players that I will be serving fried chicken sliders, and they know exactly what they will be getting - and it won't be from White Castle (or Krystals), and it won't be steamed, and it won't have onions. Language changes - evolves. While white Castle may have invented (or at least popularized) the slider, any mini-burger roughly conforming to the look of a slider is a slider. It is not however a Slyder. That has been trademarked, and is thusly owned by White Castle.

 

[thoomp]

@upNdown - What a huge help! Looking forward to carefully poring through all that when I have a few extra moments; just doing work stuff at the moment. If time and money was no object, what's your ideal all-purpose 600-chip breakdown?

@Poker Zombie - Many thanks for both your welcome and telling me a bit about ZPC. Yeah, we only have three hours available...and usually it's just 5-6 people at the most -- which means we can't really do a second table. But a 2-hour main event might work. As for the slider thing, okay - I'm feeling wicked old as language has changed over the past fifteen years...when a slider was just a slider! I'm just not going to publicly admit that things have changed. FYI, we don't even have the joy of a single White Castle / Krystal location in New England...but I sure ate my share back when I lived in Ohio many moons ago to make up for it.

Dammit! You pesky kids! Get off of my lawn with your delicious tiny hamburgers!

 

[upNdown]

@upNdown - What a huge help! Looking forward to carefully poring through all that when I have a few extra moments; just doing work stuff at the moment. If time and money was no object, what's your ideal all-purpose 600-chip breakdown?

@Poker Zombie - Many thanks for both your welcome and telling me a bit about ZPC. Yeah, we only have three hours available...and usually it's just 5-6 people at the most -- which means we can't really do a second table. But a 2-hour main event might work. As for the slider thing, okay - I'm feeling wicked old as language has changed over the past fifteen years...when a slider was just a slider! I'm just not going to publicly admit that things have changed. FYI, we don't even have the joy of a single White Castle / Krystal location in New England...but I sure ate my share back when I lived in Ohio many moons ago to make up for it.

Dammit! You pesky kids! Get off of my lawn with your delicious tiny hamburgers!

All purpose is an ugly word to a bunch of chip lovers. We’re all looking to have the right tool for the right job, plus lots of extra tools. As a chef, what’s a good all purpose cheese? But I digress.
Oh and there are security reasons with passing out handfuls of your cash chips for tournament use. But if you’re always playing with the same 6 or 7 buddies, and none of them have spent time at South Bay or Framingham, maybe you won’t be concerned.
Anyway, it can be done pretty easily because you can build a tournament structure to work with whatever cash chips you have. But you do need to narrow down your cash stakes a bit. What range of blinds will you be playing? I’m guessing either .25/.25 and/or .25/.50. But will you ever be playing .50/$1 or $1/1 or $1/2? Or on the other end .05/.10 or .10/.25?