Tourney Tournament Best Practices (1 Viewer)

[MeridianFC]

Lord knows there are many ways to slice a pie, though really only a few good ones, to that end it seems there should be a master guidelines or best practices stickied post not unlike the "For Newbies" threads that exist elsewhere. There is so much good information here and countless hours of thought and practice have been brought to bear by the great and the good (and not so good) of this forum but I see some of the same basic questions asked repeatedly and other seemingly pivotal questions I really have to dig for. I mean in many cases the digging has paid dividends because of the quality of the discussion. In any case does it make sense to create this kind of document? Thinking of an update of the old Homepokertourney page. Links to existing discussions would certainly be in order. If such a thing already exists point me to it.

If not:

Good general rules of thumb for structures.
What structures work (base chip/buy in totals i.e T5 base/T2000, T25 base/T20000, etc.) and what are the pros/cons of each.
Blind structures for each. W/Antes or w/out.
Non flop game structures (stud, draw).
How many BB is ideal to start? With/without rebuys?
Hints on rebuys, rentry, add ons, etc.
Hints on bounties and other proposition types of bets
How many chips need (1 table, 2 tables, etc.)
Differences between single table and multi table play
When will it end? @BGinGA discussion on this from a couple of years back it top drawer.
Balancing tables @Chris Manzoni videos on this and others are of course of the first water.
Leagues, points, etc.

 

[KHarp1]

One of the reasons why this is such a great forum!

 

[JTBass]

-Try not to double the BB in your structure.
-You structure will be dependent if the tournament is the highlight of the night or a shorter one so that the cash game can start.
-The T5 etc. is not so important. I like tournaments that are 200BB deep, that means if the blinds start out 25/50 for a T25, I like to give players 10K in chips. Most of my tournaments run about 4.5 hrs.
-I like doing scratch ticket bounties, usually $3/$5.
-I like structures that have at least 10 of the denoms and less of the 500's as they are not really needed in quantity. Less than 10 denoms means that change is being made too often.

T10000
12x25 = 300
12x100 = 1200
7x500 = 3500
5x1K = 5000

Chips needed:
120x25
140x100
80x500
60x1000

Adjust for rebuys or MTT.

T40000
10x100 = 1000
8x500 = 4000
10x1000 = 10000
5x5000 = 25000

Chips needed:
100x100
100x500
120x1000
80x5000

Adjust for rebuys or MTT.

So you can see that about 400 Chips is a comfortable set for a single table. This number goes up with rebuys or more players.

Just a couple of tidbits.

 

[MrBoosh]

We have a new league that is close to finishing up our first season. When we started the league we wanted to make our tournaments run as smoothly as possible. The @Chris Manzoni videos were a huge help for our group as far as the number of chips we needed, starting stacks, blind structure, running multiple tables, and other important aspects. I highly recommend anyone who is starting out to check out his videos. They are so helpful!!! Plus they are the reason I found this forum!!!

We usually to T25 with 10000 starting stack and 25/50 starting blinds for 200BB's in most of our tournaments. I like to give guys more time to play in the beginning with 20 min blinds and then after 2 hours move to 15 minute blinds. We will usually do re buys for 1 or 2 hours as well depending on the tournament. Our tournaments usually run about 4.5 hours on average.

I love the idea of putting all this info into one thread where we can get ideas and best practices from others on how to improve our structure and tournaments!!!!!

 

[upNdown]

In my mind, the key to being a good tournament host (and player for that matter) is to play a bunch of different tournaments a lot, to see what works well and what doesn’t and to actually understand why.

If you’re starting from zero and you want to read everything here you can, good for you, that’s not the worst way to start. But like with most things, there’s a world of difference between doing something because that’s what you were told to do, and doing something because you understand why you’re doing it. And if you want to understand why, there’s no substitute for doing it. So go play a tournament or two every week for at least a few months. Hit the casinos, hit the cardrooms, find the home games, suck it up and hit the godawful bar poker. Pay attention to things like structures and stacks. Talk with other players about it, and listen. And run deep!

I don’t want to fault anybody for trying, and I feel bad for people who don’t have access to tournaments where they can go and play and learn. But some of the questions I read on pcf just leave me with my jaw dropped, wondering “what kind of a shit show tournament are you going to host, if you don’t even understand that?” Maybe I’m an over thinker or an over planner, but I’d never consider filling my house with people for a tournament unless I knew exactly what I was doing. There’s no substitute for experience, so go get it!

 

[krafticus]

Too much for me to type. You need to make it out for one of my games, and I can explain everything then. :-D

 

[MeridianFC]

Maybe a better way to approach this is do a thread on one subject, beat it to death, then add that to the main post? I'm happy to do the lifting for the assemblage. A PCF Cuvée if you will.

I've been doing this poker nonsense for years but I still refer to the classics, like the aforementioned HPT page.