Tourney Tournament Payout Structure (1 Viewer)

[v1pe]

Curious what folks use for a structure for payouts for their home tourneys.

I generally prefer to spread the love a little bit more to make it a bit more player friendly and social. I went to a game last weekend with (I think) 20 players and top 5 were paid, plus we paid the bubble the buy-in. I thought that seemed a little less top heavy than many casino run tournaments and I liked that.

 

[Numerobis]

Continuous fights with my group of players, were some (incl. me) want to "spread the love" because of the friendly aspect, while others prefer to pay only the top 2 or 3 because of the challenge aspect

Glad to know this is also an issue elsewhere

 

[v1pe]

Continuous fights with my group of players, were some (incl. me) want to "spread the love" because of the friendly aspect, while others prefer to pay only the top 2 or 3 because of the challenge aspect

Glad to know this is also an issue elsewhere

I could go either way to be honest. Frankly I'm probably the best player at my game, so the top heavy structure would be advantageous for me...but I'm more interested in my players having a good time and continuing to come back

 

[Frode789]

In our single table tournament (9 people) we pay top 3 with 50%-30%-20%. Some might have liked only top 2 paid, but as mentioned, it is important to spread the love Home games are supposed to be nice & fun.

If we sometime get to do a 2 table tournament I'd add 1 or 2 more paid spots.

 

[Trihonda]

Generally, a single table pays three spots in my world (30-33%). Two tables pays 5 spots (25%)when I do three tables (27 players), we generally pay 6 spots.

 

[links_slayer]

I do 50-30-20 for a single table (9 or 10 players)

 

[ChaosRock]

For my league tourneys, I do the above (50/30/20) as long as there's more than 9 players, and up to 16, the max players I host. If for some reason I only get 9 players or less (never happened) payout changes to top two players (70/30).

 

[BGinGA]

Personal preferences:

2-5, wta
6-9, 67%/33%
10-13, 55%/30%/15%
14-18, 40%/25%/20%/15%
19-24, 38%/22%/17%/13%/10%
25-30, 35%/21%/16%/12%/9%/7%

 

[v1pe]

Personal preferences:

2-5, wta
6-9, 67%/33%
10-13, 55%/30%/15%
14-18, 40%/25%/20%/15%
19-24, 38%/22%/17%/13%/10%
25-30, 35%/21%/16%/12%/9%/7%

Think I may adopt something similar to this. I'll probably make the second tier pay 6-8 and the third tier pay 9-13. I like the idea of a full table paying 3 spots.

 

[MikesDad]

10 - 14, 50%-30-20
15-19, 45-28-17-10
20-25, 43-25-14-11-7
25-30, 31, 22, 14, 10, 8, 5

 

[Poker Zombie]

I use 3 different structures, based on the chipset we are using...

Standard structure for most games...

When using the World Edition chips (high denom chipset) we want bigger payouts and therefore pay a little less:

Finally, when using authentic casino chips, we have a top-heavy payout structure to simulate the win-or-go-home feel of casino tournaments, but still pay a home game portion of the field.

Less than 10 players and we round to the nearest $5 increment. 10+ players and payments are rounded to the nearest $10 increment.

Number of players is based on number of initial buy-ins. Rebuys add to the prize pool by do not deepen the payout field.

 

[T_Chan]

For our league games which vary from 16-30 players on any given night, I just pay out 20% of the field rounded up. I play around with the percentages for actual dollars paid but it's pretty flat, not top heavy.

 

[rjbf65]

Personal preferences:

2-5, wta
6-9, 67%/33%
10-13, 55%/30%/15%
14-18, 40%/25%/20%/15%
19-24, 38%/22%/17%/13%/10%
25-30, 35%/21%/16%/12%/9%/7%

Do you have numbers all the way up to 100 players?

 

[MaxB]

The tourney I am doing is broken down into this:

 

[rowlin]

Rebuy tourneys + top heavy payouts = more chopping, but our group doesn’t seem to mind.

Short-handed: 80/20

Full Table: 70/20/10

Two Full Tables: 55/20/15/10

 

[Craig D]

I host re-buys with add-on STTs and used a 50/30/20 payout but 4th place wanted something so now we use 40/30/20/10

Have Fun

 

[WedgeRock]

I have always used the formula developed by 4ceps on Home Poker Tourney. His thought was first place should get twice as much as first, three times as much as second and so on. Math is easy for 4 places, which is what we generally end up paying out in our tournaments, but the number of payouts is determined by the number of entrants.

Payouts rounded to the nearest $5.

As to the number of spots paid, we essentially agreed that you pay 3 places for a full 1 table tournament and add another payout for every full table you add. Then we drew arbitrary lines between paying an extra spot.

 

[Poker Zombie]

I know most don't think about these things when setting up payout schedules, but I did, so I may as well pass along a few tidbits on my payout percentages...

1. Minimum payout must be at least 1 buy-in. Some people like a night to be profit or loss only, but fish really like a night of food and fun for free.
2. Never take money away from 1st. If the group goes from 12 players to 13 players, 1st place shouldn't be paid less. In Wedge's example, the winner makes more money if he defeats 8 players than he would make for defeating 9 players. That's just messed up. (not picking on Wedge, his was just the shortest to scroll to)
3. Rounding is your friend. Casinos have no issue paying you dollars and cents, but nobody wants change. Even singles are a little unwieldy. Rounding also helps smooth out the problem with 1st getting paid less when adding an extra player.

Following these guidelines isn't critical, but it's the little touches that I feel are important.

 

[WedgeRock]

In Wedge's example, the winner makes more money if he defeats 8 players than he would make for defeating 9 players. That's just messed up. (not picking on Wedge, his was just the shortest to scroll to)

Interesting. Never considered it, but you're right. About $15 less in one of our freezeouts.

Candidly, we are almost invariably paying 4 spots, so this is less of an issue. Sometimes, if we get a lot of regulars that can't make it, we'll pay 3 and if we pay 5 for a three-table stud tournament. But you're point is still valid.

 

[BGinGA]

Along those same lines, I've always felt that each pay jump should be larger than the last -- but not necessarily twice. In fact, the element of luck is so high once a typical tournament gets three-handed, that I'm a pretty firm believer that the pay jumps from 3rd to 2nd and (especially) 2nd to 1st should be relatively flat. It takes considerable skill to get to the top three, but it's mostly luck on how those three players finish. A single bad-beat, suck-out, or cold-deck hand can drastically change everything, and it's always seemed sorta pointless to let just a single hand or two dictate a massive equity shift among the arguably two or three best remaining players.

And for those reasons, I've never subscribed to 4ceps line of thinking regarding payouts. You have to be good to get into a position to win, but you usually have to get lucky to actually win. I prefer to load up the payouts for the former, rather than the latter. It also makes chopping much less prominent, since the primary reason people chop is because the payouts are too top-heavy (which makes it a fault of the promoter, not the players).

I did a lot of payout research and development back in my backgammon tourney director days, and have shifted a lot of those findings to poker tournaments. Zombie makes several valid points that correlate with my thinking, although I'd argue that you can take percentages away from 1st as field size increases, so long as the actual $$ amount doesn't decrease. I'm also a little more flexible on paying back less than the buy-in amount, although my minimum payout will always cover the actual stack purchase amount (ie, an $80 buy-in that includes a $10 bounty chip, a $5 dealer toke, and a $5 hospitality charge will result in a minimum payout amount of $60, not $80). The player is breaking even on his tourney fee, but not his charges for food, drink, and service.

 

[detroitdad]

Along those same lines, I've always felt that each pay jump should be larger than the last -- but not necessarily twice. In fact, the element of luck is so high once a typical tournament gets three-handed, that I'm a pretty firm believer that the pay jumps from 3rd to 2nd and (especially) 2nd to 1st should be relatively flat. It takes considerable skill to get to the top three, but it's mostly luck on how those three players finish. A single bad-beat, suck-out, or cold-deck hand can drastically change everything, and it's always seemed sorta pointless to let just a single hand or two dictate a massive equity shift among the arguably two or three best remaining players.

And for those reasons, I've never subscribed to 4ceps line of thinking regarding payouts. You have to be good to get into a position to win, but you usually have to get lucky to actually win. I prefer to load up the payouts for the former, rather than the latter. It also makes chopping much less prominent, since the primary reason people chop is because the payouts are too top-heavy (which makes it a fault of the promoter, not the players).

.

I really like that train of thought. I think I will do something similar if I ever host another tourney.

Thanks

 

[BGinGA]

Long ago, several major backgammon organizers used the double-up method for payouts: 1st=50%, 2nd=25%, 3rd=13%, 4th=6%, 5th=3%, 6th=2%, 7th=1%, etc.

Others used a sliding scale, where the last place paid is assigned a "1" value, with each position doubled from the last. For seven places, it would be 1+2+4+8+16+32+64 = 127, so 1st=64/127 (50.4%), 2nd=32/127 (25.2%), 3rd=16/127 (12.6%), 4th=8/127 (6.3%), 5th=4/127 (3.1%), etc. Not a whole lot different than the first method.

Never a fan of top-heavy payouts, I championed using a 1.5 multiplier with the formula, which makes that payout sequence 1+1.5+2.25+3.38+5.07+7.61+11.42 = 29.65..... and altering the payouts to 1st=11.42/29.65 (38.5%), 2nd=7.61/29.65 (25.7%), 3rd=5.07/29.65 (17.1%), 4th=3.38/29.65 (11.4%), 5th=2.25/29.65 (7.6%), etc. Not less top-heavy for the top three or four finishers in sum, but softening the blow from getting unlucky once you reached that plateau. It's a concept I think applies even more so to tournament poker, with a higher short-term variance than a typical championship-level backgammon match.

As a side note, it's also a good foundation for awarding points in a league structure.... where combining finishes makes logical sense in the resulting points rankings: a single 1st place finish would have fewer points than a player with a 2nd and a 3rd place finish, but a player who had a 1st and 5th would outscore the 2nd/3rd places in points, etc.

 

[WedgeRock]

I championed using a 1.5 multiplier with the formula, which makes that payout sequence 1+1.5+2.25+3.38+5.07+7.61+11.42 = 29.65..... and altering the payouts to 1st=11.42/29.65 (38.5%), 2nd=7.61/29.65 (25.7%), 3rd=5.07/29.65 (17.1%), 4th=3.38/29.65 (11.4%), 5th=2.25/29.65 (7.6%), etc.

Rather than our current payout of 48% - 24% - 16% - 12%, this would result in a payout of 42% - 28% - 18% - 12%

Not terribly different, but definitely flatter.

EDIT: Comparison to 4ceps method and @BGinGA's 1.5 method:

Fifth place gets less in a 21-30 player game... Hmmm...

 

[BGinGA]

Rather than our current payout of 48% - 24% - 16% - 12%, this would result in a payout of 42% - 28% - 18% - 12%

Not terribly different, but definitely flatter.

And pay bump differences of 6%,10%, and 14% (vs 4%, 8%, and 24%).

 

[Poker Zombie]

Lots of ways to skin this cat. All pretty tasty.

In the end, I feel if your players are chopping the structure may need to be adjusted. Too steep and players chop so that they're not screwed by sheer luck. Too flat and players don't care who gets 1st cause the money is irrelevant between the two.

Of course not all chops are because of payout. It could be a blind structure problem (dragging on too long). It could also be because the cash game is either waiting for them, or they want into the cash game - both viable reasons. Whatever the cause, if players want out of a tournament to get into a cash game your tournament needs tweaking.

 

[BGinGA]

Fifth place gets less in a 21-30 player game... Hmmm...

That's a good thing if you are always in the hunt for the title (or typically win-place-show). Not so good if you usually are just hanging around to try and make it past the money bubble.

 

[v1pe]

Long ago, several major backgammon organizers used the double-up method for payouts: 1st=50%, 2nd=25%, 3rd=13%, 4th=6%, 5th=3%, 6th=2%, 7th=1%, etc.

Others used a sliding scale, where the last place paid is assigned a "1" value, with each position doubled from the last. For seven places, it would be 1+2+4+8+16+32+64 = 127, so 1st=64/127 (50.4%), 2nd=32/127 (25.2%), 3rd=16/127 (12.6%), 4th=8/127 (6.3%), 5th=4/127 (3.1%), etc. Not a whole lot different than the first method.

Never a fan of top-heavy payouts, I championed using a 1.5 multiplier with the formula, which makes that payout sequence 1+1.5+2.25+3.38+5.07+7.61+11.42 = 29.65..... and altering the payouts to 1st=11.42/29.65 (38.5%), 2nd=7.61/29.65 (25.7%), 3rd=5.07/29.65 (17.1%), 4th=3.38/29.65 (11.4%), 5th=2.25/29.65 (7.6%), etc. Not less top-heavy for the top three or four finishers in sum, but softening the blow from getting unlucky once you reached that plateau. It's a concept I think applies even more so to tournament poker, with a higher short-term variance than a typical championship-level backgammon match.

As a side note, it's also a good foundation for awarding points in a league structure.... where combining finishes makes logical sense in the resulting points rankings: a single 1st place finish would have fewer points than a player with a 2nd and a 3rd place finish, but a player who had a 1st and 5th would outscore the 2nd/3rd places in points, etc.

I like this methodology a lot. I'm going to play around with it until I find something I like. Probably something between 1.5 and 2x multiplier. A little more top heavy than you prefer, but less than the 2x method. A heuristic like the sliding scale makes it easy to adjust and calculate based on how many players you want to pay. Cool!

 

[DaneWoj]

Our league uses a flatter structure due to our goal is to make more ppl come back more often. We pay top 33% and 1st is usually 25%. The points won for 1st place are just as valuable as the cash won.

 

[bigdonkey]

Long ago, several major backgammon organizers used the double-up method for payouts: 1st=50%, 2nd=25%, 3rd=13%, 4th=6%, 5th=3%, 6th=2%, 7th=1%, etc.

Others used a sliding scale, where the last place paid is assigned a "1" value, with each position doubled from the last. For seven places, it would be 1+2+4+8+16+32+64 = 127, so 1st=64/127 (50.4%), 2nd=32/127 (25.2%), 3rd=16/127 (12.6%), 4th=8/127 (6.3%), 5th=4/127 (3.1%), etc. Not a whole lot different than the first method.

Never a fan of top-heavy payouts, I championed using a 1.5 multiplier with the formula, which makes that payout sequence 1+1.5+2.25+3.38+5.07+7.61+11.42 = 29.65..... and altering the payouts to 1st=11.42/29.65 (38.5%), 2nd=7.61/29.65 (25.7%), 3rd=5.07/29.65 (17.1%), 4th=3.38/29.65 (11.4%), 5th=2.25/29.65 (7.6%), etc. Not less top-heavy for the top three or four finishers in sum, but softening the blow from getting unlucky once you reached that plateau. It's a concept I think applies even more so to tournament poker, with a higher short-term variance than a typical championship-level backgammon match.

As a side note, it's also a good foundation for awarding points in a league structure.... where combining finishes makes logical sense in the resulting points rankings: a single 1st place finish would have fewer points than a player with a 2nd and a 3rd place finish, but a player who had a 1st and 5th would outscore the 2nd/3rd places in points, etc.

First off, I've long agreed on the role of luck at end of tournaments and using flatter pay outs at the top.

Regarding the bolded, the thinking seems somewhat contradictory. Doesn't it show more skill to reach the "plateau", ie. put yourself in a position to win, twice than to only get there once and happen to have luck assist you to the win?

 

[v1pe]

I personally think that short handed is more skill based, but a lot of that depends on stack sizes / structure and how folks are playing at the table.