Tournament structure at the local card room... (1 Viewer)

Interesting idea, honestly. I haven't looked/played at one like this before.

It looks like the starting stack is always 200 big blinds, based on the structure. So someone starting new at level 6 is paying $550 for 200 blinds vs. the $120 cost at round 1.

If I could buy in for ~20% of what everyone else buys in for at a tournament, I'd play more tournaments :)

I see your point about play time being a factor. I guess it depends whether the edge someone might gain over you for playing longer outweighs their almost 5x buying and them juicing the payouts 4 hours in.
 
is this structure meant to benefit the rich to get richer and not benefit the real poker player ?

Neither, I think. I think it's meant to benefit the house... the late comers are charged more and more for entry and staffing, yet it's still one entry, and the latecomers consume less staff on average.

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I think they're just trying to give people more options.

At all stages, people buying in start with 200 BB... but someone buying in at the start pays 50c of their entry per BB, while someone starting at 1:30 pays $2.50 of their entry per BB.

Some people would rather start earlier for cheap, and collect chips by winning... others want to avoid the grind, and are willing to pay lots of extra money to start later and still have a fair shot at winning.

As far as what's fair, and whether the latecomers have overly large stacks compared to the early starters... people will be getting knocked out a lot after the 12:10 blinds bump, and certainly after 12:50. (At 12:50, anyone who is still playing a 10,000 chip stack has only 50 BB and is paying 550 in blinds per orbit.) So if a lot of people entered and are knocked out, survivors from the morning may have well over 60,000 in chips at 1:30 pm. But if only a few people start in the morning, and lots of people start at 1:30, then the person who started early will probably be short-stacked, on average. Then again, they entered for much less money... And the morning players will know much more about each other's play, while the new people coming in will be at a big disadvantage.
 
First question I'd be asking is, "where does all the money go?"

How much of each entry goes to the prize pool? Is it a fixed amount per entry (really bad), a set percentage of each entry (still sorta bad), a set percentage of all entries (better), or something else?

This is sorta like a progressive-entry fee into a bracket backgammon tournament, where for every level you skip, your entry fee doubles (which is sound mathematically, given full fields and no extra byes). Except the correlation between blinds doubling and/or stack sizes halving doesn't hold the same mathematical validity as in a bracket tournament.

Truth be told, those 200BB you receive in L4 do not hold the same value as the 200BB received in L1, nor is the numerical difference in value anywhere close to linear as suggested by the buy-in table. With an extremely conservative and slow-increasing blind schedule (or with passive nitty players), those later huge stack buy-ins are worth much more than what they are charging. But with an aggressive fast-moving blind schedule (or aggressive swing-for-the-fence players), fewer players will remain five or six levels in, and those players will have much larger stacks relative to the new buy-ins - making them worth less. And as Mental noted above, the physical number of players entering at each level will also skew the true value of late entries.

Interesting concept, but I think it's inherently flawed. The proper way to do something like this would be to base it not on the number of BB at the current blind level, but base it on the current average stack size at a given blind level. Limiting buy-ins to the size of the average stack also protects those players who have earned their large stacks with earlier play, and also helps protects the short-stacks who remain.
 
First question I'd be asking is, "where does all the money go?"

How much of each entry goes to the prize pool? Is it a fixed amount per entry (really bad), a set percentage of each entry (still sorta bad), a set percentage of all entries (better), or something else?

This is sorta like a progressive-entry fee into a bracket backgammon tournament, where for every level you skip, your entry fee doubles (which is sound mathematically, given full fields and no extra byes). Except the correlation between blinds doubling and/or stack sizes halving doesn't hold the same mathematical validity as in a bracket tournament.

Truth be told, those 200BB you receive in L4 do not hold the same value as the 200BB received in L1, nor is the numerical difference in value anywhere close to linear as suggested by the buy-in table. With an extremely conservative and slow-increasing blind schedule (or with passive nitty players), those later huge stack buy-ins are worth much more than what they are charging. But with an aggressive fast-moving blind schedule (or aggressive swing-for-the-fence players), fewer players will remain five or six levels in, and those players will have much larger stacks relative to the new buy-ins - making them worth less. And as Mental noted above, the physical number of players entering at each level will also skew the true value of late entries.

Interesting concept, but I think it's inherently flawed. The proper way to do something like this would be to base it not on the number of BB at the current blind level, but base it on the current average stack size at a given blind level. Limiting buy-ins to the size of the average stack also protects those players who have earned their large stacks with earlier play, and also helps protects the short-stacks who remain.

Totally agree on limiting buy-ins.
 
I think it's meant to benefit the house... the late comers are charged more and more for entry and staffing, yet it's still one entry, and the latecomers consume less staff on average.
Yeah, definitely. Latecomers pay more in both rake and staff fees (wtf? that's supposed to be covered by the rake). So in a sense, assuming that the buy-in amounts are mathematically legit (a big stretch all by itself), the promoters are ether ripping off the latecomers by charging them more fees than earlier registrants, or they are ripping off the early starters by not adding in the proper amount of prize pool funding from the latecomer buy-ins.

The whole thing almost sounds like a house ponzi scheme. :(
 
Yeah, definitely. Latecomers pay more in both rake and staff fees (wtf? that's supposed to be covered by the rake). So in a sense, assuming that the buy-in amounts are mathematically legit (a big stretch all by itself), the promoters are ether ripping off the latecomers by charging them more fees than earlier registrants, or they are ripping off the early starters by not adding in the proper amount of prize pool funding from the latecomer buy-ins.

The whole thing almost sounds like a house ponzi scheme. :(

Schemes it does seem. I guess I'll stick to cash games and run when I like to.
 
I may have miss understood how the levels work but does level 2 buyin for 400bb?

If that's the case this is where the money is.

Assuming all of the buyin - rake adds to the total prize pool, I personally would hate the idea of playing in a tournament sturctured this way. If I did I would always buy in to the last level. If I could not justify the cost of the highest buyin I would simply dodge the tourney.

My gripe is that at the stage of the last buyin the field would have normally stabilized and the average chip stack would be a lot lower than 200bb. If you buyin early you would loose a lot of the leverage that you should normally have at this stage of play and you would have to play so tight it would just not be enjoyable.
 

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