I'm sensing a slight bit of defensiveness from Worm regarding his current structure...... which is a bit odd, considering I haven't really responded here yet in detail. 
But that's about to change. 
But totally in Worm's defense, his blind structure itself does adequately allow for a four-hour single-table event to occur. One might argue against the large 100%+ increases (although combined with longer level times, that's less critical than large jumps with shorter increments), and the use of non-standard denominations (which can be successfully demonstrated with efficiency examples, but I'll save that for later). Bottom line is, it works.
Here is his current structure, showing the increase between levels, the starting stack size in terms of current big blinds, and the total bb in play at each level:
T1225 starting stacks (123bb)
blind levels: L1-L2 = 60 minutes, L3+ = 30 minutes (110% average increase)
lvl sb bb incr bb/s tbb time
L1 5 10 n/a 123 1225 1:00
remove T5 chips
L2 10 20 100% 61 613 2:00
remove T10 chips
L3 25 50 150% 25 245 2:30
remove T25 chips
L4 50 100 100% 12 123 3:00
remove T50 chips
L5 100 200 100% 6 61 3:30
remove T100 chips
L6 200 400 100% 3 31 4:00 (assuming that blinds remain 200/400 until the event ends)
With six denominations in play, almost 600 chips are needed, and five color-up breaks are required. With 10 players (15/15/10/5/5 stacks, five denominations), there will be 110-115 chips in play at tournament end, and bets can be made in 100-chip increments (if I understand correctly, T100 chips would still be in play) with a few T200 chips also on the table. At the half-way point (2 hours), the average starting stack is worth 25bb.
It gets the job done as designed, although there are certainly other ways to skin the cat. Let's compare this to a more conventional T5-base blind structure -- one that uses a similar-sized starting stack in terms of blinds, also lasts about four hours, and uses a similar but standard 5/25/100/500 denomination set (no T10, T50, or T200):
T2500 starting stacks (125bb)
blind levels: 20-minutes (40% average increase)
lvl sb bb incr bb/s tbb time
L1 10 20 n/a 125 1250 0:20
L2 15 30 50% 83 833 0:40
L3 20 40 33% 63 625 1:00
L4 30 60 50% 42 417 1:20
L5 40 80 33% 31 313 1:40
remove T5 chips
L6 50 100 25% 25 250 2:00
L7 75 150 50% 17 167 2:20
L8 100 200 33% 13 125 2:40
L9 150 300 50% 8 83 3:00
remove T25 chips
L10 200 400 33% 6 63 3:20
L11 300 600 50% 4 42 3:40
L12 400 800 33% 3 31 4:00
Only two color-up breaks are required. With 10 players (15/13/11/3 stacks, four denominations), 435 chips are required, and there will be ~140 chips in play at tournament end. Bets can be made in 100-chip increments with T500 chips also in play, At the half-way point (2 hours), the average starting stack is worth 17bb.
So we can see that during L12 (400/800), this structure also has 31 total big blinds in play during the last 20 minutes -- identical to Worm's structure in the last blind level. Both structures start and end at the same place, taking the same amount of time. Even the mid-point of the events are similar in terms of average stack size in relation to the blinds. But how they get there is very, very different.
Look what's happening if we view the total blinds-in-play every 20 minutes:
at 0:00 hours: 1225bb vs 1250bb
at 0:20 hours: 1225bb vs 833bb
at 0:40 hours: 1225bb vs 625bb
at 1:00 hours: 613bb vs 417bb
at 1:20 hours: 613bb vs 313bb
at 1:40 hours: 613bb vs 250bb
at 2:00 hours: 245bb vs 167bb
at 2:20 hours: 245bb vs 125bb
at 2:40 hours: 123bb vs 83bb
at 3:00 hours: 61bb vs 63bb
at 3:20 hours: 61bb vs 42bb
at 3:40 hours: 31bb vs 31bb
The fact is that Worm's structure DOES play much deeper for the first two hours, with an average of no fewer than 61bb per player vs as few as just 25bb per player with the 'standard' structure. If playing 'deeper' is a criteria, then Worm's structure is the better of the two (although I'd argue all day long that 125bb is not really 'deep', reserving that term for stacks of 200bb and larger). Neither of the structures above are deep-stack structures, regardless of how and when the blinds increase.
However, whether or not this deeper play is a good thing or promotes better poker play is highly debatable. One can argue that playing with a huge amount of bb early is somewhat pointless, as the contested pots are rarely life-changing in terms of stack size... so the players are essentially wasting time, and merely moving around relatively small amounts of chips until the stack-to-blind ratio gets small enough to require 'serious' and meaningful play. There is also the argument that escalating blinds keeps the action going, thereby requiring that people play poker vs just waiting for monster hands (which arguably benefits luck more than skill). Lastly, massive jumps in blinds (vs gradual increases) can create more desperate short-stack situations where player options are severely limited, which give an event more of a shove-fest feel than one with gradual blind increases.
Fwiw, below is a more-typical four-hour single-table deep stack tournament structure, using T10000 stacks with T25 as the smallest denomination. Generally speaking, the elimination of T5 chips makes constructing blinds and bet amounts much more efficient and less confusing for players.
T10000 starting stacks (200bb)
blind levels: 20-minutes (45% average increase)
lvl sb bb incr bb/p tbb time
L1 25 50 n/a 200 2000 0:20
L2 50 100 100% 100 1000 0:40
L3 75 150 50% 67 667 1:00
L4 100 200 33% 50 500 1:20
L5 150 300 50% 33 333 1:40
remove T25 chips
L6 200 400 33% 25 250 2:00
L7 300 600 50% 17 167 2:20
L8 400 800 33% 13 125 2:40
L9 600 1200 50% 8 83 3:00
L10 800 1600 33% 6 63 3:20
remove T100 chips
L11 1000 2000 25% 5 50 3:40
L12 1500 3000 50% 3 33 4:00
Only two color-up breaks are required. With 10 players (12/12/5/6 stacks, four denominations), only 365 chips are required, and there will be ~125 chips in play at tournament end. Bets can be made in 500-chip increments with T1000 chips also in play, At the half-way point (2 hours), the average starting stack is worth 17bb.
The single biggest advantage of the T25-base format vs T5 is the ease of player betting by eliminating the T5 chips. Humans (especially in the US) are inherently more familiar and comfortable betting and counting in 25 and 100 increments than in increments of 5. The T25-base structure also is more efficient, requiring only 365 chips while still maintaining an adequate number of workhorse chips at each blind level.
So what's the point of all this? To demonstrate that there are lots of ways to skin the cat, and just observing that a structure with 100% increases isn't necessary 'bad', due to that one feature alone -- although arguably it can usually be improved upon depending on the goals of the organizers/participants.
** T5-base structure experiment, using your standard color/denomination assignments to minimize confusion:
white T5
blue T25
black T100
purpleT200 T500
T2000 starting stacks (200bb) = 15xT5 9xT25 7xT100 2xT500
blind levels: L1-L2 = 60 minutes, L3-L5 = 20 minutes, L6-L9 = 15 minutes (68% average increase)
T100 and T500 chips are used to replace the T5 and T25 chips. Never color-up with chips that will later need to be removed from play.
lvl sb bb incr bb/p tbb time
L1 5 10 n/a 200 2000 1:00
L2 10 20 100% 100 1000 2:00
L3 20 40 100% 50 500 2:20
L4 30 60 50% 33 333 2:40
remove T5 chips
L5 50 100 67% 20 200 3:00
L6 75 150 50% 13 133 3:15
L7 125 250 67% 8 80 3:30
remove T25 chips
L8 200 400 60% 5 50 3:45
L9 300 600 50% 3 33 4:00
Only two color-up breaks are required, only 340 chips are needed, and it allows for two hours of deep stack play early on (actually deeper than you are playing now). There will be ~100+ chips in play at tournament end, with bets made in 100-chip increments with T500 chips also in play, At the half-way point (2 hours), the average starting stack is still worth 50bb -- twice what your current structure provides. The blinds never double after the first two increases, but rather gradually go up in increments of 50%-67% every 20 or 15 minutes. Having shorter blind levels in the latter stages of an event actually produces played hand counts that mimic the earlier levels, since fewer remaining players means more hands are played per hour.
Next up: optimal chip set denominations and breakdowns, and suggestions for chips to match
But that's about to change. But totally in Worm's defense, his blind structure itself does adequately allow for a four-hour single-table event to occur. One might argue against the large 100%+ increases (although combined with longer level times, that's less critical than large jumps with shorter increments), and the use of non-standard denominations (which can be successfully demonstrated with efficiency examples, but I'll save that for later). Bottom line is, it works.
Here is his current structure, showing the increase between levels, the starting stack size in terms of current big blinds, and the total bb in play at each level:
T1225 starting stacks (123bb)
blind levels: L1-L2 = 60 minutes, L3+ = 30 minutes (110% average increase)
lvl sb bb incr bb/s tbb time
L1 5 10 n/a 123 1225 1:00
remove T5 chips
L2 10 20 100% 61 613 2:00
remove T10 chips
L3 25 50 150% 25 245 2:30
remove T25 chips
L4 50 100 100% 12 123 3:00
remove T50 chips
L5 100 200 100% 6 61 3:30
remove T100 chips
L6 200 400 100% 3 31 4:00 (assuming that blinds remain 200/400 until the event ends)
With six denominations in play, almost 600 chips are needed, and five color-up breaks are required. With 10 players (15/15/10/5/5 stacks, five denominations), there will be 110-115 chips in play at tournament end, and bets can be made in 100-chip increments (if I understand correctly, T100 chips would still be in play) with a few T200 chips also on the table. At the half-way point (2 hours), the average starting stack is worth 25bb.
It gets the job done as designed, although there are certainly other ways to skin the cat. Let's compare this to a more conventional T5-base blind structure -- one that uses a similar-sized starting stack in terms of blinds, also lasts about four hours, and uses a similar but standard 5/25/100/500 denomination set (no T10, T50, or T200):
T2500 starting stacks (125bb)
blind levels: 20-minutes (40% average increase)
lvl sb bb incr bb/s tbb time
L1 10 20 n/a 125 1250 0:20
L2 15 30 50% 83 833 0:40
L3 20 40 33% 63 625 1:00
L4 30 60 50% 42 417 1:20
L5 40 80 33% 31 313 1:40
remove T5 chips
L6 50 100 25% 25 250 2:00
L7 75 150 50% 17 167 2:20
L8 100 200 33% 13 125 2:40
L9 150 300 50% 8 83 3:00
remove T25 chips
L10 200 400 33% 6 63 3:20
L11 300 600 50% 4 42 3:40
L12 400 800 33% 3 31 4:00
Only two color-up breaks are required. With 10 players (15/13/11/3 stacks, four denominations), 435 chips are required, and there will be ~140 chips in play at tournament end. Bets can be made in 100-chip increments with T500 chips also in play, At the half-way point (2 hours), the average starting stack is worth 17bb.
So we can see that during L12 (400/800), this structure also has 31 total big blinds in play during the last 20 minutes -- identical to Worm's structure in the last blind level. Both structures start and end at the same place, taking the same amount of time. Even the mid-point of the events are similar in terms of average stack size in relation to the blinds. But how they get there is very, very different.
Look what's happening if we view the total blinds-in-play every 20 minutes:
at 0:00 hours: 1225bb vs 1250bb
at 0:20 hours: 1225bb vs 833bb
at 0:40 hours: 1225bb vs 625bb
at 1:00 hours: 613bb vs 417bb
at 1:20 hours: 613bb vs 313bb
at 1:40 hours: 613bb vs 250bb
at 2:00 hours: 245bb vs 167bb
at 2:20 hours: 245bb vs 125bb
at 2:40 hours: 123bb vs 83bb
at 3:00 hours: 61bb vs 63bb
at 3:20 hours: 61bb vs 42bb
at 3:40 hours: 31bb vs 31bb
The fact is that Worm's structure DOES play much deeper for the first two hours, with an average of no fewer than 61bb per player vs as few as just 25bb per player with the 'standard' structure. If playing 'deeper' is a criteria, then Worm's structure is the better of the two (although I'd argue all day long that 125bb is not really 'deep', reserving that term for stacks of 200bb and larger). Neither of the structures above are deep-stack structures, regardless of how and when the blinds increase.
However, whether or not this deeper play is a good thing or promotes better poker play is highly debatable. One can argue that playing with a huge amount of bb early is somewhat pointless, as the contested pots are rarely life-changing in terms of stack size... so the players are essentially wasting time, and merely moving around relatively small amounts of chips until the stack-to-blind ratio gets small enough to require 'serious' and meaningful play. There is also the argument that escalating blinds keeps the action going, thereby requiring that people play poker vs just waiting for monster hands (which arguably benefits luck more than skill). Lastly, massive jumps in blinds (vs gradual increases) can create more desperate short-stack situations where player options are severely limited, which give an event more of a shove-fest feel than one with gradual blind increases.
Fwiw, below is a more-typical four-hour single-table deep stack tournament structure, using T10000 stacks with T25 as the smallest denomination. Generally speaking, the elimination of T5 chips makes constructing blinds and bet amounts much more efficient and less confusing for players.
T10000 starting stacks (200bb)
blind levels: 20-minutes (45% average increase)
lvl sb bb incr bb/p tbb time
L1 25 50 n/a 200 2000 0:20
L2 50 100 100% 100 1000 0:40
L3 75 150 50% 67 667 1:00
L4 100 200 33% 50 500 1:20
L5 150 300 50% 33 333 1:40
remove T25 chips
L6 200 400 33% 25 250 2:00
L7 300 600 50% 17 167 2:20
L8 400 800 33% 13 125 2:40
L9 600 1200 50% 8 83 3:00
L10 800 1600 33% 6 63 3:20
remove T100 chips
L11 1000 2000 25% 5 50 3:40
L12 1500 3000 50% 3 33 4:00
Only two color-up breaks are required. With 10 players (12/12/5/6 stacks, four denominations), only 365 chips are required, and there will be ~125 chips in play at tournament end. Bets can be made in 500-chip increments with T1000 chips also in play, At the half-way point (2 hours), the average starting stack is worth 17bb.
The single biggest advantage of the T25-base format vs T5 is the ease of player betting by eliminating the T5 chips. Humans (especially in the US) are inherently more familiar and comfortable betting and counting in 25 and 100 increments than in increments of 5. The T25-base structure also is more efficient, requiring only 365 chips while still maintaining an adequate number of workhorse chips at each blind level.
So what's the point of all this? To demonstrate that there are lots of ways to skin the cat, and just observing that a structure with 100% increases isn't necessary 'bad', due to that one feature alone -- although arguably it can usually be improved upon depending on the goals of the organizers/participants.
Typically, a better -- and usually easier, and cheaper -- approach is to get a chip set that supports the number of players, and design a blind structure around your chip set to meet the tournament requirements.
As others have stated, a tournament set with denominations that are only 2x apart is very inefficient.
Maximum initial distribution of the chips is rarely the best or most efficient use of the set. In your case, the required purchase of additional 25, 100, and 200 chips proves this out.
That's not really deep stack play, but I do get what you are trying to accomplish. An hour of play at 120+bb, followed by an hour of play at 60+bb, on average. Unconvinced that it promotes good tournament poker play or strategy, however -- in fact, it may do exactly the opposite. But if that is what is desired for your social game setting, so be it. But if planning on ending the event in four hours, the latter stages of the event will suffer for it.
And this pretty much proves my point. With an average stack of just 10bb or less, there is very little serious poker being played, at a time when the risk/reward ratio is at the highest. Most players will gladly sacrifice large amounts of time at somewhat meaningless play early-on for the chance to play non-shove poker towards the end of the event, when it counts. Essentially, in the bigger view -- your event is set up to reward luck, not skill. If that's what is desired for your social game setting, so be it. But players who have never played it any other way may not realize that it's 'broken', and could use a little 'fixing'.
A 400 chip set should be plenty for a 10-player no-rebuy tournament, if efficiently designed. With your budget, that puts some pretty nice chips within your reach. No need to break the bank, nor settle for some low-end chips with built-in quality issues.
Ditching the 10s doesn't mean doubling the 5s, nor does ditching the 50s mean increasing the 25s. There are optimal numbers of chips per stack, and eliminating unnecessary denominations allows you get exactly what you really need -- which will typically be fewer chips overall than if using 2x denominations.
Agreed, and glad that you have noticed this phenomenon. When blinds increase less radically, there is less of an "instant short-stack" shock impact to players.
Solid unslugged plastic, weighing about 8 grams.
I think this is a great idea, although I dislike using T5 chips in tournaments. If wanting to experiment, I'd suggest that you also try out a non-T5 blind structure. However, see below ** for a T5-base experiment suggestion that excludes T10 and T50 chips but meets your unorthodox requirement for early deep play.
I agree 100%, and why I advise against using T5 chips at all. They generally have to stay in play too long, and they are not particularly conducive to making bets in the first place. A T25-base set and corresponding structure is much easier for players to use.
I think you may be overvaluing the importance of posting blinds -- that is a very small part of any hand. Of greater value is the ability to quickly calculate and assemble bets and raises, both pre-flop and on subsequent betting levels. Towards that goal, T25-base sets offer much improvement and efficiency over T5-base sets.
** T5-base structure experiment, using your standard color/denomination assignments to minimize confusion:
white T5
blue T25
black T100
purple
T2000 starting stacks (200bb) = 15xT5 9xT25 7xT100 2xT500
blind levels: L1-L2 = 60 minutes, L3-L5 = 20 minutes, L6-L9 = 15 minutes (68% average increase)
T100 and T500 chips are used to replace the T5 and T25 chips. Never color-up with chips that will later need to be removed from play.
lvl sb bb incr bb/p tbb time
L1 5 10 n/a 200 2000 1:00
L2 10 20 100% 100 1000 2:00
L3 20 40 100% 50 500 2:20
L4 30 60 50% 33 333 2:40
remove T5 chips
L5 50 100 67% 20 200 3:00
L6 75 150 50% 13 133 3:15
L7 125 250 67% 8 80 3:30
remove T25 chips
L8 200 400 60% 5 50 3:45
L9 300 600 50% 3 33 4:00
Only two color-up breaks are required, only 340 chips are needed, and it allows for two hours of deep stack play early on (actually deeper than you are playing now). There will be ~100+ chips in play at tournament end, with bets made in 100-chip increments with T500 chips also in play, At the half-way point (2 hours), the average starting stack is still worth 50bb -- twice what your current structure provides. The blinds never double after the first two increases, but rather gradually go up in increments of 50%-67% every 20 or 15 minutes. Having shorter blind levels in the latter stages of an event actually produces played hand counts that mimic the earlier levels, since fewer remaining players means more hands are played per hour.
Next up: optimal chip set denominations and breakdowns, and suggestions for chips to match
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