Hey everybody,
Looking to host my own games soon, most likely twice a month, maybe every other week alternating between cash games and tournaments. Most of the people I play with regularly love the NLHE STT format and play it almost exclusively. I would like to introduce some variants of this format to them to mix it up a bit and keep things fresh. I would appreciate everyone's ideas on this.

Here's some of mine:
Small buy-in bounty only tournament with one rebuy
Double or nothing
Double elimination heads-up tournaments

That's all I've got
Thanks!!

Looks like fun!

But crawl before you fly. Get them in with what they know they like, maybe with improvements to the existing structure, get them as regulars in the game, THEN start experimenting.

Thanks pfapfap! I was hoping that you would respond. All you advice on hosting games is invaluable and I've already learned alot from some of your past posts.

Too bad you're not still hosting games in the East Bay

what do you mean bounty only? Bounties are a convenient thing to add to a tournament. You can make them optional (sell a bounty chip to the interested players), so they're less intimidating to new players. I've never heard of a tournament played for bounties only.


played well, double-or-nothing (supersatellites) are incredibly tight and stressful, and lead to situations where one player can basically choose to allow player X or Y to survive. I don't think it would end well for a group of acquaintances.

heads up is tough to stage live. You need more space, it goes really slowly if it's player-dealt, and the length of the tournaments is hard to predict so scheduling is frustrating. People will be waiting around a lot for their next opponent to finish another tournament.

if you want to branch out from nlhe stt's, I'd suggest something more like a HORSE tournament, or limit omaha8. A lot of people run a league with seasonal prizes like entry into a bigger tournament (wsop event?). But like pfapfap says, get a nlhe game up and running as step 1. That might be as fun and challenging as you need.

Just an idea I had after reading a thread over at CT. Have everyone buy-in as normal and players earn other players buy-ins by knocking them out of the tournament. Hoping this will promote loose play leading to a fun, quick game. Keep the buy-in low, time each tourney to take 1.5-2 hours and play multiple tournies a night. Maybe allow 1 rebuy until the 4th level.

Anyhow you guys are right, I should probably slow down and take it one step at a time but that just not my style!!!

If you can find several players with your kind of views of a home game structure, then I see no reason why not. OTOH if you try to push your ideas of a fun poker game too quickly on more traditional players you will simply fail! Either find a cohort of likeminded players or introduce your style slowly. This comes from years of experience with homegames GL to you sir

We run our home game monthly tournament nights as seasons. This Saturday completes Season V with Episode 8. On any given night we run two tournaments, the first (generally for half-stakes) is pot limit pre flop (no limit if heads up or post flop) to keep players from feeling bullied (at least for the first few levels). The second tournament is advertised as the Main Event, and we rotate through a series of tournament types through the course of a season.

For Season 5 we had a "Standard Tournament" every other Main Event, but we had some special game on alternate months:
S5E2: Knock-out Tournament
S5E4: Cheap Rebuys
S5E6: Add-on Extravaganza, and
S5E8: Cheap Rebuys again.

For the Knock-out Tournament buy ins (and rebuys) have a portion dedicated to act as payment for when a player is knocked out. I pay 'em on the spot and we make a big to-do out of it (much to the bustee's chagrin).

The Cheap Rebuy Tournament deviates from our standard as rebuys cost half price of a normal buy-in yet still receive a full starting stack. We also have one add-on (for the price of a rebuy) at the end of the rebuy period for all remaining players. This one makes for a crazy night.

The Add-on Extravaganza differs from our standard in that folks start with 3 lammers to be exchanged for one stack's worth of chips any time they'd like (between hands). We do a bigger buy in on those nights and there are no rebuys. Adds a bit of a strategic element between having bust-out protection vs covering the weaker players who get lucky early.

Our defunct Main Events have included a Bounty Tournament (first person to bust someone out becomes The Bounty) and whomever busts them gets cash on e spot then acts as the new Bounty. If The Bounty knocks out additional players, their bounty pool increases. Got a bit complicated for my crowd, so we swapped this for the Knock Out Tournament.

I'm adding two new types for Season 6, and have ideas for running a mixed game tournament (special rules for Dealer's Choice, fixed limit/no limit/flop games/stud games betting amounts), and a FANTASTIC idea for a couples/partners game (once we are up and running with two tables): Ante-only Tournament (no blinds but increasing antes as the structure) and High-Hand Tournament (a portion of the prize pool is handed out to whomever luck boxes into the best fifth-street hand, broken up into two HH periods: during the rebuy period, and post-rebuys).

Those work for us as we tend to play in home games with smaller-stakes players, so things we do differently than straight up Hold'em makesit more fun for most of our crowd. I'm holding off on my mixed games tournament for the day that I think a good chunk of our players would REALLYwant to mix things up.

Good luck!

Thanks The Meal

Most of the regs I play with take poker "seriously"(as do I) and the more casual players usually don't return because they get intimidated and think that our buy-in is too large($40!?!?!)

These are all great ideas to make the game more fun for EVERYBODY, which is kind of the point of home poker, right???

I've always been a proponent of the freezeout tournament but quick low buy-in games is what I want to do to attract the casual players and I can always host larger games for the more serious players.

I am interested in an ante-only tournament like the one at this year's WSOP. Has anyone found details on the structure?

Eneely

Its wsop.com/2012/structuresheets/12149-structure.pdf

^^^^^ sorry don't know how to post links from an iphone

I'd love to do an ante-only tournament but as much as the players in our game bitch about antes I doubt we'd get more than 3 or 4 players. What I'd really like to do would be an all-in-or-fold tournament. They ran one at the Borgata during the summer open a few weeks ago, and it turned out to be pretty popular. Just like it sounds, your have two options when it's your turn to act: Go All-In, or Fold. I didn't play but I believe the blind/ante structure was just like a normal tournament.

there are no bring-in amounts in that chart. Is the min bring-in simply = the ante?

Is it played 10-handed? utg really sucks in this format.

From the Updates page on Day 1 of the tournament:

So Level 14 with a full table would be 1200 x 10 players in the pot and 100 to call. 120:1 pot odds to call.

The bring-in is very vague, and I wondered the same thing:

The only amount listed is the ante, so I guess that is it.

Don't know about table size. The reviews from the players were very positive.