I run a league and we are looking for a new structure for our events. We need events to not last longer than 6 hours of play time. However my players don't like the shovefest at the end of the night where most league points are accumulated. I explained that if they want a long FT then the bust outs need to occur fast and quickly early in the night. They all want their cake and eat it too.

Is starting with short levels then moving to longer levels the best way to accomplish what they want?

You could also reset levels when the FT starts and have every FT start with the same blinds.

Our players always seem to be very nitty. Never 3bet jamming light over a opener and playing aggro. They are just sitting around until they have AJ+ and 77+ to play a hand. They all fold their way to 10 big blinds and then go all in. I was thinking of shortening the early levels and making the later levels longer. The event lasts the same amount of time but allows for more play late.

Left is our current. Middle is long longer levels late. Right is the Rio Deepstacks w longer levels late.

A 4 to 6 hour Tournament is almost always nearly a "Shovefest" by the final table. If players don't want that at the FT , then reducing the blinds and increasing the level time AT the FT seems to be the best way to go. Make sure everybody ( or most everybody) agrees and see if you please the folks. It might be tricky , at first , to do this and still stay in your time frame of a 6 hour cutoff.

Yeah tell them to stop nitting it up.

Assuming they don't accept that, make the structure slow in the beginning so they can play their 200bb limped pots, then after an hour or 2 accelerate to the point that you have bustouts every other hand and then slow it down again for the final table.

edit; consider very high antes for that middle stage. Like 1/4bb antes so those annoying nitterballs lose their stack really fast and are forced to shove. It punishes them more than active players and it is also less visible that you want a lot of nits gone in a short period of time because the BBs stay relatively the same.

We've not done antes cuz it's a hassle every hand to make sure everyone is in. Is it out of the realm to have the dealer ante for the table? Just take the number of players and ante size and that's what the dealer has to put in.

If your group is not disciplined enough to reliably post antes on their own then I would just avoid having them as part of your structure. This is NOT an uncommon situation in home games BTW. I assume you have players self dealing each hand and not a designated non playing dealer at each table.

You can always change the tourney to a shootout style (where you have to win your table (or be n last 3 or so)) to advance to the next round, and then start over, in essence this makes every table a final table from the beginning. It wont last any longer, and in fact should play a little faster so you can make the levels a touch longer or stacks deeper. I love shootouts but they are very rare.

We are doing a 4 max shootout in our next event. Our fields are usually close to 20-26 ppl so we'll be doing 6 tables of 4 and play down to a FT of 6. Shootouts are fun due to the fact you can't just ladder up the pay table. You have to win.

start with 1 table

Antes are a total PITA. But having the dealer 'ante for the table' is like adding a 3rd blind. You're talking revolution there. Be careful or they'll behead the king.

Will longer levels at the end really help? If people really play push/fold around 10-15BB, heck that is often mathematically more correct than your average punter's strategy, but I don't see how a longer level will effect a meaningful change to their strategy, just stretch out the agony. A case could be made that longer levels in the beginning or middle would actually reward people who are "playing more poker".

If you want to get creative, you could consider something like a "time" tourney like Stars and others have, where after a certain point, you chip-chop the points. I'm just thinking off the top of my head here, but let's say you have 5 places ITM (points). Once you get there, or perhaps down to 4 players, chip chop the points. Here are some advantages:

1. Gets the punters done sooner. Could allow for longer levels at some point if you like, and to "compensate" the group so they get their money's worth.
2. Eliminates the part of the tourney that is in theory most exciting, but for your group, is mostly shuffling cards, mucking, shuffling more cards.
3. A chip chop as opposed to ICM chop actually encourages accumulating chips. ICM chops are much more about simply getting there. Chip chops are also easier for people to get their head around, and I think we'll all agree that if someone doesn't know about ICM, there's no point in telling them.

If anyone thinks there's merit to parts of this, I'd love some feedback. Probably I'm just overcaffeinated, but I kinda like this idea of mine. And it's only 10AM, what else will the day bring? Oh the places we'll go!

I dont see what the difficulty would be to add an ante, besides getting the chips for it..

How about adding bountys?

This is why your tournaments play the way they do. Your players are all playing to try to outlast each other, so a large number of them play deep but don't really accumulate chips. It goes on and on for hours until the blind structure starts really penalizing tight play.

Tweaking the structure a little will probably not change much. You need a field of players who aren't all ABC nits. Or maybe change the game to something that they don't have such a boring, automatic strategy for playing.

So they want to have deeper stacks so that.... they can wait longer to get to the point where they can shove their 7bb stacks? So basically what they are saying is that they prefer to just fold everything before they get aces? Why would anyone even want to host or play this nitfest?

Alternate between rounds of NLHE and PLO. That will liven things up.