I've heard of people doing this and think it is a pretty cool idea. Interested in seeing what everyone's thoughts are on the best way to do it.

Some of my thoughts so far:
1. 10 people (I don't want to deal with organizing more than that) @ $1,000 each
2. Assuming we start this in Sept and have ~40 weeks before WSOP main event starts, we could set how many weeks we will have a game, say 35, and then say that we will count your best 30 weeks so that you dont have to be there every week.
3. Assign points to each place, 10, 9, 8, etc... so there is some incentive to do well, not just win.
4. I have a lawyer in the family that could draw up a simple contract that spells everything out, how the winner is decided, that they have to play in the 2013 WSOP main event and can't just cash it out, etc...
5. Winner would get to play and keep a predetermined % of any cash, say 40%? and then the other 9 guys would split the remaining 60% evenly.


Some of the other questions I have are:

1. Would you charge the $1,000 up front and put it in a bank account? Do you put everyone's name on the account then? What if someone decides they don't want to allow the withdraw at the end because of some dispute?

2. Or do you say that you pay weekly and then if someone drops out at some point the remaining people have to pony up the difference each week so there is still $10k at the end?

Obviously this is something that I would do with people I know and trust so I'm not worried about getting screwed over by someone or someone being a DB about something, but you never know what will happen with $10k on the line and I'd rather make sure we have thought of and prepared for everything.

Lump it up at the start to prevent people from dropping out.

I played in a league last year that sent 3-4 people to a WSOP $1500 event and I'm co-organizing and co-hosting a similar league this year as well. Our stakes are a little lower but the idea is the same.

That's a ton of point tracking to be done. Make sure you have a coherent system that you can work with and is transparent to the players.

Definitely but make sure to weight the payouts. Don't do what one league does and give 1st 10 pts, 2nd 9 pts, 3rd 8 pts, etc.

40/60 seems awful unbalanced but this is a matter of taste.

Put YOUR name on account and the name of one other person who is not playing in the group - in case something happens to you, they are the backup. Make sure the players know how to contact that person.

I'm going to be frank - it's not an insult. But if you are asking a question like this it makes me think that you really haven't thought this through very much at all. How hard is it going to be to collect from anyone mathematically eliminated? Do you really want to deal with chasing down the money at the end of the season from the bottom 3 finishers that didn't even bother to show up? I wouldn't want to deal with it as the host and I wouldn't even play in the league unless I knew EXACTLY how much I was spending.

+1

Definitely do it all up front. No payments or any of that mess.There is no need for everyone to be on the checking account... that's just a big waste of effort and time. If you're organizing this then you keep the 10k and the winner gets it.

-Yes but I live in Excel so I could set that up and manage it pretty easily. It would just be done every time after the game and posted for everyone to see/review.

-What do you think would be a better structure or what do you do in yours? 10, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1?

-What do you guys do in yours?

-Great idea. I can probably get the same family lawyer to do it.

-No offense taken. This is still preliminary research on the best structure to do it. I agree would be extremely difficult to get them to pay up, but will also be very difficult to get 10 guys to throw down $1k rather than pitching it as $25/week for 40 weeks, hence, one of the reasons we might just do lower stakes so everyone can throw down $150 every other month or something and send more than 1 guy.

Still not enough separation IMO.

I would do something like:

1st - 125
2nd - 80
3rd - 55
4th - 40
5th - 30
6th - 25
7th - 20
8th - 15
9th - 10
10th - 5

no-show - 0

The one I did last year was 50/50. This years is 60/40.

We take payments for the first three events but you MUST be paid up by the 3rd event, excepting extraordinary circumstances. We only run our games once every 3 weeks so it makes it easier for people to absorb the cost.