I searched a little bit but didn't see anything specifically addressing this sort of thing. If it's in the wrong place, feel free to move it. If it's not thread-worthy, feel free to delete it. Posting this because there are much more experienced gamblers than me here and who knows, maybe somebody likes the idea and does something similar.

Some friends and I were discussing setting something up so we could gamble a bit on the One Drop. We were thinking basically just dividing the field up into 4 groups. So Group A consists of the big name tv pros, Group B is the lesser-known but good pro types, Group C is the poker-playing businessmen or guys that make you go "he's in it?", Group D is the pure businessmen who we wouldn't expect to do much.

Put the group A names in a hat; player 1 picks, player 2 picks, etc. Repeat that with each group. The idea is that all 48 players would be on someone's team. (Obviously I don't know the final list of entrants, but this is the general idea.)

We'd then assign points to where people finish, and the team with the most points wins.

Anyway, what I'm trying to figure out is what the best point system would be. 48th-36th get zero points? 36th-30th get 2? Final table would be worth a good amount, but when do I start moving the points up? Trying to determine the best "payout" structure, basically.

It would be more randomly enjoyable obviously if random businessman A had random business man B all-in for 28th place and it meant something, so we didn't want to just have the top 10% mean something.

Any ideas?

(No, we don't plan on sitting and watching the whole thing start to finish, but since it will be televised, we figured it would be worth having a rooting interest at any given point we tune in.)

Cliffs: If you were setting up a fantasy league for the One Drop and all 48 players were drafted, what point system would be best?

I think what I'd do is straight cash but have multipliers for the bottom groups. Like the celebrity group gets triple points, businessmen get double, etc. If you really need the place of non-cashing players to matter just go 1 point for last, 2 points for 2nd to last, etc. When you hit the money start doubling the points, when you hit the final table triple them. Something like that. I have no idea what one drop structure is final table and min-cash might be the same thing it'd be easier to give a more detailed answer if I knew the pay structure.

Also, either way I think I'd have multipliers for the bottom groups.

Thanks for the response. I hadn't thought about multipliers. Not to get off track, but that would be interesting for an auction draft or something. A guy like Dan Shak if receiving a multiplier would be interesting to bid on.

Assuming they get 45-48 players, the structure looks like this:

9 players paid

1. $17,200,002.15
2. $9,40,001.19
3. 4,080,000.51
4. 2,480,000.31
5. 1,720,00.22
6. 1,520,000.19
7. 1,320,000.17
8. 1,160,000.15
9. 1,040,000.13

Yeah, I like multipliers that's a way to spice it up to really pull for the celebs and lower tier guys and would be terrific for an auction. You can also do what many fantasy soccer games do and have a team captain doubling his points. The double would be on top of the multiplier so it wouldn't be a slam dunk just to put it on your big guy.

It's a neat idea and the tourney has a lot of novelty factor. Have fun whatever you do you really can't go too far wrong. Also, if you don't want to go full-fledged auction you can just run it like a home-run pool. If you have enough groups/choices you're not going to get any ties (and you can make easy tie breakers anyway). Out of a hat is obviously fine as well I still do an NCAA tourney one like that (winner takes all) and have a good time with it.

eta - you can't really do straight cash w/ that structure. One per place, double for cashing (so like 1st place is 96 points, 2nd is 94, last is 1, bubble is like 39 or whatever and 9th is like 80 something...using those numbers and my quick gorilla math) and then the multipliers for certain lower tier groups...so like maybe a dan shack finishing 9th is 160 points where Ivey winning it is 96...or something along those lines obv could tweak).

I would use this with the multiplier worked in
First player out gets a bonus of 5 points
47-39--0 points
38-29--1 point
28-19-- 2 points
18-10- 3 points
9- 5 points
8- 5 points
7- 7 points
6- 7 points
5- 8 points
4- 8 points
3- 9 points
2- 9 points
1- 10 points

If this was the setup, I probably take a team of Dan Shaks vs. Phil Iveys. Dan Shak has enough tourney experience to be considered a "pro" imo.

Integer multipliers may be too much weight for the amateurs; I don't think I give anything higher than double to anyone. This is still a donkament afterall. And 9th place will be near the bubble. This tourney only has 48 players max (20% paid).

I would probably use a scale similar to Barbiaux before multipliers. I do like the idea that first out gets a small bonus as well.

First out: 3 points (never multiplied)
47-28: 0 points
27-19: 1 point
18-13: 2 points
12-10: 3 points
9-7: 4 points
6-5: 5 points
4th: 6 points
3rd: 7 points
2nd: 8 points
Champ: 10 points

Class "A" pros: 1x Multiplier
Class "B" pros: 1.2x Multiplier
Class "C" poker/business: 1.5x Multiplier
Class "D" business/amateur: 2x Multiplier

Here is ROUGH breakdown of where I would place the players (I had to look a good number of these guys up ):
* if they end up playing

I tried to put them in rough order, so if they are near the top of class B, they could move to class A. If bottom of class A, could move to B etc.

Class A:
Phil Ivey
Daniel Negreanu
Elky
Jason Mercier
Tom Dwan
Phil Hellmuth*
Erik Seidel
Ben Lamb*
Gus Hansen
Patrik Antonius

Class B:
Nick Schulman
Jonathan Duhamel
Andrew Robl
Noah Schwartz
Justin Smith
Eugene Katchalov
Sam Trickett
Johnny Chan
David Peat
Bobby Baldwin
Vivek Rajkumar
Jean-Robert Bellande*
Mike Sexton*

Class C:
Jens Kyllönen (this is a pro poker player; could be moved to B)
Roger Teska (also a pro; could be moved to B)
Dan Shak
Bob Voulgaris
Guy Laliberte
Cary Katz
Bob Bright
Phil Ruffin
Andy Beal

Group D:
Richard Yong
Paul Phua
Giovanni "Malibu" Guarascio
Arnaud Mimran
Paul Newey
Frederick Banjout
John Morgan
Any other random entrant

Yup certainly agree with that. Hadn't really looked at the trny too close and was using just a platform. Have done similar type things in other pools in the past and it's always been fun. I'd certainly play in the one you and Barbiaux set up. Would probably be dead money myself but an auction w/ that structure would be a fun time then sweat.

Thanks for all the input.

As I think more about it, because we're just doing a random draw for players, I'll probably skip the multipliers. I think that would add a really interesting dynamic for a draft/auction, but because we're just doing a random draw, I feel like that could throw things off too much. (That is, the odds for the top pros would all be relatively close, but the odds between the best businessmen and the worst would be huge. So adding a multiplier to that gives the person who happens to draw good businessmen an even greater advantage.)

So I'll probably just do a little more straightforward of a system, but still not sure what points system would be best.

Tringlomane, I appreciate you digging through the names. I think a FEW people might take exception to you putting JRB ahead of Kyllonen (Jeans89), but I realize it's tough to sort through. I'm waiting to see the final list before I worry too much about who goes where. It's not going to be perfect, I just wanted to divide it in such a way that it's impossible for one guy to have all the best players, etc.

Separating out non-paying spots does level the field a bit though. Many times a bad amateur is a better last longer bet than a much better player and he can get rewarded for that here.

Yeah, I never heard of the guy, and I just quickly looked at his live tourney results only, and I did it so quickly, I think I glossed over his $1M tourney win. Given the online info, he is easily ahead of JRB and most of the B class for that matter; whoops, my bad.

I think if it was me I'd base it on celebrity first and have categories like; Pre-Boom/Boom Stars (Hellmuth, Negraneau, etc), Post Boom Stars (Durr, PA, etc), Pre-Boom/Boom 2nd Tier (Sexton and the like), Post Boom 2nd Tier (Viffer, Mercier, etc), 3rd Tier or Non-Celebrity Pros (The guys leading off your group C, etc), Whales (Guy, Ruffin, etc.)

You might have to finesse the groups and/or add or take away a group. You might pull two from some groups and only one from others. Things like that. I think I'd make it more on popularity/class types like this than on ROI groupings though. Yeah, it will mean some groups will have certain gems/duds but that's part of the fun and heck, it's one donkament like has been said you never know.

Yea, I'm not sure how I'll break down the groups until I know the final list. I was just listing those as an example. I'd like to have different groups with a somewhat even number of players (that's why I was thinking 4 groups of 12), but as long as the groups are made up of somewhat even players, that's fine. I could always do 8 groups or something if that's more fair. The idea was just to make sure people had somewhat evenly-matched teams.

As I mentioned before, the big problem I'm having was just trying to figure out the points. I didn't want to just copy the structure of like a 45 man SNG, because it seemed sort of lame to only have 6 guys accruing points. The motivation behind this was to have an extra incentive to be interested in who is coming in 23rd or whatever.

But finding the balance is hard. If one guy has all of his guys come in 12th-20th, he shouldn't win. At the same time, if one guy has all his guys bow out in the 30's but then have the winner, I don't know if he should win either. So that's the problem. Like with tringlomane's idea (I appreciate the input btw, don't mean to always be criticizing you), the 5th place finisher would be 5 points behind the winner, but only 5 points head of the guy coming in 27th. That seems off to me.

Maybe I'll just say there are 100 total points available and then try to figure out the best way to assign those points? Barbiaux's system seemed like a pretty good distribution. I'll screw around with that a little bit as well.

If it's 48 it'd be easy to break it into 8's. Maybe something like;

41st through 48th - Minus 5 points
33rd through 40th - 0 points
25th through 32nd - 5 points
17th through 24th - 10 points
9th through 16th - 15 points (I'm assuming they are paying 8, if they're paying 9 cut this off at 10th, etc.)

ITM Players

1st - 40 points
2nd - 30 points
3rd - 25 points
4th - 24 points
5th - 23 points
6th - 22 points
7th - 21 points
8th - 20 points

Something like that rewards performance/actually making money but leaves plenty of ways for teams to finish well/poorly. I like making early bust-outs a negative number as it just feels harsh especially if a person with Durrrr or somebody watches him 6-bet ship it with nothing and lose the 1st hand. Putting an actual negative number on that performance just seems like fun.

ETA - If you want to skew it more towards actually getting people on the final table just bump that whole pay table up 5 points, maybe 10 points. Depends on what you want I agree it's hard to split the difference between not making it about just who drew the winner and also not letting a guy who had no final tables win.

One thing you can do is put a part of the pool aside as final table bounties. Say you have 8 people enter and plan on charging $50. Make it $42 + $8 with each Final Table player being worth $8. That way a person can lose but if he has one guy slip into the money bubble he gets a rebate.

So that'd be a pay-out of something like
($336 main pool, $64 Final Table Bounties)

1st Place - $175
2nd Place - $100
3rd Place - $61

$8 each for every guy you have that cashes.

I don't know if that's exactly how I'd do it but off my head and is just an idea...you can do a lot of different things with a pool like this without getting too complicated.