i know ive seen some formula for figuring out how long a tourney lasts, but i cant find it anywhere. anyway.

start with 5,000 in chips. blinds go up every 30 minutes. two decks per table. between 15-25 players.

NLH

25/50
50/100
100/200
200/400
300/600
400/800
500/1000
600/1200
800/1600
1000/2000
1500/3000
2000/4000
2500/5000

something tells me this one will take awhile. this is going to be much higher stakes than most of the players are used to playing and i want the best player to have the biggest edge so blinds are slow... any input on this structure would be great too.

By the time the BB is equal to the starting stack you'll be all but done. Your structure is an excellent slow progression and should allow for some real poker. Not including breaks 6 hours seems about right.
I prefer 200BB starting stacks for our deepstacks, your 100BB starting stack is a bit low IMO, but your slower blind schedule makes up for it, should be a good setup.

I agree, 6-7 hours of playtime, plus probably an hour total of breaks.

It *could* go that long, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Despite a slow blind structure, players are going to get involved in hands and make moves they shouldn't make -- you already told us that people in your game aren't that experienced (or at least aren't used to a deep stack format). You'll get to one table sooner than you expected, but THAT table will run slower (you'll have more action when you've got multiple shorthanded tables waiting to consolidate).

I'd call it at least four hours though.

It you WANT it to run slower, consider breaking shorthanded tables and playing 9 (or more) handed until you get down to size again. [E.g. When you hit 17 or 18 players, you'll go slower with 9-8 or 9-9 instead of 6-6-6 or 5-6-6.]

Why, are you in love with the best player?


You may need to add some more rounds. Top level needs to be at least 3k/6k, most likely.

i am the best player by a long shot. the one guy thats any good is not coming. this is also a satty so were playing a series of tournies. i feel im a lock to take it down.

example. two days ago my friend was telling me how pokerstars was rigged ect, ect.

"hey, poker is rigged" he asked

"ya?"

"6789J is a straight, right?" (hes been playing 3 years)



these are the people i play with.

6.53 hours

ill take the over

add 5k more in chips and extend ur levels....also add antes once u get to a certain level

i like deep stack but i dont have enough chips for bigger stacks/antes

You say this is a satellite? To what?

Good rule of thumb is the tourney will end when the SB + BB = 10% of the chips in play.

So 20 players * 5000 * 10% = 10,000 or SB 3,000 and BB 6,000

or 25 players* 5000 * 10% = 12,500 or ~4000/8000 level

Sure you do, you just don't know it.

Chip list, please

I've usually found it to be 5% of the chips, because the blinds are then more than 10% of someone's stack.

Thus, the shortcut rule (only works for groups of 25 or less) of BB= Start Stack= tourney's last round.

The basic formula is to add up all the chips in play. So for example 5000*20 players=100,000. Now envision when this is heads up and each player has 50,000 chips. You can see that at the last blind level of 2500/5000, the average stack will be around 10BBs so somebody will likely bust out at that level. As mentioned, they may get through that level if the hands are even so you might need one more level to ice the tourney, but not likely.

And also as mentioned, if you double the starting stack to 10,000, you basically double the amount of chips in play and by doing this you will probably need a final level of 5000/10000 so you are only going to add an hour to this tourney.

my friend has a 1k chip set were going to use, hes missing 1 $25 chip

we have

$1-300 chips (used as $100)
$5-300 chips (used as $500)
$25-199 chips, missing one
$50-100 chips (hate using $50s, but not enough $25 chips)
$100-100 chips

so far my plan is if we have 20 or less, starting stacks are

5- $500 chips
20- $100
6-$50
8-$25

=$5000

when we color up, then it will be all $100s and $500s, and heads up say at 2000/4000 will all be $500 chips. so heads up with 20 ppl there will be exactly 200 chips in play.

25 seems like the max i can support

one thing i dont like about my buddies home games are starting stacks of like 20 chips. its just kinda boring. i like big stacks around with lots of chips. people feel like they are shortstacked with few chips.

I like a 20-chip starting stack. Tourneys go faster, people get more hands, people have more fun. Perhaps you're coloring up too quickly. A big stack is more fun when you've crushed a bunch of people to get it!

If you have 20 people, what's stopping you from using $100 chips as $1k?

Since your chips are labeled and you're having difficulty finding good starting stacks, why can't you just have levels that use the chips you have, rather than re-assigning? That way there are a bunch of $1 and $5 chips around in the early stages, people get the big stacks they want, you can make it much deeper, less potential for confusion, might even skip the $50 chips, etc. Seems to solve a lot of problems.

not sure this is a good idea. i dont mind it, but i dont think a lot of the players would like playing that long.

im going to have a start time of 6:00pm. i think the ideal time to end would be 1:00-2:00. half hour blinds, 5 minute break every hour. im not sure it will be over by then. (10 minute breaks for color up)

speaking of coloring up, when should i do that?

one of my home games is like this. start with $40 in chips. not many of the players like it. i think the 5k stack is pretty good, but we'll see what larry puts together for the 10k stack.

You could always go to 25 minute blinds.

That's an unfortunate chip set distribution. My suggestion is rethink this whole thing.

Let's say you start with t1000 chips and starting blinds of 5/10 (take your entire blind structure and divide everything by 5). Let's call the chips as follows:

White $1 = t1000
Red $5 = t5
Green $25 = t25
Blue $50 = t500
Black $100 = t100

Starting stack (t1000):

Red - 10
Green - 10
Black - 3
Blue - 1

Here is a proposed blind structure for t1000 or t1500 tourneys:

5/10
10/20
15/30
Break
20/40
25/50
Break (chip up reds)
50/100
75/150
Break
100/200
150/300
Break (chip up greens, might need some whites here)
200/400
300/600
Break(chip up blacks, introduce whites as t1000 chip)
500/1000
1000/2000

For 20 players that's 20,000 chips in play so it will likely end in 500/1000 level. If you add a t500 to each stack, you go to 30,000 chips and it may make the 1000/2000 level so I figure it might add an extra 1/5 hour.

With 30 minute blinds and 10 minute breaks, it would take 7 hrs, 20 mins to get to the end of 1000/2000 level which is highly unlikely.