How much does reducing the blinds time shorten a 20 player tournament?
Join Date: Jun 2019
Posts: 211
I played a 20 person tournament last week that took about 8 hours to complete. It had 25 minute blinds.
I am hosting next week and since it will be an evening instead of a weekend we all agree that 8 hours is too long.
So my question is how much would you estimate the tournament would be shortened if we did 20 minute blinds instead of 25? We are ok with 6 hours. Do we also need to drop a few blind levels?
Join Date: Jan 2016
Posts: 818
You should definitely be able to finish a 20-person tournament in 6 hours at 20 minute blinds, or even 25 minute blinds honestly.
It depends on whether there are rebuys, as well as starting stack sizes and how much blinds increase at each level. (Might be worth looking into other inefficiencies like how quickly people ar shuffling and dealing, or slow rebuys, or floor disputes, but these shouldn't matter too much if you're sticking to the blind schedule).
If you structure the blind increases so that the big blind at Level 12 is the same as the amount of chips everyone gets at the beginning, then with 20 buy-ins, you'd have the equivalent of a HU match with two players having 10bbs each, which should be a waiting game at that point. At 20 minute levels, that's 4 hours in. Even with rebuys, lets say there's 30 total buy-ins, that means you're 3-way with 10bb stacks at the 4-hour mark.
If the game is especially tight or people aren't playing shove-or-fold at 10bbs then maybe it makes sense to add antes. Or if players are fed up with a slow game, you can have really steep blind increases after Level 12, like 50% increase to the BB at each level.
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 4,335
The game usually ends when the BB in heads up play is 5% of the total chips in play. So if you want the game to end in 6 hours, look over the blind schedule and see where this 5% happens. You could reduce the starting chips, length of the blinds, or the number of blinds which would all help speed up the game. Try posting the blind structure, starting chips, let us look it over.
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 5,238
Just shoot for a much quicker tourney than usual. 20 minute levels with quicker level jumps as well.
