I have never played poker at a casino. I play online at PS and FTP. If a casino has half hour levels, is it equivalent to turbo play since online play is about 6 or 7 times faster than live play.

Sounds pretty standard for the usual casino tournament. 20-25h/hour is what you're looking at in a live game.

I don't know that online play is 6 or 7 times faster .... I'd guess 3 or 4. But then online you can play more than 1 table at a time.


Half hour levels probably pretty standard. How good/bad the structure is also depends on what the levels are.

A stats "guru" as yourself should be able to look at the blind structure and compare it to the starting chip stacks to see where you will be at given points in the tournaments.

Unless playing in a labeled "deepstack" live event, most daily tournaments in casinos will be just like, if not more "turbo" than your average online turbo. Blinds go up fast and most of the players are trying to nurse their stacks so it will seem like everyone is hanging around with an M of two or three and they'll never shove unless they have the goods. Then you'll see the few players that actually know what they're doing (while being called maniacs by the idiots nursing their stacks). Just make sure you know which type of player you're playing against.

As for the level times, I prefer not to play any tournament with levels faster than 25 minutes. Any less than that and it's like an orbit and a half per level... But yeah, you should be able to figure out what it matches up to if you look at the blind structure.