Yesterday I had a discussion with a poker room manager on the change of structure of a tournament I take part in every month. He is claiming that speeding up the tournament at the beginning phase by removing 1 level + keeping the clock at 20 mins would allow players to have a bigger stacks when it is down to 2 table.

I have my suspicion that he was FOS and just want us to move back onto the cash tables.

Old structure
10 handed
Players - 180-200
Starting stacks - 18000
Clock - First 6 levels 20mins, then 25mins
No 30 sec shot clock

1 50 100 20 Mins
2 100 200 20 Mins *** REMOVED ***
3 100 200 25 20 Mins
4 200 400 50 20 Mins
5 300 600 75 20 Mins
6 400 800 100 20 Mins
7 500 1000 100 25Mins
8 600 1200 100 25Mins
9 800 1600 200 25Mins
10 1000 2000 200 25Mins
11 1500 3000 400 25Mins *** Extended ***
12 2000 4000 500 25Mins
13 3000 6000 1000 25Mins
14 4000 8000 1000 25Mins
15 5000 10000 1000 25Mins
16 6000 12000 1000 25Mins
17 8000 16000 2000 25Mins
18 10000 20000 2000 25Mins
19 12000 24000 3000 25Mins
20 16000 32000 4000 25Mins

New structure

10 handed
Players - 180-200
Starting stacks - 18000
Clock - 20mins
30 sec shot clock

1 50 100 20 Mins
2 100 200 25 20 Mins
3 200 400 50 20 Mins
4 300 600 75 20 Mins
5 400 800 100 20 Mins
6 500 1000 100 20 Mins
7 600 1200 100 20 Mins
8 800 1600 200 20 Mins
9 1000 2000 200 20 Mins
10 1200 2400 300 20 Mins
11 1600 3200 400 20 Mins
12 2000 4000 500 20 Mins
13 3000 6000 1000 20 Mins
14 4000 8000 1000 20 Mins
15 5000 10000 1000 20 Mins
16 6000 12000 1000 20 Mins
17 8000 16000 2000 20 Mins
18 10000 20000 2000 20 Mins
19 12000 24000 3000 20 Mins
20 16000 32000 4000 20 Mins

Thank you for reading and look forward to your opinion!

In general, early levels of live tournaments tend to be pretty meaningless leading to unnecessarily deepstacked and anteless poker early while still having short stacks late. In general removing early levels in favor of extra and/or longer levels later will be a good thing.