EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second article in the “Home Poker Tournament Pitfalls” series. Future articles will include such topics as determining the number and type of chips to use, how to handle dealing responsibilities, identifying issues with common rulings, and many, many more. Please stay tuned for more articles in the very near future.
In the first article of this series, Home Poker Tournament Pitfalls: Logistics and Comfort, we discussed ways to determine how many players you should invite to your tournament. Now that you have a number in mind, you must determine how long you want the tournament to last and an appropriate blind structure for it. While there are no steadfast rules on blind structures, there are some very good guidelines.
For beginners, I suggest using blind structures that have already been used by others and are known to work well. There are a couple very good sources from which you can obtain proven blind structures.
- Consult the Blind Structures page of The Grand Slam Poker Source by clicking the link provided or by selecting the Tournament Support page. Currently, there are four blind structures available for your use. They each provide a solid structure and an approximate projected length for the tournament based on a specific number of players. The blind structure examples on the page require enough chips for players to have starting stacks between 1,000 and 10,000 chips.
- The Home Poker Tourney website has suggestions for tournament structures. The blind structure examples I’ve seen their all require enough chips for players to have a starting stack of 1,000 chips.
While researching information for this article, I really did not see any other sources that provided solid blind structures for home poker tournament use. While many sites show blind structure examples, home poker tournament hosts should be wary about using them. Most of the examples I’ve seen are taken from casino games in which their sole objective is to knock out players early. That is typically not the objective of a home poker tournament.
If you do develop or find a different blind structure you want to use, again, there are a couple of good sources to have it critiqued by players who have a vast amount of experience. The Home Poker Tourney Forum has regular members with a vast array of talent and experience who are always willing to provide feedback. Also, feel free to use The Grand Slam Poker Source’s Ask TGSPS!!! page and The Grand Slam Poker Source Forum. As a matter of fact, you might want to try all three. The more information you can obtain, the better off you will be.
Now, as experienced hosts can attest, the key to any good Texas Hold’em Tournament is a good blind structure. If the blinds increase too much or too quickly, the tournament will become more about who gets lucky than who plays skillfully. On the other hand, if the blinds increase too little or too slowly, the tournament may last a lot longer than you would like. The key is to find the happy middle-ground and use a blind structure that maximizes play for the time alotted throughout the tournament.
Of course, this begs the question - how can I tell how long a tournament will last. The answer is: it depends. While there are formulas that can be used as a general rule of thumb, they are not always very accurate. The best way to determine how long a tournament will last is experience and comparison. It can be very helpful to record the number of players and the length of each tournament for every blind structure you use. By doing so, you will get a good feel for how your tournaments play and how long they will last.
This doesn’t help beginners very much, though. So, as a starting frame of reference, assume your one- or two-table tournament will end when your blinds (small blind + big blind) equals 10 percent of the total chips in play. For example, if you have a tournament with a starting stack of 10,000 chips and 15 players are entered in the tournament, you have a total of 150,000 chips in play. You should plan for the tournament to end at about the time the blinds are 5,000/10,000 (5,000 + 10,000 = 15,000 which is 10 percent of 150,000). Please note that this formula is not accurate if your blind structure includes antes.
Once you know when the tournament will approximately end, you can adjust the length of the blind levels to fit into the time you have allotted for the tournament; however, there are a couple of key points to stress:
- Never make blind levels shorter than 15 minutes. For home poker tournaments, 20 or 30 minutes blind levels are preferred, but not always attainable.
- Do not forget to include ample time for player and dealer breaks. You should plan a 5-10 minute break every hour or so.
- Just because you plan for a tournament to end in 3 hours, it may only last 2 hours and it may last 4 hours. Have a backup plan if it goes short and be prepared for it to go longer than expected.
Overall, blinds should rise at a steady pace throughout the tournament. The mistake many beginning tournament directors make is to devise a blind schedule that increases slowly at the start, but increases very quickly near the end of the tournament. While this does allow for more play at the beginning of the tournament, those players who worked so hard to collect chips during the tournament are forced to gamble with them at the end because the blinds are such a large percentage of their total chips. This is not a good experience for them and will not sit well.
Lastly, you have to pick a blind structure that is compatible with the chips you have available to you. You can’t run a tournament requiring 10 stacks of 10,000 chips if you only have 1, 5, and 25 denomination chips. In the next article of the series, I will discuss buying chips, which denominations you should get, and how you should configure the starting stacks for the blind structure/starting amount you choose.
So, to summarize, ask yourself these simple questions:
- What blind structures are available to me?
- Do I need to receive some feedback about the blind structure I want to choose?
- How much time do I have for the tournament and can I adjust the blind lengths to conform to it?
- Do my blind levels rise at a steady pace and allow players to play good poker throughout the tournament?
- Do I have the right chips and the right denominations for the structure I have chosen to use?
If you can answer these questions positively, you are well on your way to hosting a quality tournament.
Until next time,
KC
Stumble it!
