Manage and Enjoy Your Home Poker Tournament - Part Two
First, the money.
Now don't get me wrong - you definitely don't have to play for money to have fun.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with divvying up the chips and playing for the pride of trashing your buddies.
But when there are a few bucks on the line, the excitement seems to escalate just a bit.
And you don't have to put up $50 or more to get that feeling.
In fact, in my tournaments the standard we've settled on is a $10 buyin.
The payout schedule we use is 1st Place - 40%, 2nd Place - 30%, 3rd Place - 20% and 4th Place - 10%.
Of course, this schedule may need to be modified if you have more or fewer players.
We usually end up with about 8 or 10 players at my tourneys so this works out OK.
You may elect to pay the winner everything, or to pay out even more places.
Your call.
Two things to consider - what do you do with the folks that bust out early? I often set up a little side tournament once we have 4 or 5 players out of the main tourney.
We use a $5 buyin and payout 1st and 2nd.
Also, you should think about whether or not you want to permit re-buys.
This allows a player to pay another $10 and get more chips, even if they've busted out.
The general consensus with the folks I play with are that they don't like re-buys, so we don't use them too often.
When we do use them we only permit players to re-buy if they've busted out and only if we don't have a side tourney going.
OK, let's get to the blinds schedule.
As the Tournament Director you have the responsibility and opportunity to decide how long you want the tournament to last.
You manage that with your blinds schedule.
By setting your blinds schedule in relation to your chip denominations you can come pretty darn close to determining how long the tournament will last.
I usually like to hold at least two tourneys each time we get together, so I plan my tournaments to run about 90 to 120 minutes each.
Your chip denominations and number of chips in play have a definite effect on what the blinds schedule should be to meet your tourney length goals.
Our team at New Millenium Software has put together a free little online program that will handle this for you.
You can find TourneyPro at http://www.
cardshark2.
com.
Feel free to create and print your schedule at our website anytime.
Other things you'll need to decide are how often to have breaks, whether you'll go BYOB or provide beverages and snacks, and so on.
Well, now that you know what equipment you need, and how to plan the payout and blinds schedules, all you need to worry about is how to stay out of jail.
Next up is Part Three to show you how to avoid that jail time!
Now don't get me wrong - you definitely don't have to play for money to have fun.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with divvying up the chips and playing for the pride of trashing your buddies.
But when there are a few bucks on the line, the excitement seems to escalate just a bit.
And you don't have to put up $50 or more to get that feeling.
In fact, in my tournaments the standard we've settled on is a $10 buyin.
The payout schedule we use is 1st Place - 40%, 2nd Place - 30%, 3rd Place - 20% and 4th Place - 10%.
Of course, this schedule may need to be modified if you have more or fewer players.
We usually end up with about 8 or 10 players at my tourneys so this works out OK.
You may elect to pay the winner everything, or to pay out even more places.
Your call.
Two things to consider - what do you do with the folks that bust out early? I often set up a little side tournament once we have 4 or 5 players out of the main tourney.
We use a $5 buyin and payout 1st and 2nd.
Also, you should think about whether or not you want to permit re-buys.
This allows a player to pay another $10 and get more chips, even if they've busted out.
The general consensus with the folks I play with are that they don't like re-buys, so we don't use them too often.
When we do use them we only permit players to re-buy if they've busted out and only if we don't have a side tourney going.
OK, let's get to the blinds schedule.
As the Tournament Director you have the responsibility and opportunity to decide how long you want the tournament to last.
You manage that with your blinds schedule.
By setting your blinds schedule in relation to your chip denominations you can come pretty darn close to determining how long the tournament will last.
I usually like to hold at least two tourneys each time we get together, so I plan my tournaments to run about 90 to 120 minutes each.
Your chip denominations and number of chips in play have a definite effect on what the blinds schedule should be to meet your tourney length goals.
Our team at New Millenium Software has put together a free little online program that will handle this for you.
You can find TourneyPro at http://www.
cardshark2.
com.
Feel free to create and print your schedule at our website anytime.
Other things you'll need to decide are how often to have breaks, whether you'll go BYOB or provide beverages and snacks, and so on.
Well, now that you know what equipment you need, and how to plan the payout and blinds schedules, all you need to worry about is how to stay out of jail.
Next up is Part Three to show you how to avoid that jail time!
Source...