I am going to be hosting a Hold 'Em No Limit tourney here pretty soon and wanted some input. We are going to have 18 players in total. My question is should we do 2 full tables of 9 or 3 tables of 6? Also, how many chips should we start each person out with? What should we start the blinds at and how often and at what increments should we move them? I'd like the tourney to go pretty quickly, but not fast enough to where it becomes an all-in fest in the later stages. Any input would be helpful. Thanks

I usually have 1 or 2 big games a month with usually around 18 players. I had one last saturday with 19 players. We had a table of 7 and 2 tables of 6. I have a sheet on microsoft excel that I made up, and it will be possible for you to use if you email me, i could send it to you. On saturday we started at 7 P.M and we were finished at 1A.M following our blind schedule. If you email me I will be able to give you this sheet and it has all you will need to know.

bobscho@hotmail.com

I cant answer how many to a table. Almost seems like a personal preference thing. Do you prefer to play at a smaller table, or at a big full game?

As for starting chips etc, www.homepokertourney.com has a lot of great info. I dont know how well they cover starting chips and blind structures for tables of 6, but you may find it useful.

rog

usually full tables are better... once people start getting eliminated, it will get really shorthanded really quick. id recommend playing 2 tables of 9 until you get to 9 or 10 players.... then make a final table.

we raise blinds about every 15 minutes.....start em really small (10-20) and every starts with 1500 in chips. it is however a rebuy tourney so you may want to adjust accordingly.


as for the tables.....i say 2 of 9 just to start the action slow.

good luck man

Oh, more advice...if this is a novice game, you might want to make the blind levels longer, and dont worry too much about getting them high too quickly. If you have experienced players, forget I said anything. For one thing, novices play slowly making it a crapshoot if the blinds go up too quickly. For another thing, novices have no qualms about putting their money in without pressure from the blinds.

These are both from personal experience. I have a fledgeling home game with many novices. Week 1 we used 15 minute blind levels, and got maybe 10 hands per level at the most played. Week 2 we used 30 min levels, and I planned for the blinds to be about 1/10th the chips in play by 1 AM to start seriously wrapping things up. The tourney ended at 11PM with blinds about 5% starting stack size.

Rog

check out homepokertourny.com

We have a tourny about every other week and after much trial and error we found a setup that works for us but you said you would like it to go fast you i think you should start somewhere with like 2500 in chips or even lower like 2000 and have the blinds go up every 20 minits usualy doubleing. i would probably start the first blind at 5-10 or 10-20 and go from there. hope that helps. gl

Wow - blinds at 15 or 20 minutes turns this in to a crap shoot pretty quickly. Unless you're trying to have turbo tounaments, you're really taking away from actual tournament strategy and play. I would suggest a two table be run at 1500 starting chips, start the blinds at 10/20 and use something along the lines of the PokerStars blind schedule (w/o the times) if you want a realistic run at tourney play. Yeah it'll probably take anywhere from 8-10 hours, but at least it's realistic.

Then again, I just thought of something you didn't mention, the buy-in - my suggestion is based on the fact that we generally play $100 buy-ins - if you're only playing for $20-30, the quicker times may be worhtwhile seeing you're not really winning much if you invest that kind of time.

A suggestion for ease of playing. Seems like most people have suggested 1500 in chips and 10/20 blinds. I don't know about most of you, but I get some dumb people at my games, so I start with 150 and make blinds 1/2 (Raise every 20 mins). Same thing % wise, but just makes the numbers easier to work with.

I will agree with the person that said the buy-in changes the time of the game. The more the but in, the less people are gonna risk calling or going all-in on iffy hands.