Home Poker Tournament How-To Guide. First things first. You need to schedule the big event. No date, no players, no tourney. So that player would receive one $25 chip. In most home poker tournaments I have played in, there were no dedicated dealers. Each player took turns dealing. DIY Poker Tour is a website that make running your own home poker tour easy. Chip counts and payouts. For more detailed information on structures and rules www.homepokertourney.com is a great. Can put in another $10 into a side pot which is winner-take.

The blind structure (or schedule) is one of the most important details of running a successful tournament. Gradual increases of the blinds at each level and finishing on time are characteristics of a good blind structure.

To calculate a blind structure, the minimum information you need is the number of players, target duration, and the starting blind level (which is usually the smallest chip denomination you have). It is also necessary to know how many chips there will be in play and how many rounds there will be. The blind calculator tool below can take care of that and help set up your perfect structure.

To calculate a blind structure, you need the starting blind level, the estimated total value of the tournament chips in play (initial buy-ins plus rebuys and add-ons) and the desired length of the tournament. Use the tool below to help set up your perfect structure.

This section discusses some tournament blind structure theory, which explains why the PokerSoup.com tournament blind structure calculator suggests blind levels the way it does and what you can change to create the right blind structure for your game.

Home Poker Tourney Software

Starting Number of Blinds

Most tournaments start with 50-100 big blinds. Anything around 200 big blinds is considered a 'deep stack' tournament. Deep stack tournaments are considered to be full of skillful poker play and not just pushing your money all in before the flop. The latter occurs quickly in tournaments that start with less than 50 big blinds, which are also aptly nick-named 'luck-fests'. There just aren't enough chips to maneuver and play real poker.

If all other variables are held constant, starting a tournament with larger chip stacks will increase the length of the game.

Rebuys and Add-ons

The number of rebuys and add-ons in a tournament also effect the total number of chips in play during a tournament. If no other changes are made, more rebuys and add-ons make for a longer tournament.

Blind Level Round Length

Most live tournaments employ blind level lengths of 15, 20, 30, 45, or 60 minutes. The blind calculator can calculate blinds for any of these blind levels. With a set tournament length, longer blind levels result in less number of rounds and shorter blind levels result in more rounds.

Gradual Blind Increase

The greatest benefit of using the PokerSoup.com tournament blind structure calculator is the assurance of constantly increasing blind amounts. This is an important aspect of tournament play. If the blinds increase (preferably slowly) at a constant rate, players do not spend an inordinate amount of time being deep- or short-stacked and there are no game-altering blind increases in the middle of the tournament.

For example, if the blinds increase from 150/300 to 200/400, that is an increase of 33%, or (200+400)/(150+300). This is a comfortable increase. Similarly, in the later stages of the tournament after many players are knocked out, a blind increase from 3000/6000 to 4000/8000 is also 33%.

End Goal

Eventually, the blinds (and antes) induce action to end the tournament. After all, a tournament usually does have a set duration (or a goal, anyway). As a player, it is up to you to figure out how aggressive it is necessary to play in order to keep up with the blinds. Constant gradual increases make this easier to figure out.

Handling Chips

During the play of a tournament (or cash game), you should put any extra chips away from players in case they get stolen or 'worked into' the game. Keep in mind that during your game, your chips have a temporarily higher value than their intrinsic value. In other words, someone could grab some of your chips without paying you for them, and then cash them out to you at the end of the night. Similarly, you should be aware that someone could go to the store and buy a set of chips for $0.10 cents each, work them into your game, and then 'cash them out' in your game for $5 each. This is much more likely to occur if you use generic chips.

For a tournament, you can put the starting chips in Ziploc bags before any players arrive. Then, as people pay you their buy-in, you give them the bag with their chips. You can also put a piece of paper in their bag with their seat number so that when they get a random bag then they will get a random seat number.

Seating Players

Home Poker Tournament

Players should be distributed evenly between all the tables. Each table at a casino will seat a maximum of 10 players. At home games though, many times people use non-poker tables (like kitchen tables) to play on. So you may have to limit the maximum table size to about 4 to 6.

Drawing Seats

There are 2 popular methods used to draw seats:

• Lottery - You can write seat numbers down on pieces of paper and have the players pick them. You can have the numbers given out with chip stacks, or draw them separately.
  
• Draw Cards - Set aside cards Ace through 10. Those cards represent the seats numbers (Aces count as 1). Shuffle the cards and have players pick them. You can use different suits for different tables.

Drawing for the button

The most popular (and easiest) method to draw for the button will be to deal one card to each player and the player with the highest card gets the button. If 2 players have the same cards, a formal game will have a rule that says that suits break the tie. Unfortunately, most casual poker players don't know the order of suits, so it is easier to break the tie by simply dealing a second card to each of the players who tied.

Late players

Any player that has prepaid to get into the tournament will have to right to have his stack at the table and be blinded down (i.e. his blinds are posted in his absence). He has the right to join the tournament in progress at any point as long as he still has chips. The status of other players arriving late will be determined at the host's discretion. The host may let the player post all his historical blinds since the start of the tournament - or he could simply let him buy into the tournament and receive a chip stack equivalent to the blinded down amount. This last option also lets players enter the tournament late who were not originally signed up.

In my experience, some players (for some inexplicable reason) don't like it when other players are allowed to come into the tourney late. I sometimes get the feeling that this is due to them thinking that the late players have somehow 'advanced' in the tournament without having to play, and are getting some kind of a 'free ride'. Obviously, this is a logically-flawed argument because the absent players being blinded-down is mathematically equivalent to them folding every hand in person. Having another player blinded down is actually an advantage for the other players because the amount of money blinded-off is free money for the rest of the player involved in the blinded-down hands. The only advantage an absent player possesses is that he hasn't exposed himself to busting out (or losing a lot of his chips) since he can't make any big bets. So, an absent player has actually averted some risk, but this has come at the expense of his chips.

Moving players

Technically, when the difference in the number of players between tables is greater than 1, then a player should be moved from the bigger table to the smaller table. Specifically, it should be the player who is on the Big Blind. Moving players can be a pain in the ass though so you can let it get to 2 players if the tables are almost full. For example, if the two tables have 10 and 8 players respectively, it probably isn't worth the hassle to move a player just to make them 9 and 9. If the table differences are 5 and 3 though, it might be better to move a player and make it 4 and 4.

Color Up

The lowest denomination of chip in play will be removed from the table and swapped out when it is no longer needed in the blind or ante structure. Many times this is only done because there are so many of the lowest denomination chips in play that the players' chip stacks become too difficult to manage. But if these chips stacks do not become unwieldy, then you don't need to do color-ups.

Try to do your color-ups when your tournament is on break. This way you don't waste player's time, and you also don't have the players getting involved in the color-up process.

Chip Race

After a color-up is done, any extra chips will be raced off. Each player will receive 1 card for each odd chip. The player with the highest card will be dealt a higher-denomination chip. You can use suits to break ties or deal another card. There will be a maximum of one chip going to any player. A player cannot be raced out of a tournament. In the event that a player has only one chip left, the regular race procedure will take place. If that player loses the race, he will be given one higher-denomination chip and will still play.

Making Deals at the End of a Tournament

In most tourneys, players can make deals at the end of a tourney to cut 'side deals' to split the payouts. For example, the final two players might agree to split the first and second prize payouts between the two of them. Private agreements by players in a tournament may or may not be allowed. If such an agreement is made, the director has the option of making sure it is carried out by paying the correct amounts. If the Tournament Director decides to not be involved, then any such side deals are strictly between the players. Any deal that excludes any active players is not allowed. You can use my home poker game spreadsheet on my downloads page to use the Deal Calculator I made up in Excel.

Some of the reasons why players make deals are:

• Some players don't like playing heads up. They may be risk averse players or simply bad at short-handed play.
• At home games, some people get annoyed at all of the shuffling you have to do when playing heads up.
• If you are playing a series of mini-tournaments at a home game, the rest of the players will be sitting around getting bored while waiting for the next tournament to start.
• The strategy can get boring. Most of the time, when playing heads-up, the hands don't play out until the river very often because the player with the stronger hand just keeps going all-in while the player with the weaker hand constantly folds.

Personally, I hate making deals at tournaments. I think the most exciting time in a tournament is getting to play heads-up at the end. Not only is there more financial incentive (since the difference between finishing in 1st place and 2nd place is usually big), but the game is more interesting because playing heads-up is more psychological than methodical. I also think playing at the end of a tournament is a unique opportunity for a player to improve their skillset because it isn't often that they get to play in that situation. So there is a lot to learn.

Sometimes, when there are only 3 players left, and 2 of the players want to make a deal, the 3rd player may feel pressure to make a deal just to get the next tournament started. Other times, when there are only two players left, one player may want to make a deal while the other player wants to play longer. What you can do in this situation is make an unofficial agreement to play heads up for a while (like 5 minutes) and then cut a deal if no one has won the tournament by then.

Hand-for-hand

Hand-for-hand may be implemented to keep players from slowing down the game. This is where a new hand is not dealt until all the hands at the other tables are done. It keeps people from stalling until someone else busts out so they can finish higher in the money. You normally don't have to worry about this happening at home games, for a couple of reasons. First, the prizes are not normally large enough for people to bother slowing down the game. Second, you normally don't know when the other players have busted out in home game (and B&M tournaments in general). When you play online, on the other hand, you can see exactly how many other players are left in the tourney, so you can see how slowing down your play can give you an advantage over other players.

Tournament Ties

If two (or more) players are in-the-money in a tournament and they go all-in and both get knocked out, then the player with the most chips will place higher than the player with fewer chips. If they both have an equal number of chips and both get knocked out then they will finish in a tie.

Penalties

The host (or tournament director in a more formal tournament) can use various penalties at his discretion, such as verbal warnings, or time away from the table (such as 10, 20, and 30 minutes).

Side games

If you are holding a large tournament, then it is appreciated if you set up cash games on the side for players who bust out early. Usually a game will start up as soon as 3 to 4 players bust out. If you are playing a series of mini-tournaments then players are usually fine with sitting around for a while and waiting for the next tourney to start.

COMMENTS:

Log in to post comments
or Register

funybois on December 16, 2019

panistefanin on December 12, 2019

panistefanin on December 12, 2019

tylerworgan01 on December 6, 2019

tylerworgan01 on December 6, 2019

jasminegates on December 6, 2019

FlushMaster on November 25, 2019

Terry17 on November 21, 2019

rebeccamorris on November 18, 2019

rebeccamorris on November 18, 2019

rebeccamorris on November 18, 2019

Bingoman on November 13, 2019

Bingoman on November 12, 2019

jonydep on November 12, 2019

altheqa on November 10, 2019

Bingoman on November 7, 2019

tylerworgan01 on November 1, 2019

yisoo on October 24, 2019

jozephchristopher on October 24, 2019

AlinaSusan on September 24, 2019

darrellburt4827 on September 18, 2019

darrellburt4827 on September 18, 2019

RaidenAllen on September 17, 2019

maze13 on September 16, 2019

horeakaii on September 12, 2019

connor19 on August 26, 2019

henryjones147 on August 26, 2019

JulioLynch on August 21, 2019

Home Poker Tourney

jacksonmcnee on August 17, 2019

Home Poker Chip Value

Abhi2958 on July 19, 2019

tom245 on July 17, 2019

Home Poker Tourney Blinds

samuelddarden on July 15, 2019

Poker Tournament Starting Chips

malkova on April 11, 2019

Home Poker Tournament Chip Distribution

alanabui on February 22, 2019

mason_ on February 8, 2019

HPG ADMIN on March 1, 2013