- Home Poker Tournament Structure
- Poker Home Tournament Structure List
- Home Poker Tournament Blind Structure
- Poker Home Tournament Structure
The best form of tournament to use in House Poker Tournaments is rebuy tournament with one or unlimited rebuys. You can always hold two smaller/shorter tournaments than two long ones. That would suit a house game better as players don't have to sit out for a long time and watch other play. Use the Tournament Director software. The Tournament Director is the premier poker tournament management software package. You will not find a more professional, feature rich, easy to use tool for running your tournaments. With the Tournament Director, you can sit back and focus on playing in your tournaments instead of running them - the Tournament Director runs them for you. In this video i share with you my way of setting up a Poker home game tournament structure for max 10 players. No Limit Texas Hold em Sit and Go, No Ante. 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.
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Have you ever held a home poker tournament and wished that were was a better way to keep track of the blind levels? As long as you have a computer somewhere near where you are playing (and laptops are very handy for this) you are in luck! There are a number of tournament clock software products available today. They come with preset blind structures, like you might find in Full Tilt Poker software, and also allow you to enter a custom blind structure. Most poker tournament clocks have audio and visual alerts for when blind levels are approaching completion and when they actually do change. You can pause the clock in case someone spills a drink and even modify the blind structure on the fly if the tournament is going too slow.
For any home poker tournament organizer some kind of tournament clock software is a necessity. Some of the options available include Poker Tournament Supervisor, Poker Timer, and The Tournament Director. All of these are excellent pieces of poker tournaments clock software.
The Poker Time is a tournament management system for a poker home game or large-scale event.
5.00 out of 5
Fully customizable poker tournament software.
5.00 out of 5
A must-have tournament clock for a large poker tournament or home game.
3.90 out of 5
DD Poker is an excellent tool to help the novice player improve
3.83 out of 5
A web-based timer for your next poker home game. Australian pub pokies.
3.80 out of 5
PokerTimer is an easily navigable tournament management software
2.45 out of 5
An easy-to-use poker tournament management system and clock.
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Fully customizable poker home game clock.
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I'm sure you're capable of buying beer and nuts. If your friends want coke and sweets, fine, that's what you get them. Mussels and red wine? Do it.
I won't touch on that part of your poker night. You should know your friends. However, there are a few small things that may ruin the fun.
If you don't set up a good blind structure and sensible chip values, people will be confused and annoyed. Do it well and your home tournament will run smoothly.
Blind periods
In a home game, I would go with 20 minute periods at least, seeing how slowly most people deal.
If you think the tournament will drag on too long, it's probably better to adjust the starting stacks than the blind periods.
Ending time
There's no way of knowing for sure when a tournament will end, but here's a rule of thumb that will help you avoid disasters.
The tournament will end in the blind period where the big blind is more than 5% of the total chips.
Example: If 10 players start out with 10,000 in chips each, the total chips are 100,000. Hence, the tournament will end in the period where the big blind reaches 5,000.
Again, this is a very crude rule, but you will avoid having to stay up the whole night - unless you want to.
Blind structure
Usually you want to increase the blinds by 50% from level to level, so that the big blind doubles every two levels. If you double it every level, it's a fast structure.
Example: 100/200 - 200/300 - 200/400
On the other hand, you should probably use some 'natural' blind levels that people expect, rather than rigidly doubling every two levels.
Example: rather than 200/400 - 300/600 - 400/800 - 600/1200, you might want to go with 250/500 - 400/800 - 500/1000 - 750/1500.
On the third hand, you should avoid mixing in small chip nominations late in the structure. Blinds of 1250 or 3725 will give your friends a really bad headache.
Example: To avoid this, it's quite fine to do 300/500 instead of 250/500, or 800/1500 instead of 750/1500.
There are a lot of parameters, but you'll be fine if you avoid the worst mistakes.
Example blind structure
1. 25/50
2. 50/100
3. 75/150
4. 100/200
5. 150/300
6. 250/500
Home Poker Tournament Structure
7. 400/800
8. 500/1000
Not Rated Yet
No Video Available
Fully customizable poker home game clock.
Not Rated Yet
I'm sure you're capable of buying beer and nuts. If your friends want coke and sweets, fine, that's what you get them. Mussels and red wine? Do it.
I won't touch on that part of your poker night. You should know your friends. However, there are a few small things that may ruin the fun.
If you don't set up a good blind structure and sensible chip values, people will be confused and annoyed. Do it well and your home tournament will run smoothly.
Blind periods
In a home game, I would go with 20 minute periods at least, seeing how slowly most people deal.
If you think the tournament will drag on too long, it's probably better to adjust the starting stacks than the blind periods.
Ending time
There's no way of knowing for sure when a tournament will end, but here's a rule of thumb that will help you avoid disasters.
The tournament will end in the blind period where the big blind is more than 5% of the total chips.
Example: If 10 players start out with 10,000 in chips each, the total chips are 100,000. Hence, the tournament will end in the period where the big blind reaches 5,000.
Again, this is a very crude rule, but you will avoid having to stay up the whole night - unless you want to.
Blind structure
Usually you want to increase the blinds by 50% from level to level, so that the big blind doubles every two levels. If you double it every level, it's a fast structure.
Example: 100/200 - 200/300 - 200/400
On the other hand, you should probably use some 'natural' blind levels that people expect, rather than rigidly doubling every two levels.
Example: rather than 200/400 - 300/600 - 400/800 - 600/1200, you might want to go with 250/500 - 400/800 - 500/1000 - 750/1500.
On the third hand, you should avoid mixing in small chip nominations late in the structure. Blinds of 1250 or 3725 will give your friends a really bad headache.
Example: To avoid this, it's quite fine to do 300/500 instead of 250/500, or 800/1500 instead of 750/1500.
There are a lot of parameters, but you'll be fine if you avoid the worst mistakes.
Example blind structure
1. 25/50
2. 50/100
3. 75/150
4. 100/200
5. 150/300
6. 250/500
Home Poker Tournament Structure
7. 400/800
8. 500/1000
9. 800/1500
10. 1000/2000
11. 2000/3000
12. 2500/5000
Blackjack points. A 'blackjack' is a term used when a player scores the highest possible points using only two cards, which would be a ten and an ace. This is why blackjack is sometimes known as the game 'twenty one (21)'. An ace can either be worth 1 point or 11 points. This card is almost like a wild card, the player gets to choose what the point.
13. 4000/8000
14. 5000/10,000
Starting stack
The standard starting stack would be 100 to 200 times the big blind of the first blind level.
Example: If you start with blinds 25/50, you could use a starting stack of 5,000 or 10,000.
Poker Home Tournament Structure List
The starting stack affects both how deep stacked the players are and the length of the tournament. Regarding the ending time, see above.
Home Poker Tournament Blind Structure
If you want to start with deep stacks to get some real play early on but don't want to play all night, you could use a faster structure.
Example: To get a faster structure, remove level 1, 3, 5 etc. from the blind structure above.
Chip nominations
To make the betting easy, chip values should go up by a factor 4 or 5 between each step.
Example: Avoid using both 100 and 200 chips. It gets messy.
Poker Home Tournament Structure
Example: Comfortable chip nominations for the above blind structure would be 25, 100, 500 and 2000. If your people find 2000 too weird, you can go with 1000 or 5000 instead.
Further reading on poker home games
