I'm an officer and head of the fundraising committee for an organization at my law school. One of the fundraising ideas we came up with was a Poker tournament. We're estimating anywhere from 100 to 200 people signing up with $10 buy-in. Since we can't do cash prizes, we'll probably have gift certificates to bars as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes.

We think we've already got a bar to hold it at. The South End Brewery down here in Charleston is big...three floors. One of the organizations last year held an auction there, so we're pretty sure they would accomodate us on a slow Mon/Tues/Wed night.

What I'm asking is...how exactly should this thing be run?? I play poker every week with a small group of 8-10 guys...but I've never participated in, or ran large scale poker tournament.

- How many people at a table??

- How much money/chips do you start everyone off with??

- When do you consolidate/combine tables??

- How long do you think this would take?? Should we start as early as possible?? I'm thinking around 5pm.

- When do you up the antes??


Any other advice would be greatly appreciated. I know there's a pretty big poker contingent on this board, so I thought it would be a good place to ask for help.

10/13/2006 1:04:08 PM

OK there are many ways to do this, but seeing LOTS of these ways, I will post my suggestions in a really long post (I'll probably be writing while you read this).

10/13/2006 1:13:59 PM

theres a good way, then a way to make it so it is feasable.

to make it work:

- How many people at a table?? 10, or fewer depending on table size at your location, no less than 8.

- How much money/chips do you start everyone off with?? 5,000

- When do you consolidate/combine tables?? when you get enough peole to have full tables if you took one table out. dont let a table get too short, push from full tables inbetween breaking a table.

- How long do you think this would take?? Should we start as early as possible?? I'm thinking around 5pm. that all depends on how deep you start everyone, how long your timers are, and how many people you have.

- When do you up the antes??
20 minutes should be sufficient. any more time than this itll take forever with 200 people.

start at 25/50, then just double

its a charity tournament, it doesnt have to provide the best environment for good play.

[Edited on October 13, 2006 at 1:19 PM. Reason : e]

10/13/2006 1:17:49 PM

there are so many ways to set it up, but i'll tell you what i think would be the easiest. first, ten people per table. give them 1000 starting in chips. start consolidating tables as soon as you can. if you have 10 tables with 9 people, make it 9 tables with 10 people. always try to have 10 people at the table so it increases the action. with 200 people, it could take a while, depends how often you want to raise the blinds. i would look into 8-15 minutes for each blind. as for blinds, do 5-10, 10-20, 15-30, 20-40, 30-60, 50-100, 75-150, 100-200, 150-300, 200-400, 250-500, 300-600, 400-800, 500-1000, 600-1200, and up by 200 for the bb, 100 for the sb.

10/13/2006 1:20:35 PM

- How many people at a table??
10

- How much money/chips do you start everyone off with??
There are many blind structures out there, but it really doesn't matter the chip amount as long as the fractional ratios remain the same. I have always found that starting everyone with $20.00 in chips (I used 2 blacks ($5 each), 5 greens ($1 each), 6 whites ($.50 each) and 8 reds ($.25 each) works out really well.

Use this blind system if you do the above:
0-1hr: $.25/$.50
1-1.5hr: $.50/$1
1.5-2hr: $1/$2 At this point break for about 10 mins and take everyone's red/white chips. There will be some monster stacks, so if you want to start breaking out blue chips (worth $10) that's fine, or you can wait til later.
2-2.5hr: $2/$5
2.5-3hr: $5/$10
3-3.5hr: $10/$20
3.5-4hr: $15/$30 Here break again, and collect all the green chips. Ensure all green chips are accounted for, as well as all red/white. Now, you can "up the value" of a red chip, making it a $25 chip, and making whites worth $50. This will limit the amount of chips on the table at any one time. (Keep in mind, at $20 per person and 200 people, that's $4000 in chips, so you do not want some guy with $1000 in red/white/green chips..... besides being annoying, you'll run out of chips!)
4-4.5hr: $25-$50
4.5hr-End of Event: $50-$100 (if you have less than 150 people, I would suggest capping the blinds at the $25-$50 level).


- When do you consolidate/combine tables??
Here's the big blunder of many tournaments. What you DO want to do is to keep tables balanced at all times with the maximum amount of players possible. That means you, as the tournament coordinator has to keep a close eye on how many people are "out" at any one time. Let's say you start with 200 people (20 tables of 10 each). Once the number of people lowers to 190, you must pick a table at random, totally split it up, and send one person to each table that is missing a person. Thus, you now have 19 tables of 10 people.

Furthermore, if at any time a table goes down to 8 players, make sure you get them another person..... ie NEVER allow one table to play with 8 people while another plays with 10.

As you get down in numbers, it will be impossible to keep the tables full and balanced, so just keep them balanced. What this means, is say for example you have 27 people left. You can't have 2 tables of 10 people and 1 table of 7, so just do 3 tables of 9. Basically, once you get below 90 people, the number of tables you have should always be your tenths place rounded up, so if you have 82 people, you should have 9 tables (82... rounded up is 90, tenths place is 9), 8 with 9 people except for 1 table with 10. I think this formula works, but if you use it and it doesn't make sense, just balance the tables.

- How long do you think this would take?? Should we start as early as possible?? I'm thinking around 5pm.
4-5 hours probably

- When do you up the antes??
I have never used antes.

Extra Advice
Lable each seat before the tournament starts (1-200 for instance). When people pay their buy-in, let them draw a number and take their seat (that way they are random). Also, only give out chips when they have payed their buy-in. Trust me.

When combining tables, do that randomly too. Have all the table numbers in a hat, and draw from it. Generally people do not like being combined, especially at the random whim of the guy running the tournament. If you need to just take one person from a table, first randomly draw the table and then randomly draw the person. Basically make everything random.

Don't play. You can't run an effective big tourney and play. It's annoying for those at your table when you keep getting up, you'll never win, and you'll make mistakes. I would suggest getting a couple guys to help with chip distribution, table combining, etc.

10/13/2006 1:49:01 PM

Thanks a lot guys. Really...that was great. And buy "antes", I meant blinds...my bad. And yeah, I wasn't planning on playing. We've got a couple committee members, and we all plan on "supervising" to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated. But the above posts are REALLY helpful.

10/13/2006 2:54:33 PM