How do you run your tourneys?

[Wooderson]

In asking about antes I forgot to post our tourney schedule. We have two tourney schedules. No antes.

The first one is when we have 10 or fewer people. Each gets $5000 in chips for a $20 buy-in. Can re-buy half the chips for $20. Blinds increase every 30 minutes.

25/25
25/50
50/100 <-- No more re-buys after this blind
100/250
250/500
500/1000
1000/2500
2500/5000

If we have mor than 10 people, everyone gets 2500 for $20 buying. Same rebuy rule applies. Blinds increase every 30 minutes.
Blinds are:

25/25
25/50
50/100 <-- No rebuys after this blind
75/150
100/250
250/500
500/1000
750/1500
1000/2500
2500/5000

Winner gets 50% of original buy-ins plus all rebuy amounts. 2nd place gets 37.5% and 3rd gets 12.5%. If we have 6 or fewer people 2nd gets their money back, 1st gets the remainder.

[Always_Bored]

Each person gets 2000 in chips. 2X500, 5X100 and 20X25.

20 Minute Rounds
BLINDS
25-50
50-100
75-150
BREAK
100-200
150-300
200-400
BREAK
250-500
300-600
400-800
BREAK
500-1000
600-1200
800-1600

edit: No Buy ins at all.

[gmunny]

Usually have around 20-24 players, starting chips T1000 (15x$5, 13x$25, 6x$100). The last few times we had a $50 buyin, 1 $50 full rebuy under 300 for first 2 hours only, and 1 add of T500 for $20 at end of rebuy period. I used to do a $100 freezeout, but I found that the buyin was a little too high for newer or inexperienced players. See below for blind schedule. The first 4 rounds are 30 minutes so newer players can get used to the format. Tourney usually lasts about 6 hours.

Blinds
rd# min sb bb
1 30 $10 $20
2 30 15 30
3 30 25 50
4 30 30 60
break 15/end of rebuy/color up
5 20 50 100
6 20 75 150
7 20 100 200
break 30
8 20 150 300
9 20 200 400
10 20 250 500
break 15/color up
11 15 300 600
12 15 400 800
13 15 500 1,000
14 15 600 1,200
15 15 800 1,600
16 15 1,000 2,000
17 15 1,500 3,000

One question to the other hosts, how do you handle table balancing/combining?

I've used the method as discussed on home tourney.com, and even though its random, people complained about how the big stack moved to/from their table, the moved players are at a disadvantage since they have no reads of the net table's players, etc. Of course these are folks that never played in a B&M or internet tourney before, so I should probably just ignore them :D !

I also tried taking the top 3 from each table, but that caused a big delay when I table lasted 45 minutes longer than the others. Needless to say, I won't try that again.
G$

[Wooderson]

If we have <8 people, we're all at one table. If we have >8 people we're at two or more tables, each table a max of 6 people. We'll play until each table has 3 people and then combine. There's usually no more than a 30 minute wait to combine.

[Idaho]

edit: No Buy ins at all.

Cripes - not really worth playing is it

[Always_Bored]

edit: No Buy ins at all.

Cripes - not really worth playing is it

Its still fun. I would prefer buy ins, but i keep getting out voted by the people who dont want them. We used to play with buy ins and we would have $500 plus pots now we are lucky to break $200. I guess the people who are outvoting me are the people who lose every week and it cost them less to lose if they cant buy in.

[R Deckard]

I know it's stating the obvious, but (just to get my post count up ) don't you mean "re-buy" when you say "buy-in"? The term "buy-in" (in the U.S., at least) means the money that everyone pays at the start of the tourney for their initial stacks.

Post Count: +1, yay.

[Idaho]

Yeah I was just making a wise crack about you using the wrong term

[Always_Bored]

lol, ya, meant rebuy