First Time Tourney

[Mari Nelson]

I've only watched Texas Hold 'Em on TV, haven't played yet. I'm having a tourney with 8 people. I have 1,000 11.5 suited chips (100 green, 100 black, 200 blue, 300 white, 300 red). I want our players to have plenty of chips to play with even though the buyin is only $20. This is a "social" event.

Please review the following and offer me your thoughts and suggestions:

$20. Buyin for 22 chips.
Denominations:
White 5x$1,000=$5,000
Blue 5x$5,000=$25,000
Red 12x$10,000=$120,000
$150,000 Total Value

Blinds will escalate every ½ hour
0.5 Hour 1,000 – 3,000
1.0 Hour 4,000 – 8,000
1.5 Hours 5,000 - 10,000
2.0 Hours 10,000 - 20,000
2.5 Hours 20,000 - 30,000
3.0 Hours 40,000 - 50,000

Payout
All money paid in will be paid out.
1st Place 50%
2nd Place 30%
3rd Place 20%

With 8 Players ($20. Buyin)
All Money Paid In Is $160.00
1st Place $80.00
2nd Place $48.00
3rd Place $32.00

[HalfSugar]

I would reconsider my blinds structure if I were you, especially ensuring that the small blind is half the big blind. You might wanna consider the following (all figure in thousands):

2/4
4/8
6/12
8/16
10/20
15/30
20/40
25/50
30/60

Have them increase every 20 mins rather than half an hour.

Just a suggestion

[Mari Nelson]

Thank you for the suggestion, it's just what I needed. Thanks

PS I'm a woman and wonder if you were intending to offend women when your quote?

In the poker game of life, women are the rake. They're the f*cking rake.

[HalfSugar]

It's a quote from Rounders. I guess you could consider it offensice if you haven't seen the movie but when u have, it'll become a lot more benign.

[Mari Nelson]

Ok then I won't be offended. (smile)

Again thanks for your help

[EZ]

To make things a bit less complicated if it is your first home game tournament (and the other players are new also) don't get caught up in the chip color/denominations.
You have 1,000 chips and 8 players - why not just give each player 125 chips, make them all worth $1, no matter the color, and start the blinds at $2/$4. Increase the blinds every 20 minutes (2/4, 4/8, 7/14, 10/20, 15/30, 20/40 or there abouts) and the game shouldn't last more than 2 hours. If you want to stretch the game out longer, you could go 1/2, 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, etc., but I don't know if you want to play more than one tournament or how bored you care the first person out is waiting for the next tournament to start.
My $.02.