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Some people up here at the college are hosting a charity Poker tournament, and I've been asked to be the Tournament Director, for which I will get $100 for "12 hours" of work (but I'm sure it will be more like 20-30 in reality). Not a bad deal huh?

Obviously the game will be NL Hold'em. The cap on enrollment here will be 200 players, and we are supposed to finish the tournament within 12 hours, leaving some room for play. Here's what I was thinking for a structure, you guys can tell me what you think.

All players start with 1500 chips. Each blind level will last for 30 minutes.

Denominations are as follows:
Red = 5
Green = 25
Black = 100
White =500
Blue = 1000

Players will all begin with 20 Red chips, 16 Green chips, 5 Black chips, and 1 White chip.


Seating is going to start at 12:40 pm next Saturday, and play will start at 1:00 sharp.

So here's the plan.

1:00pm - 2:30pm
Round 1: Blinds 5/10
Round 2: 10/20
Round 3: 15/30

At 2:30 there will be a 15 minute break to remove the Red chips from the table. Play will resume at 2:45.

2:45 - 4:45pm
Round 4: 25/50
Round 5: 50/100
Round 6: 75/150
Round 7: 100/200

There will be a 15-minute break at 4:45. Play will resume at 5:00.

5:00 - 6:00 pm
Round 8: 150/300
Round 9: 200/400

There will be a one hour break for dinner at 6pm. Tournament officials will remove all Green chips from the table after Round 9 and begin circulating the Blue chips. Play will resume at 7:00.

7:00 - 9:00pm
Round 10: 300/600
Round 11: 400/800
Round 12: 500/1000
Round 13: 600/1200

There will be a 10-minute break after Round 13. Play will resume at 9:10pm.

9:10 - 11:10 pm
Round 14: 800/1600
Round 15: 1000/2000
Round 16: 1200/2400
Round 17: 1500/3000

There will be a 15-minute break after Round 17, and Tournament officials will remove all Black chips from the tables. Play will resume at 11:25 pm.

11:25 pm - 1:00 am
Round 18: 2000/4000
Round 19: 2500/5000
Round 20: 3000/6000



If play hasn't ended, I'm going to ask to see if we can extend the tournament to a "Turbo" mode until a winner is declared. Basically, after this point, blind levels will last only 10 minutes, and will get steep very quickly. I want to get as much play in for my players as possible while still getting the tournament done in a timely fashion so we're not cleaning the Ball Room until 5 am. If I can't get the powers-that-be to let me play down to one winner, the prizes will be allotted based on chip counts after Round 20.


Does this seem like an equitable structure to you guys? I'm going to try to train my tournament staff to play by this clock as close as is humanly possible.

Edit: I also did not include antes in my structure because I believe it will slow many of the dealers down, many of whom are fairly new to the game. I only get 6 hours of total training to make them experts.

Everything seems fine to me. That's a very good structure, especially for a charity tournament. It's nice to see some people like to have some playing room in a tourney.

Very well planned.

if you're dealers aren't experiance... you're going to have a VERY busy day.

Are you using some type of tournament software to help you balance tables and keep everyone on same deck changes at end of blinds, etc. . I have not run anything on that level but used to play in local casino games and the software seemed to be a god send. We use software for our home game (15-20) and it sure makes life a lot easier.

Have to concur on the dealer situation. They can make or break your event based on their knowledge of how to deal with situations as they arise. You can bet you are going to have a lot of know-it-alls telling dealers how to do this or that.....

Always interesting to see it from the other side though (as organizer) not player. Wish you the best of luck...

Another bit of unsolicited advice, I would make sure your rules are posted and everyone knows them before the event starts. (I plan and organize youth sports activities on a regular basis as well as other sporting/special events and everyone knowing the rules/policies always makes life a lot easier)

are you allowing players to register and then arrive late?

i.e i played in a torny recently and was informed; if i was away from the table for one complete rotation of the dealer, you would be eliminated!

this was to encourage players to play and not just sit on their stacks. i asked the director why the rule was put in and she said there had been too many problems in the past where people had arrived hours late and only lost a few chips.

it kinda makes sense. maybe worth looking into.

good luck

First committee meeting was today....

I had to fight hard to get the structure I wanted. One idiot who watches way too much WPT and is used to Party Poker SnG's wanted to have players start with 1000 in chips and start blinds at 25/50! After a fair amount of convincing and doing projections, though, the other organizers agreed to the structure I proposed. Also, I was luckily able to argue them down to 9-handed tables instead of 10-handed.

The other organizers also agreed to admit registering players up until the end of the first level, provided that we don't reach our cap of 200 players. We also agreed to allow some alternates for the first half hour if more players want to come in.

Software-wise, I do have a program for tournaments that I will probably tweak a little bit, but the main thing will just be timing blind levels. A lot of the table management will have to be done by "hand." We also got out a first draft of the rules that should be finalized in tomorrow's meeting, and the remaining chips got ordered at the end of the meeting. By Wednesday, we should be receiving a MASSIVE amount of Poker chips.

Tomorrow we get a one hour meeting to finalize rules, and then I get a 2-hour training session with the dealers (one tomorrow, one Friday, and one Saturday morning is all I get with them, so I've done a lot of planning to streamline the process).

Sounds like alot of work/fun diamond. Good luck, hope it all goes well for you.