[tomb1]

What is the smallest chip you will be using, and what are your starting blinds? With T2000 you'll probably start with 5-10 ($5 chips), and with T5000 you could start with 5-10 for a deep stack tourney or 25-20 ($25 chips) for a more typical tourney.

If you start out with T5000 x 14 players that's 70,000 total in play to start.

How many re-buys do you expect? Will your players be loose and wild and bust out every few hands, or just re-buy after losing a good hand?

If you get like 10 rebuys, that's an additional 50,000 for a total of 120,000 in play.

So using the regular rule of thumb, your game should end when your BB + SB = about 10% of the chips in play. In this case, that would be when the blinds are 4,000-8,000 (12,000 total is 10% of 120,000). So shoot for a blind schedule that gives you something like 4K-8K blinds at about 4 hours. This is all give-or-take of course, depending on re-buys and playing styles.

How long are your blind levels? For a home game with players dealing, I'd suggest 20 minutes at minimum, maybe 25 minutes better. With 15 minute levels you may not even get one orbit around the table in early rounds. You can make your blinds faster near the end when you have fewer players.

So here's a possible structure. If you use 20 minute blinds you'd get to level 12 at about 4 hours (plus or minus breaks). The jump between levels 7 and 8 is designed to put pressure on the smaller stacks so you can get down to the final players.

Level..SB.......BB

1.....$25......$50
2.....$50......$100
3.....$100.....$200

4.....$150.....$300
5.....$200.....$400
6.....$300.....$600

7.....$500.....$1,000
8.....$1,000...$2,000
9.....$1,500...$3,000

10....$2,000...$4,000
11....$3,000...$6,000
12....$4,000...$8,000

13....$5,000...$10,000
14....$6,000...$12,000
15....$8,000...$16,000
16....$10,000..$20,000