[Spaceman Spiff]

I'm thinking about have a Heads Up tourney one of these days and I"m trying to think about how to set it up. Anyone have any experience pulling this off?

One problem I see is it's so reliant on numbers. If you've got 8 or 16 guys it's perfect. Anything else and you have to deal with byes or some different formats other than just a single elimination bracket.

The structure could be tricky also. Since HU can last a minute or go for hours, I'd like to set it up to some max time. I was thinking no more than a 1/2 hour for a round. Start everyone out with T1500 and blinds at 25-50. Raise them every 10 minutes to 50-100 and 100-200. At the end of the half hour, the chip leader wins.

So then, do you carry over your chips round to round and work the blinds schedule from there or just restart using the same 1500 and 25-50 blinds? I think carrying over would be cool because it would be an advantage to those that closed out their matches. They would bring T3000 into the next round where a guy might have squeaked by and won 1600-1400. It would take some thought to plan out a constantly rising blinds schedule though.

With 1/2 hour matches, I think a double elimination format might work best also, but that would really screw up the blinds. Maybe I could use a 1 hour per match format. That would get a field of 16 done in 4 hours and I could still use the carryover format. Use 15 min levels of 25-50, 50-100, 75-150, and 100-200. I would think that would lead to most matches being closed out rather than having to go to a chip count.

All right, I'm rambling on here. I'd love to hear some other ideas for formats, blinds, etc.

[SpaceMonkey]

For single elimination, check out the PokerStars structure, and tweak it from there. I've played in one, and it's pretty good. You do carry over your chips to the next round, but it's the full table stack because every single match is played to completion.

[pie taster]

Homepoker tourney has a new section on heads up play.

Check it out.

http://www.homepokertourney.com/heads-up.htm

[whitepotatoe]

I think there are two good ways to do it.

The regular way is single elimination. I would not try to end each match in any certain period of time though, because then it will just be a crapshoot. If a player is losing 1600 to 1400 chips, and the blinds are 100/200, he has to go all in, to try to make the other guy fold. But wait, the other guy realizes that if he folds he will only be left with 1400, so he must call. They both go all in without looking at their hole cards. Is that exciting? Maybe, but is it poker? No. Each match must end by a player being eliminated not based on some time period ending.

Just use the normal blind schedule, but speed it up a little bit. So many more hands per hour are dealt, and each player is playing a higher percentage of hands. So the blinds should go up quicker.

If you do your blinds starting at 25/50, with a T1500 stack, one hand could easily end the match. The usual starting stack is between 50 and 100 big blinds, so its like you are already in level 2 or 3 when you start, and the matches should go quickly.

If you raised it to 50/100 and then 100/200 every 12 minutes, each match should end within 30 minutes.

Then after the round of players have been knocked out, have each player bring his whole stack to the next match, where the blinds start one level above what they started at in the previous match. So that:

Blind levels each 12 minutes long.

Round 1 - T1500 -- 25/50 - 50/100 - 100/200

Round 2 - T3000 -- 50/100 - 100/200 - 150/300

Round 3 - T6000 -- 100/200 - 150/300 - 250/500

Round 4 - T12000 -- 150/300 - 250/500 - 500/1000

This structure should end the tournamnet within 2.5 hours. This way seems a like a crapshoot still though, with half of the players playing only getting to play poker for about 20 minutes. Thats like a turbo tourney online.

It would be much more skill oriented if you had slower blind structures formatted for approx. 1 - 1.5 hour matches, like:

Blind levels each 20 minutes. (I assume you start with only 25s and no 5s)

Round 1 - T 1500 -- 25/50 - 50/100 - 75/150 - 100/200 - 150/300

Round 2 - T 3000 -- 50/100 - 75/150 - 100/200 - 150/300 - 200/400

Round 3 - T 6000 -- 75/150 - 100/200 - 150/300 - 200/400 - 300/600 - 500/1000

Round 4 - T 12000 -- 100/200 - 150/300 - 200/400 - 300/600 - 500/1000 - 1000/2000


But if you don't want a 16 man tourney to last you 6 hours, just do a round robin type of deal where every time the blind level changes, everyone half the people switch tables, and nobody plays the same player twice unless they have already played every other player.

The round robin style lets you have a heads up tourney with any number of players, and you don't have to have super fast rising blinds to keep it moving along. You can use a slower blind schedule, and the whole tournament would end quicker than if you did single elimination matches with 10 minute blinds.

This schedule with 20 minute blind levels would probably end the tourney in 2.5 - 3 hours.
25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200
150/300
200/400
300/600
500/1000
1000/2000

If you use this method, you can use whatever payout structure you normally use as a payout structure. But if you do single elimination matches, you don't really know who is 3rd or 4th, or who is 5th, 6th, 7th, etc.

A good payout for a 16 man touney is:
1st - 50%
2nd - 24%
3rd - 13%
4th - 13%

If you try to pay 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th then the top 4 prizes will be pathetic.

[Captn_All_In]

Thanks for the link pie! This is a great idea. I am going to try and run it by the guys I play with to see if we could get one of these rolling!!

[seymour]

I was actually thinking about a heads up double elimination tournament after I got home from our poker game last night. Maybe partly prompted by the heads up match that was on CNBC just as I got home, but it was in my mind before at least

I did check out the HPT link, useful info there. Especially the nice PDF of the tournament structure.

I do like the modified blinds ("slower and more skill based") posted by whitepotatoe, with the stacks "carrying over" after each round. Which doesn't give anybody an advantage, since it'll just be double what they had to start with in the previous round. It should make the final match seem a little more high stakes Or maybe I'll just stick with the T10000 structure on HPT. Works well for us, since that's what we use as starting stacks in our tournaments now.

I guess a slightly easier payout structure for 8 people would be 3rd/4th getting their buyin back (12.5%), 2nd getting double back (25%), and 1st with the rest (50%). Works out to be close to the percentages he had, and is slightly better than the one on HPT with 3rd/4th losing money overall. I think the percentages I used are right... some half assed math I used there.

I'm thinking this sort of tournament could also be played out over a period of time, not necessarily in one night. Maybe with a match before or after our regular game, or if two players with a match scheduled both busted out of the regular, they could play it out right then. I'm going to see what the guys think at our next game later this week.

Of course, I'm pretty decent at heads up against them (so is one other friend, it wouldn't surprise me if we ended up as the final two if we did this).

[seymour]

Looking closer at the blinds on the HPT PDF for T10000, it goes from 50/100, 100/200, 150/300, 200/400, 250/500 ... and then right up to 500/1000? Seems like a bit of a big jump, with all of the others going up by small amounts. And only T20000 total chips in play... I'll probably modify that somewhat, make it 300/600 or something. Or switch it out for a smaller blind to start, 25/50. Maybe some test runs are in order before having a tournament

[Spaceman Spiff]

Originally Posted by whitepotatoe

Each match must end by a player being eliminated not based on some time period ending.

But if you don't want a 16 man tourney to last you 6 hours, just do a round robin type of deal where every time the blind level changes, everyone half the people switch tables, and nobody plays the same player twice unless they have already played every other player.

Awesome info whitepotatoe! Thanks!

I see your point about playing each match to a conclusion. My only fear is having some of the matches end in 15 minutes and then having a bunch of people fiddling around waiting for a marathon match to end. I guess it can be controlled to a certain extent with blinds though. At worst, it just reaches crapshoot point one way or the other.

I didn't quite follow your round robin method. You said change tables at the end of the blind level. So at the end of level 1 you would pick up your chips and play against someone else for level 2? Or do you mean at the conclusion of the match?

I could see something like this being pretty cool and more customizable to a non-8 or 16 man field:

For the sake of argument, say there are 12 entrants. Randomly divide them into Pool A and Pool B, kind of like the Olympics. Or possibly Pools A, B, and C with 4 in each.

Pool play is round robin. For the 2 pool setup, that would be 5 matches. That would probably necessitate something crapshooty designed to last about 1/2 hour each. Figure those 5 matches should be wrapped in 3 hours. With pools of 4 it could be less crapshooty since you'd only have to get 3 round robin matches in, but it exposes each player to less of the field.

OK, then to bracket play based on the pool records. I've also got to consider what to do with those that don't make bracket play. I'm thinking top 6 into the tourney. In the 2 pool format, each pool winner gets a Round 1 bye. This leaves 6 guys on the outside and that's enough for them to start their own side game.

So many choices and it's all so dependent on how many players you get. I like the round robin pool format thuogh becuase it does allow everyone to get at least 3-5 matches in depending on how you run the pool setup.

The problem I have and I'm sure many others have is, I never know how many players I truly will have, sometimes up to the minute or even several minutes after I want an event to start. That's the biggest roadblock I see. There's not much of a chance of having good preparation until you know the number of players.

[whitepotatoe]

Originally Posted by Spaceman Spiff

I see your point about playing each match to a conclusion. My only fear is having some of the matches end in 15 minutes and then having a bunch of people fiddling around waiting for a marathon match to end. I guess it can be controlled to a certain extent with blinds though. At worst, it just reaches crapshoot point one way or the other.

Right, but in any tournament, when it gets down to heads up, you have the same exact situation, where the blinds keep increasing, so each match is like the final two of a regular tourney.

Originally Posted by Spaceman Spiff

I didn't quite follow your round robin method. You said change tables at the end of the blind level. So at the end of level 1 you would pick up your chips and play against someone else for level 2? Or do you mean at the conclusion of the match?

I mean that at the end of each level, you would be playing against a new guy, even if nobody is busted out. If you bust someone you just sit and wait until the next level starts.

This method is great for numbers of players other than 8 or 16. If you start with an odd number, one player will sit out until the second round starts. Everything should be done with a random draw. I'll give you an example.

You have 11 players. Each player draws cards with a table on them. You have 12 cards for 6 different tables. Your players are:

A through K.

The players draw and get these cards:
A table 3
B table 4
C table 6
D table 4
E table 1
F table 5
G table 6
H table 3
I table 2
J table 2
K table 1

So this means that F sits out one round. You have to keep track of who plays who, so that nobody ends up against the same person twice unless they have played everyone else. Lets say that the only person to bust in the first round is D, so you don't have to record anything about people that have busted out. So your list would be:
A - H
B -
C - G
E - K
F -
G - C
H - A
I - J
J - I
K - E

Each player takes whatever they have in front of them at the conclusion of the last hand and takes it to go to their new table. So a player could have anywhere from double their original stack to almost nothing.

So now each player will be playing, and you have everyone draw cards from tables 1-5. Lets say that:

A table 4
B table 5
C table 2
E table 1
F table 1
G table 5
H table 4
I table 3
J table 3
K table 2

Okay, I and J and A and H have already played together, so there needs to be a redraw for these players so that I plays either A or H and J plays either A or H. So they all redraw and I and A get table 3 and J and H get table 4. The next round starts and finishes. 3 more people have busted out. A, C, and G.

But you still need to keep track of who has played, so the list is now:
B -
E - K & F
F - E
H - J
I - J
J - I & H
K - E

The new draw is with only 4 available tables now, because you're down to 7 players.

B table 1
E table 3
F table 2
H table 3
I table 4
J table 1
K table 2

Great no redraws. Then you would have this list.
B - J
E - K & F & H
F - E & K
H - J & E
I - J
J - I & H
K - E & F

You keep going like this.

If only two people have a played together, but everyone else is alright, and nobody is sitting out, everyone redraws because the two obviously can't redraw to get someone else. But if there is another player, the two just redraw and play against the guy who was going to sit. Eventually, everyone will have played everyone, then you make sure nobody plays anyone 3 times unless they have played everyone else twice.

It seems kind of complicated, but its really pretty easy. You just have a tounament director write down who is playing while the matches are going, then you all draw for cards, it takes a minute to check, and if there is a problem people redraw until its fixed.

The complication of having to draw for seats, and redraw when you draw the same match is worth saving a few hours of waiting for the marathon matches, at least for most people.

But if you have plenty of time, the single elimination is cool because you can do it NCAA style with the brackets and so on. Its good because you can have people placing all kinds of side bets on who will make the final four, etc. When you do this though, make sure there will be some good football games or whatever for people that are waiting to watch.

Oh, and Seymore, you are totally right. I was thinking in percentages, and that it would be rounded to double the buy in, quadruple the buy in, and half the prize pool. Usually people freak out when dealing with half of percentage, so I rounded it. Thanks for simplifying it.

Also, I don't like the structure on HPT, where it jumps from 500 to 1000. There is a 33% increase, then a 25% increase, then a 100% increase. It just doesn't make sense. You need to smooth out the blind increases to keep it from being a crapshoot.

[vrecksler]

My brother and I wanted to host a heads-up tournament as well, and in looking for a perfect setup we used the homepokertourney.com double elimination as a base.

We wanted each round to last no more than 30 minutes, so we used a T1000 with blinds increasing every 5 minutes.

5/10
10/20
20/40
40/80
80/160
160/320

It sounds fast, having 5 minute blinds but in heads-up you are playing a lot of hands and after testing it out with about 50 matches against each other, this seems to work for us. In those 50 matches, we have only made the last blind level once, and most games are done in about 10-15 minutes but we are both pretty aggressive in heads-up so we think that our other friends will probably take 20-25 minutes to finish a round.

I will be using this setup when I host a HU event in the next little bit; I would have done so sooner but I wanted to wait until the guys I play with had a bit more experience with adjusting their styles of play as the game gets more shorthanded. Some guys still sit on their stacks and get blinded and these guys will be feasted on in a HU tournament and I would rather wait until everyone is more comfortable with shifting gears a bit more.