[Biglickn'Bigslick]

Anyone have any suggestions for a large tourney blind structure T5000 with about 40 ppl? I have run this tourney 4 times before using Homepokertourney's T1000 blind structure and it worked wonderfully. Now I have all my Pharoah's 600 green 600 black 200 purple 100 orange and 25 plaque's. Now the tourney is a $50 buy-in with a ten dollar bounty(with the real bounty chips).

I have done alot of research and calculating using this site and others. I have the Tournament Director program. But their suggested blinds kinda suck. The largest problem is I need the tourney to end by 130 am kickoff time is 700 pm. So here's what I came up with.

T5000

25/50 30min
50/100 30min
100/200 30min
color and break 15min
200/400 20 min
300/600 20min
400/800 20min
color and break 15min
500/1000 15min
1000/2000 15min
1500/3000 15min
2500/5000 15min
color and break 15min
4000/8000 15min
5000/10000 15min
5000/15000 15min
10000/20000 15min
15000/30000 15min



So with 40 ppl I will have 200K in play so thinking that it should end around 5000/15000 level.

[Captn_All_In]

If you have run this type of tourney before are your players comfortable with Chip Races? If so then I would have them start the process of coloring up before you get to their table (meaning the chip leader at the table buys the smaller denoms and then you color him/her up). That would allow you to shorten each of your breaks by 5 min.

*Edit*
I would also have to think that it would end before the 5K level. Making standard raises at that level will be pushing a lot of chips at one time. The problem will be how tight all the players are when you reach the final table.

You may want to shorten those final rounds to 12 min. I know that is lightning fast, but if you must have it done by 1:30 you might need to take drastic measures.

[erikk]

I run a 40 person T10,000 tourney and it never lasts more than 5.5-6.5 hours. And we're a $60 buy-in with a $10 bounty chip also. You can check out my blinds structure here: http://ekroner.net/poker.htm

Now granted I just modified my blinds structure a little bit from the last time I had the tourney (based on advice from people here in order to help with coloring up). So I can't guarantee that they'll work as well as our original structure did but I think it'll actually be better.

[UPS_MAN1995]

Start your blinds at $50 - 100. Just my 2 cents worth

[snuix114]

You can easily go down to 5 minutes for the heads up portion if you have a dedicated dealer/shuffler. It seems very fast, but the hands go by very quickly at this stage if you don't pause in between each hand for a shuffle, cut, and deal.

Also: you can try adding antes very early like the WSOP blind schedule does to induce action early in the tourney.

[erikk]

Personally I like (and you can see from my structure) a very slow ramp-up and then it gets much quicker towards the middle. It keeps people in for a while and prevents someone being stuck out within the first hour of the tourney.

[BPTDirector]

I started using ante's after the first four blind rounds to speed up the action at my monthly games of 35 to 40 players. It works well and keeps 1 chip stragglers from waiting forever and slowing down the game. I also agree that you can condense the blind rounds to 15 minutes once the action goes to heads up if you have a dedicated dealer, and two decks going since these hands are played much quicker than full table hands.


BPT

[CaptLego]

BTW,
I tossed your chipset into the Breakdown Calculator, and it looks to me like you'd be better off w/ a T2500 for 40 people with that chipset.


With T2500, you've got enough chips to easily colorup all the way. With T5000, you don't have enough chips to easily colorup the blacks.

I guess you have enough chips to colorup the blacks if you use the full combination of purples, orange, and plaques --- is that a hastle to colorup when you have to cascade chips through two or three denoms? (I'm curious, because if this is common, then I'd like to support that colorup mechanism into the breakdown calculator.)

You might consider going to T2500, and add a 25/25 blind for the first level.

[Captn_All_In]

Not to threadjack here, but Capt....what exactly did you mean by cascading through the colors?


When ever I color up I have a box of chips set aside for this in all the colors availible (i.e. coloring up T25 I would have black and purple availible) then when I get to the chip leader at each table who has already bought all the chips from the others there I can give them a few of each color instead of just all of one color (i.e. leader has purchased T500 in red (T5) from others at table I give him 8 green (T25) and 3 black (T100))

Does that sound like cascading?? I really have to admit my ignorance here (I understand the meaning of the word cascade (falling, etc) but not as you have used it here in the manner )

[CaptLego]

Originally Posted by Captn_All_In

Not to threadjack here, but Capt....what exactly did you mean by cascading through the colors?


When ever I color up I have a box of chips set aside for this in all the colors availible (i.e. coloring up T25 I would have black and purple availible) then when I get to the chip leader at each table who has already bought all the chips from the others there I can give them a few of each color instead of just all of one color (i.e. leader has purchased T500 in red (T5) from others at table I give him 8 green (T25) and 3 black (T100))

Does that sound like cascading?? I really have to admit my ignorance here (I understand the meaning of the word cascade (falling, etc) but not as you have used it here in the manner )

Sorry for the threadjack. I should probably move this discussion to the Breakdown Calculator thread, since that's what I'm working on. But since it's at least slightly relevant here....

My simplistic model for coloring up is to replace all the chips being removed with chips from the next highest denom. In this example, that would require having enough extra purples to replace all black chips. A more sophisticated approach (assuming you already have some purples in play) would be to first colorup some of the purples, then use those newly freed purples to help colorup the blacks. (That's what I was referring to as "cascading" --- maybe a poor choice of words -- I'm just making this up as I go.) Or some players may have enough blacks to directly colorup some of them to yellows or plaques (as in your example), thus reducing the number of purples that my simplistic colorup model requires.

Using more than one denom during the colorup process would seem to complicate the colorup process somewhat, but would be more efficient chip-wise.

I've seen several members post well-designed chipsets that take advantage of this more complex colorup process (including the one in the OP of this thread), so I'm thinking I need to improve the colorup calculations in the Breakdown Calculator to support this approach.