[bigmike]

What's more effective at creating a good, long tournament with lots of room to play "poker"?

Having longer blind rounds or increasing the initial starting stack?

Would you rather play a T 5,000 with 30 minute rounds or a T10,000 with 15 minute rounds?

[jojobinks]

my gut says increase the length of round.

my brain says that all that matters is how fast m's move down. there's a magic number at which the tournament is bound to end, right? when the blind is about 5% of the total chips in play. all that matters is when you get there.

[JM]

DEFINITELY length of rounds. I recently played a big tourney at foxwoods that had 50 minute rounds with I think it was 5K starting stacks. Very nice format, plenty of time to play poker without watching the clock.


Oh and I cashed, woohoo!

[bigmike]

I guess the best of both worlds would be to increase the blinds gradually (never doubling them). Something like:

25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200
150/300
200/400
250/500
300/600
400/800
...

[Felix]

I would say that stretching the lenght of the rounds is best.
I host a weekly tournament with T10.000 starting stacks, 30min. rounds mostly we are 9 Players. We allow unlimited rebuys during the first 4 rounds. With this settings each tournament lasts for 6 to 8 hours. With a lot of tight players it may last even longer.This is the blind structure we use:


50 - 100
75 - 150
100 - 200
150 - 300
200 - 400
300 - 600
400 - 800
500 - 1000
600 - 1200
800 - 1600
1000 - 2000
1500 - 3000
2000 - 4000
3000 - 6000
4000 - 8000
5000 - 10000
7500 - 15000
10000 - 20000

[bigmike]

Originally Posted by Felix

I would say that stretching the lenght of the rounds is best.
I host a weekly tournament with T10.000 starting stacks, 30min. rounds mostly we are 9 Players. We allow unlimited rebuys during the first 4 rounds. With this settings each tournament lasts for 6 to 8 hours. With a lot of tight players it may last even longer.This is the blind structure we use:


50 - 100
75 - 150
100 - 200
150 - 300
200 - 400
300 - 600
400 - 800
500 - 1000
600 - 1200
800 - 1600
1000 - 2000
1500 - 3000
2000 - 4000
3000 - 6000
4000 - 8000
5000 - 10000
7500 - 15000
10000 - 20000

How long does this tournament usually last?

[Felix]

It lasts usually 6 to 8 hours with 9 players and rebuys in the first 4 rounds.

[links_slayer]

Longer rounds.

We played a 6-man T1500 tourney earlier this week with 40 minute levels. It was a friggin' blast. I never felt like "Oh man...blinds are going up AGAIN!??!?11??" It also seemed like the other guys really stepped it up too....probably why I finished 3rd.

[hachkc]

Longer rounds definitely. IMO, 20mins is the MINIMUM you should ever have a round unless you want something like a turbo. I hate when you can't even make 1 orbit in a round. Hell, normal online tournies are usually 10mins and they play more like a 30-40min live game.

I'd like to host like an all day type event sometime. Something like a $100 buyin, T5k+1 rebuy/addon, 45min rounds.

[tomb1]

Looks like I am out of step with the rest of the known poker world (again).

Bigger stacks make for more play and more fun IMO. I'd rather have more chips, more room to make plays, more room to recover from bad beats, etc.

Longer rounds are good, don't get me wrong. If you play tight, you can keep folding for a looonnnngggg time before the blinds start to hurt. If you're a pro, you can probably make some cash in more tourneys this way. But folding for hours to protect a small stack is just not any fun.

So for a home game where fun and action are important in addition to cash, I want more chips.

Originally Posted by bigmike

Would you rather play a T 5,000 with 30 minute rounds or a T10,000 with 15 minute rounds?

In a perfect world, I'd rather have T10,000 and 20-30 minute rounds.