[VARoadstter]

My home game stuff that I put in "Tournament Director". I like to do payouts on a graduated scale, with the differences between each spot being very meaningful in terms of $. The winner is well compensated. If the payout is too flat (or too many) then once the money is made there is little incentive to work as hard as you can to place at the top so I keep the payouts low and the difference between places high.

<4 players : 100% (sometimes we'll do this at the end of the night when most of the players have long headed home)
4-6 : 2 paid, 75/25
7-11 : 3 paid, 60/25/15
12-17 : 4 paid, 50/30/14/6
18-31 : 5 paid, 45/25/18/8/4
32-50 : 6 paid, 40/22/16/10/7/5
haven't done above 50 yet but it would follow this pattern.

[Mr Meaner]

Originally Posted by softchewy

I believe the usual payout is:

Players 1-10
1st 2nd 3rd

Players 11-20
1st 2nd 3rd 4th

Players 21-30
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th

This is what I stick to and I use the payouts on homepokertourney.com.

Players 1-10
1st=50% 2nd= 30% 3rd=20%

Players 11-20
1st=40% 2nd=30% 3rd=20% 4th=10%

Players 21-30
1st= 40% 2nd=25% 3rd=20% 4th=10% 5th=5%

[Spaceman Spiff]

8 can be kind of tricky. I pay out 3 there, but you're paying out 37% of the field. I drop it to 2 with 7 players. I don't like setting the last paid place or last X paid places to a fixed amount. I just set the %'s and work off the prize pool. Here's what I use:

<7 - 70-30
8-12 - 50-30-20
13-16 - 50-25-15-10
17+ - 45-25-15-10-5

I like deeper, flatter payouts. In my philosophy, more cashes means more players coming back. Also, most of the time it's practically a luckfest with the blinds by the time it's down to 3 or sometimes 4. I don't like having steep changes between payout positions if it's mostly going to be determined by luck at that point. The alternative is to mellow the blinds, but I also don't want to play tourneys that last 5-6 hours either.

[whitepotatoe]

Originally Posted by Mr Meaner

This is what I stick to and I use the payouts on homepokertourney.com.

Players 1-10
1st=50% 2nd= 30% 3rd=20%

So if you do a two player freezout who gets 3rd place?

[Murf]

Originally Posted by whitepotatoe

So if you do a two player freezout who gets 3rd place?

Me.

[pokrdrms]

We usually have a large poker league, but in the summer our game ranges between 7 and 15 players. Here's our schedule:

2-5: winner take all
6-9: 1st-70%, 2nd-30%
10-15: 1st-60%, 2nd-30%, 3rd-10%
16-19: 1st-50%, 2nd-25%, 3rd-15%, 4th 10%
20-25: 1st-47%, 2nd-23%, 3rd-15%, 4th-10%, 5th-5%
26-30: 1st-44%, 2nd-22%, 3rd-12%, 4th-10%, 5th-8%, 6th- 4%

Our fall and winter league tourneys average about 22 players twice a week. Our blinds are relaxed and we usually have about a 4 hour tourney.

[vrecksler]

We pay out only 2 positions for 10 buy-ins or less (we allow re-buys so our payouts are based on buy-ins rather than players), so 2nd gets their buy-in back and first takes the rest. If we have around 15 buy-ins then 3rd gets their buy-in back, 2nd gets twice their buy-in, and 1st takes the rest.

We want the winner to take home the lion's share so that winning means a little something since we are social players and the poker itself is not motivation enough for everyone to play to win.

[scottoc]

Last Fri. we only had 10 players. $25bi for 10k in chips, $25rebuy for 10k in chips for 1st 3 rounds, them $10 add-on for 5k in chips. 3 rebuys and 8 add ons for a total of $405. Breakdown was
1st=$180
2nd=$125
3rd=$75
4th=$25

We used to pay 3 but usually ended up cutting in 4th for $25, so now if its 10-12 players we just set up 4th as original bi back.

[Brewster]

Our group must be rather strict compared to the rest of you. Second place gets their buy in back and first takes the rest.

[Pavel6969]

I usually play with 6 people, and pay out to the top two. Buy in is only $15, so First get $60 while second gets $30.