[bav]

I actually liked the Sahara tourney slightly better before they added chips to the starting stacks. Exactly because of the doubling of the blinds. In earlier rounds, the blinds don't double every time, but at some point along the way, they just give up on a reasonable structure and it starts doubling every round. With the previous smaller starting stack, that didn't seem to hit as hard...the play was actually mostly done by the time you got into the doubling-at-the-end stage.

Yeah, I've grumbled about the doubling. Answer is the usual "it already takes 6 hours to play". Which is true. It remains a lot of tourney for your $62. Imperfect it is, but I'm not sure there's a better bang for the buck.

People intentionally lollygagging to miss the blind when they move is a constant problem in EVERY tourney. Sometimes players will notice this happen and cause a stink, but it's pretty tough to prove.

When the tables are getting thin (down to 4ish) I've seen TD's stop the dealing at all the tables while we wait for the breaking players to join, and that way nobody gets to miss nuthin'. And a good in-your-face TD when he's balancing tables by taking a single player will typically tell the dealer about to receive a player "deal in the 4-seat next hand, I'm bringing you a player" and then go get the victim. Play stops until the victim arrives.

Sahara actually sometimes comes pretty close to doing this well. They have the dealers on break hanging around the room helping run the tourney, so it's kinda like having 3 floor people working the tourney instead of just 1. They don't do decisions, but they take care of keeping the tables balanced, and it seems like Sahara does a good job of keeping out the dealers who've never figured out the concepts of how you balance tables. Mostly.

I've actually seen a confrontation at Sahara over someone intentionally delaying when it was OBVIOUS. Player walks up, sees where the button is, and just instantly turns around and backs up and tries to blend into the wall. Right after the cards were dealt, he joins the table. Players screamed, and the floor did something about it...not sure but I think he just took the BB from him and put it into the pot.