Home tournament chip structure

[CashinCam]

I'd like to know a good starting chip structure for a game that consists of approximately 10-12 players. I have a 1,000 chips set with 300 white, 300 red, 200 green, 100 blue, and 100 black. What is a normal starting chip stack if we start the blinds at 25/25 or 25/50? We've been starting at 5/10 with 20 minute levels and the game just lasts too long. We normally start with 2,500-3,000 chips. Any suggestions? Thanks a lot.

[Slow Play Ray]

How long is too long?

This is the T2000 structure we use...

Starting stacks:

5 x 10
25 x 10
100 x 7
500 x 2

20 minute blind levels:

5-10
10-20
15-30
(color up + race 5s)
25-50
50-100
75-150
(color up + race 25s)
100-200
200-400
300-600
500-1000
700-1400
1000-2000
1500-3000

For a single table, this usually lasts about 3.5 hours.

[pfapfap]

I've used Dr. Neau's Tournament Manager to set up and run tournaments. You can tell it your chip distribution and desired length and it will suggest blind structures for you. Also fun for running games, completely customizable or automated or something in between.

[Khabbi]

The tourneys I run are always 10-12 player T1000 tourneys. We use the same structure as you do: 5/10 increasing every 20 minutes:
5/10
10/20
15/30
20/40
25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200
150/300
200/400
300/600
400/800

Our tournaments last 3.5-4.5 hours and rarely even make it to the 400/800 level.

How many tournaments have you run that were "too long". Also, what is your definition of "too long".

If 3.5-4.5 hours is "too long" you don't want a poker tournament, you want to play bingo.

[corron1016]

My home tourney sturcture is as follow T3500 blinds are 20 mins
8 x 25 = 200
8 x 100 = 800
3 x 500 = 1500
1 x 1000 = 1000

blinds start
25-50
50-100
75-150
100-200
150-300
200-400
250-500
300-600
400-800
500-1000
600-1200

the game is usually over by the 500-1000 level, depending on the number of people. this is also for a $50 buy-in, and we set a leauge on homepoukertour.com for everyone who sat in a game, and even points according to the number of people, so if ten people play and you go out first, you get 1 point, and if you win you get 10 points.

I'm always looking to increase the starting chips to T5000 and add an ante at the 100-200 level. But the number of chips on the table is low, so it accomadates and speeds up the chipping up process and we chip up after the 250-500 level.

[PantsOnFire]

I would do this:

Red=5
Green=25
Black=100
Blue=500

You can now use 5/10 as your starting blinds. A good tourney is 100BB and a deep stack tourney is 250BB. So for a deep stack tourney (usually preferable by good players) I would start the chips per player like this:

5 - 15
25 - 13
100 - 6
500 - 3 (you can have 0-3 chips here depending on what starting stack you want which will have a bearing on how long the tourney lasts)

Blind Structure

5/10
10/20
20/40
30/60
Break (remove red chips)
50/100
75/150
100/200
150/300
Break (optional remove green chips)
200/400
300/600
etc.

[Grasshopp3r]

www.homepokertourney.com has some printable blind structure charts, etc., to aid you in the presentation.