Blind structure of 5-7 person tourny

[Pokerbrat]

I play a $10 tourny with my friends, and we usually get about 5-7 people to come. Assuming we start out with $10 in chips, what should blinds start at and how often should they increase? My friend insists that they start at .10/.20, while I say they should start at .05/.10. We are all in agreement that we don't want it to become an all-in contest, yet we also don't want the game to drag on past a couple hours at the most. What do you guys recommend?

[LuckyTxGuy]

Ok, you said it's a tourney.....so I can't see any reason for the $10 to buy you an action $10 in tournament chips? I've hosted a $20 tournament for almost a year now and we've played many different structures and mix it up from time to time, just to keep it fun. Here is our tried and true structure for 5-7 people.

$3,500-$4,000 tournament chips for each player
20-30 min blinds

5/10
10/20
25/50
50/100
100/200
200/400
300/600
400/800
500/1000
600/1200
700/1400


And you will NOT get to those very high blinds unless you just have a bunch of rocks trading chips around. We played that structure last night, 30 min blinds, $4,000 chips, 7 players and the game lasted about 4 hrs.

Oh and my chip denoms are.....
$5
$10
$25
$50
$100
$500
$1,000

Good luck!

[Precept2]

Okay...starting with 400BB is a bad idea. Go with 50BB or 100BB-at most.

Start with whatever amount you want (2500/3000/4000/5000 in chips).

Chip denominations for starting with 2500 - 25/100/500.
12 $25 chips
7 $100 chips
3 $500 chips - for larger starting stacks, add more $500 chips

Blinds increase every 15/20/30 minutes (15 make things go much quicker).

25-50
50-100
75-150
100-200
150-300
200-400
300-600
500-1000
700-1400
1000-2000
1500-3000
2000-4000
2500-5000