Help needed - designing a charity poker tournament

[iillllii]

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Since you expect a lot of inexperience players, I would suggest offering "training classes" at lunch for a few days up to the event, maybe even a week. Have a sign-up and teach 8 or 9 (maybe even 10) each session. Possibly, you can even do them as a quick $2 sit-n-go with a nominal prize that earns a little more for your charity.

This will eliminate the need for tutoring in thr tournament (when you are very busy), as well as introduce the concept and maybe hook some who would jump into the tournament for money directly.

None of the buy-ins go to a prize pool, these are recreational players at best, and you are worried about how long it will go after work. Forget add-ons and rebuys, I think. If you want to make sure your charity gets a higher take, increase the buy-in.

You have plenty of increase in the levels you can expect this to wrap in maybe 5 hours or so. The levels are short at 15 minutes.

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Thanks for the feedback, hopefully it won't be the only reply.

I think having a higher buy-in with no rebuy/add-on would be much easier to manage, but would limit the money we would raise...This is a deal where the company is going to provide booz/bartender and order up pizza and what not, so the idea is to get a lot of people together to get buzzed up and fed and donk around with $20 in a tourney...they can go all in like they see on TV, and discuss which of Chris Moneymaker or Jamie Gold is the best NLHE player in the world. Then, they're having a good time and get busted, so what the hell, another $20 isn't a big deal.

As opposed to 'damn, a $40-50 buy in, I could have a whole bar hopping night on the town for that price, F that'.

But at any rate, this tournament is an annual event, which has has always had re-buys (not sure about add-ons, I always just assume they go together), and people seem to like that aspect. I just don't think the whole event has always been optimally run/planned in the past - it sounds like it was one of those deals where blind levels and timing would be made up as they went along.


As far as the training sessions, not a bad idea, but wouldn't work with our particular firm. At a given time, 90% of people are in the field (all over the city and state) at clients. But people generally know how to play, they just might not know to fold an inside straight draw to a pot sized bet, or to lay down middle pair to a re-raise.