Good structure for a 20ppl hometourney?

[Spurious]

Hello,
i need some help with my structure for a 20-men-tournament.
The tournament is freeze out with 5000 chips at the beginning.

I got a structure and now i wanted to ask you what i should change in order to make the tourney "better".

SB BB Ante
25 25 0
25 50 0
50 100 0
100 200 0
100 200 25
150 300 25
200 400 50
300 600 75
400 800 100
600 1200 100
800 1600 200
1000 2000 300
1500 3000 400
2000 4000 500
3000 6000 500
3000 6000 1000
4000 8000 1000

We want to start of slow therefore i got 25/25 blinds in the first round. Each level will be 20min.
What do you think about the end? Do you think its gonna be an All-In battle or do you think we will get to the last levels?
Do you think i should stop earlier with blind increasement?

Please post some recommendations, thanks.

[jjflash]

Just my humble opinion, but I don't see this tourney lasting until the last levels. Personally, I would determine how long I wanted the tourney to last. After that, I would adjust the blind lenghts accordingly. I think that the antes are overkill with such a small starting field.

Take all of this with a grain of salt as I am still trying to find the "pefect" tourny structure for my home game.

Hope everything goes well.

[Spurious]

Thats what i thought, that the tourney wont last that long, and seriously i dont have any idea how long tournaments like this last.

You think the Antes are an overkill? Why?
Personally, I like Antes, since they speed up the action at least a little bit.

[pfapfap]

I like antes, too, as they introduce a different aspect, one I can exploit as cash game players don't always know how to adjust. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

The structure looks decent. Don't forget to throw in some breaks. I suspect this will last 4-5 hours of gameplay.

Is this something you'll be doing regularly? If so, there's no shame in adjusting afterwards. I had to massage my schedule quite a bit to get it just right for the players and the environment. It's a balance of wanting to keep enough casual players playing long enough to feel like they got their money's worth, but not have it be a crapshoot at the end. Having a somewhat shallow prize structure also helps with this (as money seems more in reach of the fish).

[Spurious]

I got breaks in the schedule but removed them for the post. I think the beginning is alright, since the action will start slow.
I think we gonna play those tournaments more often if its fun. I will adjust the structure afterwards.
But I am not satisfied with the later levels.

[southgapoker]

Whether it's a 2 person tournament or a 2000 person one, I want antes.

I have bought AT LEAST one house off antes.

[Small Fry]

Whats the guidelines for when the tourney will end, approximately? When the BB equals the buy in or when the blinds equal 5-10% of total chips in play, right. With antes go with the lower end of this scale or add them in too.
Both of these gets you pretty close to the end of your blind schedule, but the antes will make a huge difference, probably cutting it back a few levels as they're pretty significant.

For example: Asssume 4 guys left at the 1500/3000 400 level. Average stack is 25000. They need to put out 6100, or about 24% of their stack per round. Pot starting out is 6100 so if this occurs you'll get that all in fest whether you want it or not.

I would expect to last about 4 hours. Check out www.homepokertourney.com for some more info and ideas.

good luck

[pfapfap]

The only thing I don't like about the later levels is the repeat of the 3k/6k level with only an ante change.

I run a regular 20-30 person tourney, with 2k buyins/rebuys and 3k addon (so sorta the same total chips as yours), and we tend to end at the 5k/10k blind level. My schedule is very similar to yours, except it gets much steeper after the 1500/3000 level (looking at it now, perhaps I should change it, but the thing has to end at some point). This is usually over five hours of gameplay. I think you'll be fine.

[PantsOnFire]

This tourney has 100,000 chips. Most of the time, tourneys will end when the BB is 5-10% of the total chips. For example, your last level has starting pots of 14,000 chips. Two guys heads up with 50,000 chips each are not going to play long for those stakes.

I would flatten out the ante increases a bit and some are very high compared to the BB. Here is my suggestion:

SB BB Ante
25 25 0
25 50 0
50 100 0
100 200 0
100 200 25
150 300 25
200 400 25
300 600 50
400 800 50
600 1200 50
800 1600 100
1000 2000 100
1500 3000 100
2000 4000 200
3000 6000 200
4000 8000 400

That's 16 levels and it's pretty guaranteed to end on or before the last level. So with say 20 min intervals that's 320 minutes or just over 5 hours. Add in some breaks and you could hit 6 hours.

If you want it shorter you will either have to decrease the interval or remove some levels.