Chaos Tournament Post-Mortem (2 Viewers)

[Leonard]

Last night I ran a Chaos Tournament - see my prior thread.

I did a $100 buy-in instead of my usual $200 because I anticipated more re-buys. Here were my final rules:

$20 from each buy-in goes to a Bonus Pool. This money is awarded as below, until it runs out. If there is remaining Bonus Pool money at the end of the tournament, it goes to the tournament winner.

Roll three colored dice at each blind change:

Red die:
1 – Blinds go down one level
2 – Blinds are unchanged
3.4 – Blinds go up one level (like normal)
5 – Blinds go up one level and all players ante one small blind
6 – Blinds go up two levels (this cannot happen two rounds in a row).

Blue die:
1-3 – Nothing
4, 5 – Bomb pot (one big blind). Each winner gets $20 from the Bonus Pool.
6 – One orbit of bomb pots (clock is paused)

Green die:
1, 2 – Nothing
3-5 – Winner of the next (non-bomb pot) hand gets $20 from the Bonus Pool
6 – Redraw for button

If all 3 dice have the same number, then everyone at the table draws a card. High card swaps half his chipstack with low card. (ie both players give the other half their stack).

Overall, I think it was a pretty big hit.

- Bomb pots and pots with a cash sweetener generated lots of action. But toward the end of the tournament, when blinds were high, 1 BB might be too big. These pots were huge and resulted in major swings in the tournament.

- Because the blind level (ie round) went up and down, it makes more sense to end the re-buys at a set time, rather than a set round/blind level.

- I had to rule on the fly that once the re-buy period had ended, the blinds could only go up or stay the same. I wanted the tournament to end in a reasonable time frame.

- We never had to re-draw for the button, which could be a big deal later in the tournament and never had chip swaps. I'm thinking that next time instead of a partial chip swap I might just have one player give 2 or 3 BB to another - but this has to be a rare event.


Anyway, it was fun and a change from more typical tournaments. Give it a try, with your own spin on the rules.