odaniel12
Waiting List
I run a (usually single table) tournament at my house. Sometimes we can get 12-14 players and do 2 tables of 6 or 7. It's 2 or 3 guys who semi know what they're doing, and the rest are completely new and/or literally just like a boy's night. No intention to lose money or anything, but they have never heard of a pre-flop chart and won't look at one, it's just not something they care about, which is fine. A few are starting to want to understand the theory better and that's great.
The buy-in is initially $35, of which $5 goes to a bounty pool and $5 goes to a high hand bonus (rolls over, you have to hit a straight flush using at least 1 hole card at showdown). It's a 6:30 start time game, and usually after the 5th level (roughly 8:15), we stop allowing rebuys. Rebuy is $25 (no additional bounty or high hand contributions to keep it cheaper). We will usually have 3-5 rebuys, so total pot is usually around $400 - $500, and usually I pay 3 places, cause it's just 1 table, 3rd gets their $35 back, winner usually gets $225ish and second usually gets $135ish. Tournament meant to be over between 11:30 - midnight.
For bounties, say 9 people, that's $45 in bounty money, so I make a "big bounty" and "small bounty" say $30 and $15, and use envelopes with 7 empty and 2 with cash. Every time you knock someone out, you get to draw. If it's prior to the 6th level, we put the empty envelopes back and reshuffle for the next guy, cause the guy knocked out usually buys back in. Once people start getting permanently eliminated, we obvious keep the pulled envelope out. Once the 2 bounties are drawn, the bounty game is over. It's simple and has worked pretty well, even the bad players have a chance at some of their money back, etc.
I recently saw some texas card room advertising a "chaos bounty" game, where instead of just simple bounties, they are actual enhancers or detractors in the game, like "surrender your hand" or "seat/table change" or "new river card" that the players hold onto and use (once) when they feel like they need to. I'm going to try to implement this cause it seems like a lot of fun, maybe 1 or 2 games a year (we play 1x per month).
Got me thinking, what other fun games do people do with small tournaments, especially for newer and/or less serious players to keep it interesting?
The buy-in is initially $35, of which $5 goes to a bounty pool and $5 goes to a high hand bonus (rolls over, you have to hit a straight flush using at least 1 hole card at showdown). It's a 6:30 start time game, and usually after the 5th level (roughly 8:15), we stop allowing rebuys. Rebuy is $25 (no additional bounty or high hand contributions to keep it cheaper). We will usually have 3-5 rebuys, so total pot is usually around $400 - $500, and usually I pay 3 places, cause it's just 1 table, 3rd gets their $35 back, winner usually gets $225ish and second usually gets $135ish. Tournament meant to be over between 11:30 - midnight.
For bounties, say 9 people, that's $45 in bounty money, so I make a "big bounty" and "small bounty" say $30 and $15, and use envelopes with 7 empty and 2 with cash. Every time you knock someone out, you get to draw. If it's prior to the 6th level, we put the empty envelopes back and reshuffle for the next guy, cause the guy knocked out usually buys back in. Once people start getting permanently eliminated, we obvious keep the pulled envelope out. Once the 2 bounties are drawn, the bounty game is over. It's simple and has worked pretty well, even the bad players have a chance at some of their money back, etc.
I recently saw some texas card room advertising a "chaos bounty" game, where instead of just simple bounties, they are actual enhancers or detractors in the game, like "surrender your hand" or "seat/table change" or "new river card" that the players hold onto and use (once) when they feel like they need to. I'm going to try to implement this cause it seems like a lot of fun, maybe 1 or 2 games a year (we play 1x per month).
Got me thinking, what other fun games do people do with small tournaments, especially for newer and/or less serious players to keep it interesting?
