Tourney Heads-Up Tournament Plan and Structure (2 Viewers)

[Al Azouri]

I thought I's share my Heads-Up tournament structure and open it up for suggestions.

I've hosted three of these to date and I'm planing a fourth one soon.

12 players
Yes, twelve. We play 3 rounds: 12 down to 6, 6 down to 3 and the final table is 3-way. I know that's not truly heads-up but it works. One of the things I really like about this structure is that after the first round we have enough players to start a Cash Game. Also, 12 players is easy to host on two tables.

Blind Structure
The tournament is structured for about 90 minute rounds with 15 minute levels.

Payouts

• Round 1 winners get their buy-in back.
• Round 2 winners get 2 but-ins.
• 2nd Place gets 3 buy-ins.
• 1st place gets 4 buy-ins.

*I'd love to hear suggestions on improving this payout structure. What I like about this structure is that you don't have to make change, but it feels like 1st place should win more.

Seating
I've come up with a pretty cool way to draw for seats and designate seats with seat markers,
I made matching seat checks and cut cards. Players draw their seat checks from the bag then they go find the matching cut card that indicates their seat.

The cut cards and seat checks will make their debut at my next event.

 

[Gobbs]

I would adjust the payout structure to only pay the Top 3 players and pay 50/30/20 or 60/30/10. (For some reason, I like 50/30/20 for this one.) I guess, if you really don’t want to make change, you could go 6 buyins, 4, and 2.

Paying first round winners just seems too much to me.

 

[BGinGA]

I agree with @Gobbs -- paying first round winners seems spreading the payouts too thin, essentially giving 4th/5th/6th place their buy-in back, leaving only 75% of the prize pool to distribute to the top three finishers.

I'd go with 50%-30%-20% payouts for this structure (compared to 33.3%-25%-16.7%-8.3%(×3) as currently configured). Or for easier math, 6/4/2 buy-ins for 1st/2nd/3rd (50%/33.3%/16.7%).

The rest of the structure seems great. 80BB is plenty for a good heads-up battle, and most matches will finish by L6 (90 minutes).

 

[Mr Winberg]

+1 on 6, 4, and 2 buy-ins for the top three and nada for the rest. It's convenient to not have to make change.

 

[DaneWoj]

Think you should make it a 12 team bracket where 8 ppl play into the round of 8. 4 players have a “bye”.

You’d have to adjust the buyin slightly. Example if you were going to do a $100 BI ($1200 prizepool), you make the 4 byes pay $150 and the 8 ppl with the “play in” matches pay only $75. This way accomplishes the same $1200 prize pool.

You just have to let players know they will have to pay a premium if they get a bye.