Heads Up Tournament Set (1 Viewer)

[Huskerchipper]

If you have a heads up set show/tell me what you have. What kind of ratio to BB do you like? How many chips per player? I know the answers can be all over the board here but I am curious what people are using out there? I need an excuse to buy more chips i don't need.

 

[Santa123]

I dont have but I would go with two max three denominations giving both players each 2-3 barrels I guess.

How about a nice rack of 43mm chips.

2 barrels of 1k
2 barrels of 5k
1 barrel of 25k

 

[TheRealTeddyKGB]

I went with a rack for each player because I prefer DEEP STACKS! The T25 Base RPC & JACKS sets are $9K/player & the Tiger is a crazy $750K/player with a T5K Base. I have not played with the latter set yet but the former sets have averaged about an hour to complete using 10min levels.

 

[FestiveKnight]

I’ll grab a bunch of pics when I got home from Thanksgiving travel but I have a bunch of this!

I really like a 40x T25, 40x T100, 20x T100 single rack heads up set.

Here’s the set up I use. Taken from @BGinGA originally I believe.

You can drop the antes for a slower structure. I like this dealer ante because it exacerbates the preflop asymmetry and makes some interesting dynamics.

 

[BGinGA]

^^ This works great. We still use this (best-of-three) format for heads-up tournaments.

 

[Choketastic]

I really liked the WPT heads up championship where instead of using mins for blind levels they used hands dealt. This avoided unsporting behaviour when blinds were reaching the end levels as experienced players tended to tank to make sure their opponent hit the next level in the big blilnd. I think they used something like 9 or 11 hands per level. An odd number ensured that players alternated being in the BB first when levels increased

 

[Huskerchipper]

If you have a heads up set show/tell me what you have. What kind of ratio to BB do you like? How many chips per player? I know the answers can be all over the board here but I am curious what people are using out there? I need an excuse to buy more chips i don't need.

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I went with a rack for each player because I prefer DEEP STACKS! The T25 Base RPC & JACKS sets are $9K/player & the Tiger is a crazy $750K/player with a T5K Base. I have not played with the latter set yet but the former sets have averaged about an hour to complete using 10min levels.
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About an hour...thats interesting. It being heads up from the start is what has me curious about starting stacks and length of tournament. One hour sounds good or no longer than 2hrs max. Thank you for the feedback.

 

[Huskerchipper]

I’ll grab a bunch of pics when I got home from Thanksgiving travel but I have a bunch of this!

I really like a 40x T25, 40x T100, 20x T100 single rack heads up set.

Here’s the set up I use. Taken from @BGinGA originally I believe.

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You can drop the antes for a slower structure. I like this dealer ante because it exacerbates the preflop asymmetry and makes some interesting dynamics.

This looks VERY similar to what I was thinking. Are the 20 T500's enough or do you need extras for chipping up or just the 100 chips (40/40/20) is all you need?

 

[TheRealTeddyKGB]

About an hour...thats interesting. It being heads up from the start is what has me curious about starting stacks and length of tournament. One hour sounds good or no longer than 2hrs max. Thank you for the feedback.

They've probably been as short as 30 min & as long as 1.5 hours. I really like the Deepstack over the best 2 of 3 Turbo format where it tends to be just a flip-a-thon.

 

[Huskerchipper]

They've probably been as short as 30 min & as long as 1.5 hours. I really like the Deepstack over the best 2 of 3 Turbo format where it tends to be just a flip-a-thon.

Same. I am definitely not a fan of turbo formats either. FestiveKnight starting with 7500 and you starting with 9000 sounds like a good starting area to what I am looking for.

 

[FestiveKnight]

This looks VERY similar to what I was thinking. Are the 20 T500's enough or do you need extras for chipping up or just the 100 chips (40/40/20) is all you need?

No other chips are needed and honestly I rarely bother with coloring up in these because it’s actually rare to grind away into the highest levels.

If you do care to chip up, you can do 7k stack and reserve a single 500 to chip up all the 25s at once at some point.

Again, I also avoided this because it was simpler for players to get even barrel heights of chips when resetting between games and not having to keep track of the two extra chips.

Not sure what circumstance you’re interested in using these in but when I hosted a large Memorial Day party this past year where we did a Swiss bracket heads up tournament. We did 4 round bracket Bo3 with the structure I posted above and it took around 5 hours with breaks between games.

 

[FestiveKnight]

They've probably been as short as 30 min & as long as 1.5 hours. I really like the Deepstack over the best 2 of 3 Turbo format where it tends to be just a flip-a-thon.

Hmm, I slightly disagree. Even deepstacked, the reality is one cooler can effectively or entirely hand the match to one player in an instant. I think best-of is really important for heads up play to hopefully reduce some volatility. I also enjoy developing a cross-game meta against an individual opponent. Whereas a single game, even with deepstacks, you play pretty procedural and hope for lucky moment.

 

[Kid_Eastwood]

Nevada Jacks Travel Set

• Kid_Eastwood
• Mar 5, 2021

$25 x 40
$100 x 40
$500 x 20
Dealer button x 1
Setup of cards

Playing T7000 or T5000, it depends.

Blinds :
25-50
25-75
50-100
...

Starting stack =

T25 x 20
T100 x 20
T500 x 5 or 9

Color-up of the T25 with T500.

This set can also act as a travel allowing to play at five 8/8/3, T2500 on starting blinds 25-25 (100BB).

 

[Huskerchipper]

No other chips are needed and honestly I rarely bother with coloring up in these because it’s actually rare to grind away into the highest levels.

If you do care to chip up, you can do 7k stack and reserve a single 500 to chip up all the 25s at once at some point.

Again, I also avoided this because it was simpler for players to get even barrel heights of chips when resetting between games and not having to keep track of the two extra chips.

Not sure what circumstance you’re interested in using these in but when I hosted a large Memorial Day party this past year where we did a Swiss bracket heads up tournament. We did 4 round bracket Bo3 with the structure I posted above and it took around 5 hours with breaks between games.

Thanks for confirming my thoughts on the needing (or lack thereof) of chipping up with this type of heads up play.

 

[Huskerchipper]

Nevada Jacks Travel Set

• Kid_Eastwood
• Mar 5, 2021

$25 x 40
$100 x 40
$500 x 20
Dealer button x 1
Setup of cards

Playing T7000 or T5000, it depends.

Blinds :
25-50
25-75
50-100
...

Starting stack =

T25 x 20
T100 x 20
T500 x 5 or 9

Color-up of the T25 with T500.

This set can also act as a travel allowing to play at five 8/8/3, T2500 on starting blinds 25-25 (100BB).

Excellent! Everyone is basically giving me the same advice. A barrel of 25's a barrels of 100's and five to ten 500's. Thanks everyone!

 

[TheBigTater]

Here is my Head-up album. https://www.pokerchipforum.com/media/albums/heads-up-sets.1027/ mostly 40/40/20 - 25/100/500 but I have a couple of other sets not pictured that are 40/40/20 - 1K/5K/25K. I use similar blind structure as above except normally start with 25/50 and only 100BB to start off with extras for colorup if needed. 2 out of 3 session is better to me than 1 deeper stack round so they are kinda turbo sessions but it works for me.

 

[LeGold]

Here is my Head-up album. https://www.pokerchipforum.com/media/albums/heads-up-sets.1027/ mostly 40/40/20 - 25/100/500 but I have a couple of other sets not pictured that are 40/40/20 - 1K/5K/25K. I use similar blind structure as above except normally start with 25/50 and only 100BB to start off with extras for colorup if needed. 2 out of 3 session is better to me than 1 deeper stack round so they are kinda turbo sessions but it works for me.

May I ask about the box you use there? I've been struggling with finding something similar.

 

[TheBigTater]

May I ask about the box you use there? I've been struggling with finding something similar.

They use to be all over eBay for a long time but I haven't seen any like mine in a while or they are totally different and way overpriced (granted I haven't been looking for any in a while either). Texas Poker supply use to have a similar 100 chip wooden box that I bought a couple of but now that I check his site I don't see any there either. I think when I bought most of mine they were around $10-$20/case.

 

[Kid_Eastwood]

Here is my Head-up album. https://www.pokerchipforum.com/media/albums/heads-up-sets.1027/ mostly 40/40/20 - 25/100/500 but I have a couple of other sets not pictured that are 40/40/20 - 1K/5K/25K. I use similar blind structure as above except normally start with 25/50 and only 100BB to start off with extras for colorup if needed. 2 out of 3 session is better to me than 1 deeper stack round so they are kinda turbo sessions but it works for me.

Awesome sets, congrats !

 

[TheBigTater]

Don't know anything about this place but only place I could find any (of course they are out of stock) but this is the exact case in my album pics.

https://www.casinogamesupplies.com/chips-and-cases/wooden-cases/100-poker-chip-mahogany-case/

 

[Huskerchipper]

Don't know anything about this place but only place I could find any (of course they are out of stock) but this is the exact case in my album pics.

https://www.casinogamesupplies.com/chips-and-cases/wooden-cases/100-poker-chip-mahogany-case/

I remember seeing them back in the day. Shame they stopped making them. I really thought poker supplies would keep expanding but I can think of quite a few that have went away. These 500 rack trays were like $20/eBay and as far as I know they are gone as well.

 

[Huskerchipper]

Here is my Head-up album. https://www.pokerchipforum.com/media/albums/heads-up-sets.1027/ mostly 40/40/20 - 25/100/500 but I have a couple of other sets not pictured that are 40/40/20 - 1K/5K/25K. I use similar blind structure as above except normally start with 25/50 and only 100BB to start off with extras for colorup if needed. 2 out of 3 session is better to me than 1 deeper stack round so they are kinda turbo sessions but it works for me.

Awesome! I run all of my tournaments at 100BB and think that would be a good starting point as well. I don't really care for deep stacks either but wasn't sure if more than 100BB would be needed with strictly heads up play.

 

[TheRealTeddyKGB]

Hmm, I slightly disagree. Even deepstacked, the reality is one cooler can effectively or entirely hand the match to one player in an instant. I think best-of is really important for heads up play to hopefully reduce some volatility. I also enjoy developing a cross-game meta against an individual opponent. Whereas a single game, even with deepstacks, you play pretty procedural and hope for lucky moment.

I guess I feel players playing 2 out of 3 play differently than they do normally because they play with a "get out of jail free" mentality instead of possibly "laying down a monster."

I've played both formats & I just prefer playing like when you get to Head's-Up at the end of a MTT or STT. I definitely don't want a Turbo format here or a Chop. This is the only reason why I play Tournaments anymore people so don't ruin the best part!!

But back to the OP: why not both : )

 

[BGinGA]

I prefer needing to out-play my opponent twice vs just once to advance (and similarly, needing to be out-played twice before being eliminated). I'm always in favor of reducing the luck factor.

 

[TheRealTeddyKGB]

I prefer needing to out-play my opponent twice vs just once to advance (and similarly, needing to be out-played twice before being eliminated). I'm always in favor of reducing the luck factor.

Why not just play 3 times each for money?

6:00 levels isn't happening for me because it turns into a shove-fest too soon.

But maybe when you say "advance" you're talking about a Round Robin style tournament?