Tourney Help Me Come Up With a Good Points Structure for a Tournament League (2 Viewers)

[CrazyEddie]

I typically award cash prizes to the top 25% of the field size, and award points to the top 33% of the field size. The 10-6-3-1 payout structure (for points or cash) refers to when there are 4 places awarded (covering cash payouts for fields up to 16 players). For only three awarded places, just the lower 6-3-1 portion is used, and for just two places, 3-1 is used. For field sizes that require that 5 places be awarded, 15-10-6-3-1 is used.

I love this. Mathematically elegant.

Triangle numbers ftw!

 

[JMC9389]

I typically award cash prizes to the top 25% of the field size, and award points to the top 33% of the field size. The 10-6-3-1 payout structure (for points or cash) refers to when there are 4 places awarded (covering cash payouts for fields up to 16 players). For only three awarded places, just the lower 6-3-1 portion is used, and for just two places, 3-1 is used. For field sizes that require that 5 places be awarded, 15-10-6-3-1 is used.

This makes lots of sense. I've played it like this:

2-4 players: We say forget it and play cash
5 players: Winner take all, with the exception that 2nd place gets their initial buy in back
6-11 players: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd pay
12-16 players: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th pay
16+ 1st through 5th pay

Given that all tournaments until COVID is sorted are going to be STT's, I only plan on paying out 1st through 3rd place. My goal is to keep my players happy and coming to the games, as the regular crew itself is very social and we know each other well outside of poker. Given this, I'm willing to pay out a place more on average and award points in the same manner.

 

[legonick]

I like simple to calculate point systems. Screw any system using decimals or requiring the use of square roots. I also strongly dislike any system that gives 19th more points than 20th. Really, what does it matter, when those players never even sat at the same table?

Our current point system is simple.

• FInish out of the money get 1 point.
• Winner gets 1 point for each player's buy-in and rebuy
• Second gets 70% (rounded to the nearest integer) of the 1st place score
• Third gets 60% (rounded to the nearest integer) of the 1st place score
• Fourth gets 50% (rounded to the nearest integer) of the 1st place score, provided 4th was a paid position.
• Fifth gets 40% (rounded to the nearest integer) of the 1st place score, provided 5th was a paid position.
• Sixth gets 30% (rounded to the nearest integer) of the 1st place score, provided 6th was a paid position.

This would be easy to modify to discourage rebuys by subtracting some amount for a rebuy, but I like to encourage "play" for our player of the year, so I would never deduct a point for rebuying.

This system also encourages playing to get in the money - the real goal of poker, right? I would hate to see a race at the end of the season where a player just folded into the championship slot by finishing 12th.

Our typical game has about 16 players,and 5 rebuys; 21 points for the win. The attendance/out of the money points only add up to a small fraction of the total score, but can make a difference.

We also host the occasional cash game. The top money earners earn points as if it were a tournament.

If you had a tournament with no rebuys, shouldn't there be some difference between the guy who busted 9th (say 9 person STT) VS the guy who busted on the bubble at 4th?

With the group of amateur yahoos I play with there is def. a difference in skill between those 2 people.

 

[BGinGA]

If you had a tournament with no rebuys, shouldn't there be some difference between the guy who busted 9th (say 9 person STT) VS the guy who busted on the bubble at 4th?

With the group of amateur yahoos I play with there is def. a difference in skill between those 2 people.

I have one scoring system that awards 1 point to the bottom third of the field, 2 points to the middle third of the field, and 5-9-14-20 points to the top third.

For a 9-player field, it would be:
1st - 14 pts
2nd - 9 pts
3rd - 5 pts
4th-6th - 2 pts
7th-9th - 1 pt

 

[Poker Zombie]

If you had a tournament with no rebuys, shouldn't there be some difference between the guy who busted 9th (say 9 person STT) VS the guy who busted on the bubble at 4th?

With the group of amateur yahoos I play with there is def. a difference in skill between those 2 people.

That would be very circumstantial.

It would work if all the following were met:

• Single table
• No rebuys
• No late buy-ins

Single Table My system is designed to be useful for multi-tables. Even when I had just one table, I had developed a contingency plan in case I need a second table. To me, it's smarter to overbook than to play short-handed because 2 couples cancelled last minute. Since I developed a plan for an overflow table, why not have a points system that does the same?

No Rebuys Some of my players drive an hour each way to attend a game, so I prefer to allow rebuys. Only one game each year is a freezeout, and we run a cash game for early KOs then.

No Late Buy-ins Traffic happens. I'm not excluding a player because my points system benefits them to buy in after an opponent has lost some (or all) of their chips. Some people get around that by blinding off late buy-ins, or giving a shorter starting stack to late entries. Both are violations of TDA rules. If you are altering standardized poker rules to benefit your point system, then it's your point system that has issues.

 

[DeeVee8]

My points goes like this...

1 point for each person you outlast (finish 9th in a 10 person tourney, you get 1 point)
3 points for each person you eliminate
Cash * 10% (Win $200, you get 20 points)

You could subtract a point for every re-buy and add a point for every tournament attended to accomplish your other needs.

 

[legonick]

[...] Some people get around that by blinding off late buy-ins, or giving a shorter starting stack to late entries. Both are violations of TDA rules. [...]

Surprised the blind-off for late buy-ins is against TDA! That seems like a good way to handle that situation. Also de-incentivizes people to be late.

 

[BGinGA]

Surprised the blind-off for late buy-ins is against TDA! That seems like a good way to handle that situation. Also de-incentivizes people to be late.

Yeah, that's one area where TDA chose 'simpler' over 'better'.

 

[wolfpack]

So I used to run it like this back when I ran a league (before stopping poker for family reasons as my daughter got older) and will likely use soemthing similar now that I will starting back up.

1 point for attendance then ponits awarded to the top 6 finishers in a descneding amount

1st - 10
2nd - 8
3rd - 6
4th - 4
5th - 2
6th - 1

end of the year top 9 players in points that paid the league fee got to play in the final tournament.

The league fee ($100 paid trough out the year normally people added $10 to each tournament they attended) was added to the pot for the final game.

I regually had 12-16 players each month

 

[buzzmonkey]

I'm looking into crafting a point system for the touring league I want to start next-ish year. We've always done something simple in the past but I was looking at something more complex for this league. The first metric that I look for with any point system is that a 1st and 3rd place finish should always be worth more than two 2nd place finishes. I'm testing a system I found online for the BARGE meetups and altered it slightly.

=( 10 * LOG ( number_of_players / place_finished ) )+1

I'm then using a multiplier to award extra points to the end of season championship game for the Player of the Year. $50 buy-ins get a 1.5 multiplier and the $100 tour championship gets a 2.0 multiplier. This formula results in a player with a 1st and 4th tying with a player with two 2nd finishes which I'm not sure I like so I may ultimately go to a more static point system, but I'm having fun playing around with things.

Here is a sample point distribution for a 20 person tourney.

Players	$50 Points	Separation	$100 Points	Separation
1	21.02		28.02
2	16.50	4.52	22.00	6.02
3	13.86	2.64	18.48	3.52
4	11.98	1.87	15.98	2.50
5	10.53	1.45	14.04	1.94
6	9.34	1.19	12.46	1.58
7	8.34	1.00	11.12	1.34
8	7.47	0.87	9.96	1.16
9	6.70	0.77	8.94	1.02
10	6.02	0.69	8.02	0.92
11	5.39	0.62	7.19	0.83
12	4.83	0.57	6.44	0.76
13	4.31	0.52	5.74	0.70
14	3.82	0.48	5.10	0.64
15	3.37	0.45	4.50	0.60
16	2.95	0.42	3.94	0.56
17	2.56	0.39	3.41	0.53
18	2.19	0.37	2.92	0.50
19	1.83	0.35	2.45	0.47
20	1.50	0.33	2.00	0.45

 

[JMC9389]

I think what I'm going to do here is follow the WSOP schedule of events. Start the "year" or the "season " in August. One tournament per month in August, September, October, November, skip December due to holidays, January, February, March, April, May, skip June due to Memorial Day/Father's Day/4th of July, etc, and a big WSOPesque final table freezeout in the middle of July when the real thing happens. Restart the new year the following month.

Every November, March, and July will be some variation of a deepstack Freezeout with the WSOP style main event freezeout last. Otherwise the rest will be traditional T10K starting stack tournaments with rebuys and bounties. Maybe work in a progressive bounty game or two in there to make it an even half of the events regular tournaments, two progressive bounty games, and three "majors" worth double points to make them mean a little more and to offset the drop in possible points due to them being deepstacks without rebuys.

 

[JMC9389]

Help me design a "championship belt" trophy for this!

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/thre...r-of-my-annual-poker-tournament-league.65869/

 

[JMC9389]

One of my players brought up a concern that the heads up aspect of the game is taking too long for their liking. To be honest, he's right. Granted I haven't been in a position where I'm heads up in quite a while in my own game, but these guys play like absolute nits heads up. More often that not, each has a stack of about 30k and 40k, respectively, and they trade about 5k in chips back and forth for about 30 to 45 minutes before one of them just says "fuck it" and ships on a borderline hand or the two players agree to chop.

Does anyone find that this happens in their games, or are we the only nitty ones?

I want this league to be NLHE only, but with this concern in mind, I had the idea of the possibility of changing the game to Omaha when it got to heads up to speed up the end of the game. Good or bad idea? As is, the current points structure I plan on using punishes chopping (only going to award 80% potential points to two players chopping, 70% if three players chop, rather than 100% of potential points for a win and 70% for second place). I'm going to send out a survey to my players and get their thoughts on it.

 

[TexRex]

JMC, what were the blinds at that level? How long are your blinds? How aggressive are they? I've started tracking how many BB were left in tournaments at the end. We've had some 3-way chops, and a lot of 2-way chops. I've discovered that players chop when it gets down to a luck fest. I'd look at other things before I decided players are too nitty. I've seen games where they stop raising blinds and sometimes there are just too many chips on the table to force an ending.

Last year all 9 of our games were chopped, so I started tracking the BB left and the number of players. What I found was chops came normally when the remaining players had less than 10 BB each.

It seems likely that if after 30-45 minutes of trading only about 5K in chips for those stack sizes, the real problem is the blinds are too low at that point, or they managed to get to that point way earlier than normal.

 

[Poker Zombie]

We occasionally get two nitty players that just fold pre back and forth, but it is rare.

At a certain hour, blinds no longer need to follow the progression used all night. For us, by midnight (5 hours in) blind levels that were 25-33% jumps become 50% jumps. Blind levels times can be shortened as well. When you have 2 players, both are getting a fair amount of time at each level. Knowing the Grim Reaper of blinds is approaching encourages aggressive play.

I would oppose changing games at heads-up, as that punishes holdem specialists doing well in a holdem tournament.

 

[buzzmonkey]

Regarding point systems, I scrapped my original plan I posted above and am looking at the following idea instead. It basically awards a minimum of 1 point, and increases points gradually based on the number of tables in the tournament.

Points are calculated via the following formula (where n is equal to the number of players p in the tournament divided by nine and rounded up to the nearest integer. n = ⌈p / 9⌉)

1st n + 7
2nd n+ 4
3rd n+ 2
4th - 6th n + 1
7th - 9th n
10th - 18th n - (n-1)
19th - 27th n - (n-2)
28th - 36th n - (n-3)

 

[JMC9389]

JMC, what were the blinds at that level? How long are your blinds? How aggressive are they? I've started tracking how many BB were left in tournaments at the end. We've had some 3-way chops, and a lot of 2-way chops. I've discovered that players chop when it gets down to a luck fest. I'd look at other things before I decided players are too nitty. I've seen games where they stop raising blinds and sometimes there are just too many chips on the table to force an ending.

Last year all 9 of our games were chopped, so I started tracking the BB left and the number of players. What I found was chops came normally when the remaining players had less than 10 BB each.

It seems likely that if after 30-45 minutes of trading only about 5K in chips for those stack sizes, the real problem is the blinds are too low at that point, or they managed to get to that point way earlier than normal.

By the time this game got to heads up play, the blinds were 800/1600. This is with a T10000 starting stack. Six handed with two rebuys, so a total of T80000 in play. That said, the blinds are usually 1000/2000 or 1500/3000 by the time it gets to heads up play. I think that because we played a progressive bounty format, there was a bit looser play overall and players busted sooner.

I do structure it so the blinds go up pretty dramatically after the rebuy period. I go

400/800
600/1200
800/1600
1000/2000
1500/3000
2000/4000
3000/6000

20 minute levels to start which decrease to 15 minutes after the third break with the 1000/2000 level.

Part of the problem I think is that my players for the most part play really conservatively heads up and are playing not to make a mistake rather than win, if that makes sense. Because heads up play in this instance started relatively early, both players were at 25 to 30 BB's deep which made the heads up play drag on. Maybe I make the levels 15 minutes after the second break to speed things up a bit? Maybe only for progressive bounty games where it gets to heads up play sooner?

We occasionally get two nitty players that just fold pre back and forth, but it is rare.

At a certain hour, blinds no longer need to follow the progression used all night. For us, by midnight (5 hours in) blind levels that were 25-33% jumps become 50% jumps. Blind levels times can be shortened as well. When you have 2 players, both are getting a fair amount of time at each level. Knowing the Grim Reaper of blinds is approaching encourages aggressive play.

I would oppose changing games at heads-up, as that punishes holdem specialists doing well in a holdem tournament.

Agree. I'd like to maintain the integrity of the game to keep it NLHE the whole way if I can. Part of the issue is that during the summer months, we're kind of pigeonholed into playing on Sunday because two of my regulars are devoutly Jewish and won't play cards from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday night. This is easier to do in the colder months when it's dark out earlier, but quite difficult from about late April until late September. During the summer months, for them to drive 30 to 45 minutes to my place after sunset, it would be 10pm at the earliest before they got to me. My suggestion when we discusd league play is maybe have them host every other game during the summer on a Saturday so we can start earlier. They both only have dice chips, so I would at least tell them I would bring one of my sets to them, and at least talked both into a table topper and gifted them desjgn cards, so it's not all bad if they host.

We're all in our 30's, but most of us have the circadian clocks of double our age and will bitch and moan if we're playing past 1am. This just isn't feasible to do on Sunday when we all have to work the next day. I set start time this past Sunday to 6pm, but one of the players was running late so we waited for him and didn't get to playing until 6:30. We were done in exactly 4 hours, but 10:30 was too late for the complainer in this case, hence his inquiry yesterday about speeding up the heads up aspect. My initial response was that I'm always happy to be dedicated dealer and shuffler when I'm not in action, but said that we can discuss as a group soon.

I really want to say "just play more aggressively", but I'm not sure how that would go over.

 

[Poker Zombie]

It is extremely common in our group to have two dedicated dealers when heads-up. Each dealer manages their own deck, and when one hand is finished the next deck is ready (or very close to it). More hands per hour when heads up also increases the chance of a "cooler" hand with two conservative players.

However, it is difficult to recommend this solution for everyone. We have 2 players in the house, and many of our players bring a spouse, increasing the chance that the heads-up battle will have spectators.

 

[TexRex]

JMC, if heads up starts at 800/1600, there are still 50 BB on the table. The next round, still 40BB. Our blinds increases range from 50-67%. Yours seem pretty mild in comparison. I'm not sure you are seeing really nitty play so much as players still have plenty of room to maneuver. I don't think your blinds are unreasonable, but you have 2 small blind increases right as heads up start

400/800
600/1200 -- up 50%; 66.7BB
800/1600 -- up 25%; 50BB
1000/2000 -- up 20%; 40BB
1500/3000 -- up 50%; 26.7BB
2000/4000 -- up 33%; 20BB
3000/6000 -- up 50%; 13.3BB

 

[JMC9389]

JMC, if heads up starts at 800/1600, there are still 50 BB on the table. The next round, still 40BB. Our blinds increases range from 50-67%. Yours seem pretty mild in comparison. I'm not sure you are seeing really nitty play so much as players still have plenty of room to maneuver. I don't think your blinds are unreasonable, but you have 2 small blind increases right as heads up start

400/800
600/1200 -- up 50%; 50BB
800/1600 -- up 25%; 50BB
1000/2000 -- up 20%; 40BB
1500/3000 -- up 50%; 26.7BB
2000/4000 -- up 33%
3000/6000 -- up 50%

I hear you, but to go from 800/1600 to 1200/2400, for example, may be a bit too dramatic. The dramatic jump is meant to happen between the 1000/2000 and 1500/3000 levels.

It's not to say that a couple of the guys won't stuck around after they're out to help shuffle/deal, it's just that when it gets late that a couple of folks get testy. 3.5 to 4 hours including breaks is usually pretty standard for a STT T10000 base event. We would have been ok if the one player didn't come late, I think.

I'm really doing my best to take feedback from my players to heart and want them to do the tournament and not lose interest, but truthfully I don't think there's anything wrong with the structure as is. As @detroitdad mentions, I just think they need to play better sometimes and not play like such nits. Once it gets down to 25 or 30 BB's in play, especially if one player has a 2:1 ish advantage in chips, things should finish pretty quickly. Lots of my players chip hug and won't shove until they're down to 5 or 6 big blinds regardless of the blinds. I can't change how other people play, but I do feel like the concern about the game running long is coming about due to styles and habits of play that die hard.

The ultimate Occam's razor approach here is what I think is the right thing to do. Do nothing with the structure. If the players want to be done with heads up play sooner, they'll adapt and play more aggressively I think. Especially if I deincentivize chopping based on awarding less overall points for a chop.

 

[Irish]

I don't think I'd mess with the "standard" blinds level times, but you could simply add a provision that once play is heads up, all levels are cut to 10 or 15 minutes. That way you can play like normal on a typical night, but have the potential to speed things up (ie force more aggression) when it's head's up time.

Or just tell them to play better.

 

[TexRex]

JCM, I got interrupted and accidentally hit send earlier. I was trying to make this point. Your other blinds, that I see anyway, are 33-50%. You have one that is 25%, followed by a 20% increase. It's two smaller blind increases right in a row.

Again, I don't think the blinds there are horrible, but if play is slowing down right then, that is a (but maybe not the only) reason why. If you are using consistent 20 min blinds, I don't think that's the issue either. I just think if heads up starts right then, you have blinds slowing down at the very start of that.

Here are two alternatives:

400/800
600/1200 -- up 50%; 66.7BB
800/1600 -- up 25%; 50BB Make it 900/1800 -- up 50%; 44.4BB
1000/2000 -- up 20%; 40BB Make it 1300/2600 -- up 44%; 30.8BB
1500/3000 -- up 50%; 26.7BB Eliminate this round
2000/4000 -- up 33%; 20BB Up 53.8%; 20BB
3000/6000 -- up 50%; 13.3BB
*****

400/800
600/1200 -- up 50%; 66.7BB
800/1600 -- up 25%; 50BB
1000/2000 -- up 20%; 40BB Make it 1200/2400 -- up 50%; 33.3BB
1500/3000 -- up 50%; 26.7BB Make it 1800/3600 -- up 50%; 22.2BB
2000/4000 -- up 33%; 20BB Make it 2400/4800 -- up 33%; 16.6BB
3000/6000 -- up 50%; 13.3BB Up 25%; 13.3BB

 

[legonick]

[...]
We're all in our 30's, but most of us have the circadian clocks of double our age and will bitch and moan if we're playing past 1am. This just isn't feasible to do on Sunday when we all have to work the next day. I set start time this past Sunday to 6pm, but one of the players was running late so we waited for him and didn't get to playing until 6:30. We were done in exactly 4 hours, but 10:30 was too late for the complainer in this case, hence his inquiry yesterday about speeding up the heads up aspect. My initial response was that I'm always happy to be dedicated dealer and shuffler when I'm not in action, but said that we can discuss as a group soon.
[...]

I have young kids and so feel forced to kick-off late. I'm moving my time forward slowly due to feedback from players, however my kick-off was really late, 9:15 PM ET. Trying out 8:15 PM ET if I can get the players together.

Trying to get a regular thing running once a month on a Friday, so I don't want to hear the bitching! People can swing it a bit late without disrupting their oh-so-important Saturday plans.

 

[TexRex]

Legonick, waiting on players is disruptive. I've tried several things to stop that, but what has worked the best is this. Players who appear on time get a bonus (it makes up 12.5% of their starting stack most games). Then we start on time. A player shows up late, they get a seat, but they will definitely start with fewer chips.

If players pay in advance, then we assign a late arrival a seat, they get the bonus, but their stack is blinded. The way we do that is when the small blind hits them, we remove their SB and BB from their stack and remove it from play so no player benefits every round from it.

Most games, every player gets the bonus for being on time, and we rarely blind stacks.