For anyone new to all this fun -- it might be you find yourself with 3 or more tables and that requires you to come up with a system whereby you can keep tables balanced and how to move players around.
Honestly, I'd strongly suggest not playing yourself. To run a quality tournament of 3 tables & above, IMO, is pretty much impossible to as both a player & director. It can be done, but it's not much fun for the director and can be frustrating for the players as the clock is typically paused again and again while decisions, moves, & tables are broken down.
With respect to moving players, I use this simple method stolen from homepokertournament.com (I think).
Each table has a set of cards:
Table 1, Seat 1
Table 1, Seat 2 etc.
Most likely not all of your tables will have the same number of players but they must be within one player of each other. For example, let's say 48 players on 5 tables. 3 Tables of 10 + 2 Tables of 9. This means you'd hand out all 10 seat cards for Tables 1, 2 & 3 while tables 4 & 5 only have 9 seat cards used.
On a separate folding table or whatever, you would have the EMPTY seat cards laid out by table.
As players go out, you MUST gather their seat card (or the system fails) and place it under the proper table -- here I show Table 1 lost seat 9, Table 2, seats 1&5, Table 3 lost seat 8 and Tables 4/5 started out that way. At this point the tables are still within balance -- they only differ by 1 player or less.
If you get to the point where there is a difference of two (or more) between any tables, such as below you see you must move somebody from a table with more players: Here I show Table 2 has lost seat 7, so now table 2 has only 7 players compared to the other tables with 9. A difference of 2 players = bad. Find out what position relative to the button that last player was to go out on table 2, seat 7. If they were two behind the button, then you pick up that seat card (T2/S7), take it over to table 5, find the player sitting in that same relative position of two behind the button, give them their new seat card & have them move over to table 2 -- be sure to pick up his/her seat card from table 5 because now they are gone.
Now comes the REALLY fun part -- breaking down tables. Assuming you can fit 10 people at a table... This took me a few times through in my head before it became second nature, but if you look below you'll see that table 5 (the one I want to break down first) has 8 players remaining AND there are a total of 8 empty seats when looking at tables 1-4. In other words I can now take those 8 players from table 5, & place them at the other tables, & get rid of that table. Of course the hard part is trying your best to place them in their same relative position to the button which 9 times of out 10 you can't for everyone. There are times when someone has to pay a blind sooner than they would have at the other table, but that's life. This must be explained ahead of time to avoid the argument. Anyway, you'd give those players on table 5 seat cards from the open spots on the other tables, take back their table 5 seat cards and do the whole thing over again. I could write a bunch more about all the other possible things that might/could/will happen but I already feel like I've written way too much. I do admit to writing out posts like this with those folks in mind that are new to all this and need more of a step-by-step deal. The vets are probably rolling their eyes, but hey, I remember when I first started and how lost I was. Hey, if I help one person, then cool!
Honestly, I'd strongly suggest not playing yourself. To run a quality tournament of 3 tables & above, IMO, is pretty much impossible to as both a player & director. It can be done, but it's not much fun for the director and can be frustrating for the players as the clock is typically paused again and again while decisions, moves, & tables are broken down.
With respect to moving players, I use this simple method stolen from homepokertournament.com (I think).
Each table has a set of cards:
Table 1, Seat 1
Table 1, Seat 2 etc.
Most likely not all of your tables will have the same number of players but they must be within one player of each other. For example, let's say 48 players on 5 tables. 3 Tables of 10 + 2 Tables of 9. This means you'd hand out all 10 seat cards for Tables 1, 2 & 3 while tables 4 & 5 only have 9 seat cards used.
On a separate folding table or whatever, you would have the EMPTY seat cards laid out by table.
As players go out, you MUST gather their seat card (or the system fails) and place it under the proper table -- here I show Table 1 lost seat 9, Table 2, seats 1&5, Table 3 lost seat 8 and Tables 4/5 started out that way. At this point the tables are still within balance -- they only differ by 1 player or less.
If you get to the point where there is a difference of two (or more) between any tables, such as below you see you must move somebody from a table with more players: Here I show Table 2 has lost seat 7, so now table 2 has only 7 players compared to the other tables with 9. A difference of 2 players = bad. Find out what position relative to the button that last player was to go out on table 2, seat 7. If they were two behind the button, then you pick up that seat card (T2/S7), take it over to table 5, find the player sitting in that same relative position of two behind the button, give them their new seat card & have them move over to table 2 -- be sure to pick up his/her seat card from table 5 because now they are gone.
Now comes the REALLY fun part -- breaking down tables. Assuming you can fit 10 people at a table... This took me a few times through in my head before it became second nature, but if you look below you'll see that table 5 (the one I want to break down first) has 8 players remaining AND there are a total of 8 empty seats when looking at tables 1-4. In other words I can now take those 8 players from table 5, & place them at the other tables, & get rid of that table. Of course the hard part is trying your best to place them in their same relative position to the button which 9 times of out 10 you can't for everyone. There are times when someone has to pay a blind sooner than they would have at the other table, but that's life. This must be explained ahead of time to avoid the argument. Anyway, you'd give those players on table 5 seat cards from the open spots on the other tables, take back their table 5 seat cards and do the whole thing over again. I could write a bunch more about all the other possible things that might/could/will happen but I already feel like I've written way too much. I do admit to writing out posts like this with those folks in mind that are new to all this and need more of a step-by-step deal. The vets are probably rolling their eyes, but hey, I remember when I first started and how lost I was. Hey, if I help one person, then cool!
